There are four strange caves piercing St. Catharine's Island completely through from side to side. In rough weather the storming of the sea through these extraordinary tunnels creates a prodigious uproar. When the weather is still it is possible to take boat and sail quite through one of them: at low tide you may walk through. Marine zoological riches abound in these caverns, which have been for many years a real treasure-house for naturalists. The walls are studded with innumerable barnacles, dogwinkles and other shells--not dead and empty, but full of living creatures, requiring only the return of the tide to awaken them to an active existence. There are simply myriads of them: a random stone thrown against a wall will smash a whole colony; and there are besides polyps and sea-anemones and other strange animals of eccentric habits in unusual abundance. The visitors to Tenby find great diversion in these and the other caves on the coast: in fact, the whole coast as far as Milford Haven is one succession of natural curiosities and antiquities. One cavern bears the name of Merlin's Cave, and is hallowed by a legend of the enchanter, who was born at Carmarthen in the next county.
There'll come a day when the supremest splendor Of earth or sky or sea, Whate'er their miracles, sublime or tender, Will wake no joy in me.
There'll come a day when all the aspiration, Now with such fervor fraught, As lifts to heights of breathless exaltation, Will seem a thing of naught.
There'll come a day when riches, honor, glory, Music and song and art, Will look like puppets in a wornout story, Where each has played his part.
There'll come a day when human love, the sweetest Gift that includes the whole Of God's grand giving--sovereignest, completest-- Shall fail to fill my soul.
There'll come a day--I will not care how passes The cloud across my sight, If only, lark-like, from earth's nested grasses, I spring to meet its light.
It was soon decided that I was to set out for The Headlands the first week in October. I had studied too hard, and was growing so tall and slight that Harry Dart used to draw caricatures of me, taking me in sections, he declared, since no ordinary piece of paper would suffice for a full-length. I was glad of a change, yet felt some sorrow about it too. I knew nothing of what it was to miss the warm home-life and the constant companionship which had filled every idle hour with ever-recurring pleasures. I hated to part from my mother, who had grown of late so inestimably dear to me; I should miss the boys; what could make up to me for Georgy? I did not know that I was never again to enjoy the old Belfield routine, with all my untamed impulses making the wild, free physical life full of deep and passionate delight--never again to stand the peer of all my mates, running the familiar races, playing the familiar games. I did not know what a changed life awaited me, and I looked forward to my opening vistas of a bright future with longings inconceivably sweet.