Our first stopping place was the Isle of
Wight. We entered the Solent about ten o'clock one morning, and I must confess that my heart sank as we came close to shore.
"Truly," quoth he, after a time, "I think yon fellow is a certain young miller I have seen now and then around the edge of Sherwood; a poor
wight, methinks, to spoil a good song about."
In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon, says an old writer --of whose works I possess the only copy extant -- it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the
wight Death is the only glazier.
I've seen the Black Sea and the Red Sea; I rounded the Isle of
Wight; I discovered the Yellow River, And the Orange too by night.
It is about one third as large as the Isle of
Wight, and extremely fruitful: it is governed by the head of a certain tribe, who are all magicians.
At length, it would seem, his patient industry found its reward; for, without explanation or apology, he pronounced aloud the words "Isle of
Wight," drew a long, sweet sound from his pitch-pipe, and then ran through the preliminary modulations of the air whose name he had just mentioned, with the sweeter tones of his own musical voice.
"But, aunt, she is really so very ignorant!--Do you know, we asked her last night which way she would go to get to Ireland; and she said, she should cross to the Isle of
Wight. She thinks of nothing but the Isle of
Wight, and she calls it the Island, as if there were no other island in the world.
it proves to many a poor
wight in the fishery, upon whom these spikes fall with impaling force.
He's expected at noon, and no
wight till he comes May profane the great chair, or the porridge of plums For the best of the cheer, and the seat by the fire, Is the undenied right of the Barefooted Friar.
Without knowing it in the least, we had run up alongside the Isle of
Wight, and that tower, tinged a faint evening red in the salt wind-haze, was the lighthouse on St.
In a villa on the westward shore of the Isle of
Wight, the glass doors which lead from the drawing-room to the garden are yet open.
Verse is the trade of every living
wight.--FRANCIS.