So--I went on, on my own--deeper and deeper into the silent Tunnel of the Ride--not so sure of where I was and yet not anxious either, not concerned about my companions nor even about the nearness of--certain friends. The trees were beech, and the buds, just breaking, fiercely brilliant, and the new, the renewed light on them--intermittent diamond--but the depths were dark, a silent Nave. And no birds sang, or I heard none, no woodpecker tapped, no thrush whistled or hopped. And I listened to the increasing Quiet--and my horse went softly on the beech-mast--which was wet after rain--not crackling, a little sodden, not wet enough to plash. And I had the sensation, common enough, at least to me, that I was moving out of time, that the way, narrow and dark-dappled, stretched away indifferently before and behind, and that I was who I had been and what I would become--all at once, all wound in one--and I moved onward indifferently, since it was all one, whether I came or went, or remained still. Now to me such moments are poetry. [Randolph Henry Ash]