On a day in spring, while the Moor still slept and no touch of young green broke its monochrome, the glen of Oke was alive with bird music and agleam with flowers. . . Far away, towards the Severn Sea, great rains were falling and the air was washed with sheets of cloud, that deepened almost to night where Exmoor, like a purple wale, spread luridly along and mingled her high places with the storm. From the south one roaming pencil of light passed ten miles off, and fallow land shone out, as though a ruby had been flung down there amid the welter of grey rain and flying cloud. Then the ray was swallowed by darkness, and that red earth vanished. The mellow light of the oak-buds bursting, the blaze of the spring gorse, the immense and storm-foundered distance, and the tenebrous sky, full of wild clouds hurrying and the curtains of the rain, combined to make a mighty theatre for the exhibition of two young human figures.

 The Secret Woman     Eden Phillpotts     (Methuen  1905)

Here were elms upon broad meadows, and then woods and the glint of kerning corn, that challenged the sunlight and rippled to the wind upon a gentle hill. Beyond, a heat-haze danced and the country rolled away into close perspective dimmed by distance and drenched in the splendour from the sky; while at the horizon a small shadow, like a blue mole-hill, rose-a mere hillock under the brightness of golden cumuli that towered their mighty heads beneath the throne of the sun.

The thatched roofs of Zeal fall in steps from west to east, where the village lies upon a hill. First comes a row of white-washed cots, with white-washed walls between their gardens; then a little inn appears and other dwellings under tar-pitched roofs. . . He drove slowly down through the village to where stood the Oxenham Arms, the stateliest and most ancient abode of the hamlet. . .

In the midst of Zeal rose a graceful cross above four crooked steps. It lifted with a long stalk and short arms, and the road divided here to right and left, leaving the cross and an open space and a little chapel together in the midst. A shining clock beamed from the chapel, and the hands moved over golden figures; while above, two exposed bells hung together in a tiny turret, and at times twittered thinly like birds, to call the people to prayer.

The village was quite soaked in sunshine. Zeal basked happy as a lizard beneath Cosdon's uplifted heights. It lay like a nest in the hollow of a desert place, and the sun burnt into it and lighted the cottage faces and blazed in the little flower-gardens by the way and cast deep purple shadows between the cots to make cool places for the children to play in and the dogs to rest. . . The hill towered under noon-tide light, but the light was broken by clouds. Rain swept over the Beacon, and its curtains of grey, tagged with glittering silver, extended for a few moments into the valley. The Beacon sank behind this brief storm; light and colour died out of it, until its higher and lower ridges rolled huge and dim and removed, like a cloud upon a cloud. But the rain quickly passed, the vapours thinned and feathered away, and the sun shone again. 

The Beacon     Eden Phillpotts               (T. Fisher Unwin 1911)