Yet a while, and, as we turned a corner, a great leap of
silver light and net of forest shadows fell across the road and
upon our wondering waggonful; and, swimming low among the trees, we
beheld a strange, misshapen, waning moon, half-tilted on her back.
"Where are ye when the moon appears?" so the old poet sang, half-
taunting, to the stars, bent upon a courtly purpose.
"As the sunlight round the dim earth's midnight tower of shadow
pours,
Streaming past the dim, wide portals,
Viewless to the eyes of mortals,
Till it floods the moon's pale islet or the morning's golden
shores."
So sings Mr. Trowbridge, with a noble inspiration. And so had the
sunlight flooded that pale islet of the moon, and her lit face put
out, one after another, that galaxy of stars. The wonder of the
drive was over; but, by some nice conjunction of clearness in the
air and fit shadow in the valley where we travelled, we had seen
for a little while that brave display of the midnight heavens. It
was gone, but it had been; nor shall I ever again behold the stars
with the same mind. He who has seen the sea commoved with a great
hurricane, thinks of it very differently from him who has seen it
only in a calm. And the difference between a calm and a hurricane
is not greatly more striking than that between the ordinary face of
night and the splendour that shone upon us in that drive.
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