And
then, as the sun sinks, you shall see the storm drift for an instant,
from off the hills, leaving their broad sides smoking, and loaded yet
with snow-white, torn, steam-like rags of capricious vapour, now gone,
now gathered again; while the smouldering sun, seeming not far away,
but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could reach
it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlong
fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with
blood.... And then you shall hear the fainting tempest die in the
hollow of the night, and you shall see a green halo kindling on the
summit of the eastern hills, brighter--brighter yet, till the large
white circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds,
step by step, line by line; star after star she quenches with her
kindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable,
fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move
together, hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so
measured in their unity of motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll
with them, and the earth to reel under them.... And then wait yet for
one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and the heaving
mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea,
are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning: watch the white
glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty
serpents with scales of fire: watch the columnar peaks of solitary
snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new
morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than
the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like
altar-smoke, up to the heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes
flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with purer
light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on
every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet
canopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault
beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels:
and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are
bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me
who has best delivered this His message unto men![34]
[30] Some sentences of an argumentative nature have been omitted from
this selection.
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