Behold How The Evening Now Steals Over The Fields,
The Shadows Of The Trees Creeping Farther And Farther Into The
Meadow, And Erelong The Stars Will Come To Bathe In These Retired
Waters.
Her undertakings are secure and never fail.
If I were
awakened from a deep sleep, I should know which side of the
meridian the sun might be by the aspect of nature, and by the
chirp of the crickets, and yet no painter can paint this
difference. The landscape contains a thousand dials which
indicate the natural divisions of time, the shadows of a thousand
styles point to the hour.
"Not only o'er the dial's face,
This silent phantom day by day,
With slow, unseen, unceasing pace
Steals moments, months, and years away;
From hoary rock and aged tree,
From proud Palmyra's mouldering walls,
From Teneriffe, towering o'er the sea,
From every blade of grass it falls."
It is almost the only game which the trees play at, this
tit-for-tat, now this side in the sun, now that, the drama of the
day. In deep ravines under the eastern sides of cliffs, Night
forwardly plants her foot even at noonday, and as Day retreats
she steps into his trenches, skulking from tree to tree, from
fence to fence, until at last she sits in his citadel and draws
out her forces into the plain. It may be that the forenoon is
brighter than the afternoon, not only because of the greater
transparency of its atmosphere, but because we naturally look
most into the west, as forward into the day, and so in the
forenoon see the sunny side of things, but in the afternoon the
shadow of every tree.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 342 of 422
Words from 94273 to 94556
of 116321
