It Was Full Night When I Had Reached A Vague Clearing In The Woods,
Right Up On The Height Of That Flat Hill.
This clearing was called
'The Fountain of Magdalen'.
I was so far relieved by the broader sky
of the open field that I could wait and rest a little, and there, at
last, separate from men, I thought of a thousand things. The air was
full of midsummer, and its mixture of exaltation and fear cut me off
from ordinary living. I now understood why our religion has made
sacred this season of the year; why we have, a little later, the night
of St John, the fires in the villages, and the old perception of
fairies dancing in the rings of the summer grass. A general communion
of all things conspires at this crisis of summer against us reasoning
men that should live in the daylight, and something fantastic
possesses those who are foolish enough to watch upon such nights. So
I, watching, was cut off. There were huge, vague summits, all wooded,
peering above the field I sat in, but they merged into a confused
horizon. I was on a high plateau, yet I felt myself to be alone with
the immensity that properly belongs to plains alone. I saw the stars,
and remembered how I had looked up at them on just such a night when I
was close to the Pacific, bereft of friends and possessed with
solitude. There was no noise; it was full darkness.
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