CHAPTER XVI. 



A SUMMER MORNING. 



I DO not understand how any one who has 

 watched the breaking of a summer day can question 

 the noblest faiths of man. William Blake, with 

 that integrity of insight which is often the pos 

 session of the true mystic, declared that when he 

 was asked if he saw anything more in a sunset than 

 a round disk of fire, he could only answer that he 

 saw an innumerable company of the heavenly host 

 crying &quot; Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty ! &quot; 

 The birth of a day is a diviner miracle even than 

 its death. They were true poets who wrote the old 

 Vedic hymns and sang those wonderful adorations 

 when the last stars were fading in the splendor of 

 the dawn. Beside the glory of the sun s announce 

 ment all royal progresses are tawdry and mean ; 

 beside the beauty of the dawn, slowly unveiling the 

 day while the heavens wait in silent worship, all 

 poetry is idle and empty. It is the divinest of all 

 the visible processes of nature, and the sublimest 

 of all her marvelous symbolism. 



On such a morning as this, twelve years ago, 

 Amiel wrote in his diary : &quot; The whole atmosphere 

 has a luminous serenity, a limpid clearness. The 



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