AN UNDISCOVERED ISLAND. 181 



the Poet, answering RosalindJ^who had been quot 

 ing the old counselor s summing up of the common 

 good fortune on the island when Prospero dispelled 

 his enchantments and the shipwrecked company 

 found themselves saved as by miracle. It was our 

 first evening on the island ; one of those memorable 

 nights when all things seem born anew into some 

 larger heritage of beauty. The moon hung low 

 over the quiet sea, sleeping now under the spell of 

 the summer night, as if no storm had ever vexed it. 

 So silent, so hushed was it that but for the soft rip 

 ple on the sand we should have thought it calmed 

 in eternal repose. Far off along the horizon the 

 stars hung motionless as the sea ; overhead they 

 shone out of the measureless depths of space with 

 a soft and solemn splendor. Not a branch moved 

 on the great trees behind us, folded now in the 

 universal mystery of the night. The little stretch 

 of beach, over whose yellow sands the song of the 

 invisible Ariel once floated, lay in the soft light fit 

 for the feet of fairies, or the gentle advance and re 

 treat of the sea. The very air, suffused through all 

 that vast immensity with a mysterious light, seemed 

 like a dream of peace. 



In such a place, at such a-n hour, one shrinks 

 from speech as from the word that breaks the spell. 

 When one is so much a part of the sublime order of 

 things that the universal movement of force that 

 streams through all things embraces and thrills him 

 with the consciousness of common fellowship, how 



