DAYS IN THE WOODS 289 



presence filters through all the worldly coverings 

 of care, down to the naked soul of man. It is a 

 wonderful and strange experience to lie out under 

 the stars in the solemn, silent darkness of the 

 forest, to watch the constellations rise and set, 

 to lie there gazing up through the branches of 

 the grand old trees, which have seen another race 

 dwell beneath their boughs and pass away, whose 

 age makes the little fretful life of man seem in- 

 significantly small ; gazing up at planet after 

 planet, sun beyond sun, into the profundity of 

 space, till this tiny speck in the universe, this 

 little earth, with all its discontent and discord, 

 its wrangling races, its murmuring millions of 

 men, dv^dndles into nothing, and the mind looks 

 out so far beyond, that it falls back stunned 

 vnth the vastness of the vision which looms 

 overwhelmingly before it. 



The earth sleeps. A silence that can be felt 

 has fallen over the woods. The stars begin to 

 fade. A softer and stronger light wells up and 

 flows over the scene as the broad moon slowly 

 floats above the tree-tops, shining white upon the 

 birch trees, throwing into black shadow the sombre 

 pines, dimly lighting up the barren, and revealing 

 grotesque ghost-like forms of stunted fir and grey 



