128 THE SHADOW. 



without which the mere gravitating matter of the 

 earth would be of very little value. Where they 

 have been for some time absent, nature saddens and 

 languishes ; life becomes dormant OJT extinct ; and 

 there is no motion, save those general motions of 

 the earth, which still have reference to the sun ; and 

 would in all probability cease if the earth were de- 

 prived of that luminary. But the return of the sun 

 is a time of revival, the bonds of nature are loos- 

 ened, and all her tribes are in motion. 



No matter how brief the privation is. Be it only 

 the passing of a dense cloud, how much it saddens 

 the face of Nature, in all the more airy and delicate 

 parts of her kingdoms. The polished leaves and 

 petals and the glassy waters glitter no more ; the 

 myriads that were, but the instant before, winnow- 

 ing the air with tiny wings, and breaking the light 

 into all the shades of the rainbow, are sporting no 

 more. There is not a chirp in the grass, not a buzz 

 in the air, not a hum over the flowers. The birds 

 of the free air are silent, as if the inspiration of the 

 sky were away. The skylark drops down like a 

 stone, to the covert of the clods ; not a bird sings 

 from those sprays that erewhile were so sonorous 

 as well as so sunny ; and the only sounds that issue 

 from the grove are the wood-pigeon moaning from 

 her tent of leaves, and the owl answering dismally 

 from the hollow tree. The chickweeds, and other 

 little plants of delicate texture, fold together their 

 leaves, and the daisy vails its golden eye, as if both 

 were hiding their precious germes from the effects 

 of the impending gloom. 



But still those temporary absences of the sun, 

 though they have a gloomy influence upon the merry 

 sounds and the gay colours of nature, and though 

 they drive for a moment the very odours into their 

 dells and hollows, or make them stagnate among the 

 sources that produce them, until they concentrate 

 there into rankness ; there are other parts of nature 



