THE EDGE OF NIGHT 79 



left to that quiet time between the light and the 

 dark ! Ours is a hurried twilight. We quit work 

 to sleep; we wake up to work again. We measure 

 the day by a clock; we measure the night by an 

 alarm clock. Life is all ticked off. We are mur- 

 dered by the second. What we need is a day and 

 a night with wider margins a dawn that comes 

 more slowly, and a longer lingering twilight. Life 

 has too little selvage; it is too often raw and 

 raveled. Room and quiet and verge are what we 

 want, not more dials for time, nor more figures 

 for the dials. We have things enough, too, more 

 than enough ; it is space for the things, perspec- 

 tive, and the right measure for the things that we 

 lack a measure not one foot short of the dis- 

 tance between us and the stars. 



If we get anything out of the fields worth while, 

 it will be this measure, this largeness, and quiet. 

 It may be only an owl or a tree-toad that we 

 go forth to see, but how much more we find 

 things we cannot hear by day, things long, long 

 forgotten, things we never thought or dreamed 

 before. 



The day is none too short, the night none too 

 long; but all too narrow is the edge between. 



