MOONLIGHT 



has kissed yon mountain top, and with unbending 

 rays blacked out its jagged ridge and made of it a 

 silhouette. Her colour-box has limits, for where the 

 midday sun has shown us rainbow tints and verdure 

 green, she paints in black and white with sombre 

 shades, and the distant ridge of softest blue and green 

 in daylight, is sharp and hard with greys and black by 

 night, and clear-cut lines mark where shadows fall 

 into darkened deeps of mystery. 



But land is not her canvas, save perhaps the moun- MOONLIGHT 



tain crests ; she loves to paint the sky and sea and 

 silver-wash the stream. Look where her brush in 

 passing down has lightened up the silver-rim-tipped, 

 cloud-flecked dome of heaven and sent its arch of 

 deep steel-blue far back; away beyond the place 

 which it in daylight bounds, and we seem to see 

 behind the stars of glittering gold; those countless 

 worlds; 'the pulsing dome,' unthinkable! See where 

 they hang, and yet beyond, in depths of ether's blue 

 infinity. How vast the circle of her path seems, how 

 small are we who watch her noiseless ride in space, 

 we, whose tiny atom of life is as a grain of sand, a 

 sigh of wind ! We feel a crushing sense of our little- 



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