46 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



nolence of leaf and blossom, the twinkling earth -stars bursting 

 into bloom beneath the brooding galaxy for soft-winged nestling 

 moths and poising murmurers nevertheless, with all its strange 

 surprises, for a full appreciation of the night's true witchery one 

 must become a sympathetic element of its mysteries, and see 

 the darkness unalloyed. With the light extinguished you now 

 become a harmonious instead of a disturbing element. You are 

 taken into confidence, and experience a new joy of sensation not 

 found in your illuminated path, that speculative charm which 

 Keats found in the haunt of the nightingale : , 



"Tender is the night, 



And haply the Queen -moon is on her throne, 

 Clustered around by all her starry fays ; 



But here there is no light 



Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown 

 Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 

 I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 

 Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs; 

 But in embalmed darkness guess each sweet 

 Wherewith the seasonable month endows 

 The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 

 White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; 

 Fast fading violets covered up in leaves; 



And mid- May's oldest child, 

 The coming musk -rose, full of dewy wine, 

 The murmurous haunt of bees on summer eves." 



In the total darkness the eager pupils are restless, and the 

 eyes roll in " fine frenzy " at the new importance of their com- 

 panion faculties. Their occupation is gone. The ear and the 

 nostril now take the watch, seeming possessed of a retina of 

 their own, picturing facts and surrounding events which the jeal- 

 ous eye strives in vain to prove. In the dark woods you are 

 conscious as never before of tension and muscular movement in 

 your ears; they loom up in importance, as it were, and are 

 pricked forward and backward like those of other alert but hum- 

 bler beings. Unaided by the sight, they carry on a subtle analysis 



