THE SECRET OF THE DAY 3 



flashes like a diamond — to one all purple, to another 

 red as dawn, to a third the nameless colour of the 

 deep sea, to a rare spirit, here and there, the compo- 

 site ray of truth itself. 



And thus you shall find, set largely forth through 

 the annual circle of the sun's work upon this planet, 

 a gamut of human moods — from Love, the Mother's 

 primal bribe to win us like children, with a toy — 

 along endless avenues of light and shade, by ways 

 and through hours of mino^led cloud and sunshine. 

 All passive states of anticipation, expectancy, and 

 awful dread are imaged here in their range of suffer- 

 ing, endurance, suspense, rest, sleep, or death ; and 

 activity also, in its countless manifestations, is most 

 closely indicated. Here a day tells the tale of hope 

 rekindled, of achievement crowned ; here the unnum- 

 bered states of the mind — toil, tribulation, or opposition 

 — are likewise painted upon the earth by the seasons, 

 by the havoc wrought of lightnings, the magic of 

 winter rains and summer suns, the teeth of the frost, 

 and the eternal attrition of the tides. To-day a dozen 

 facts, huddled together under the howling of the West 

 wind, shall simultaneously cry and shout their message 

 like the trumpets of an army ; to-morrow only the 

 burden of a robin's song sets free the secret ; or a 

 moonrise ; or the sudden, far-flung, fast-fading flame 

 of the afterglow. Content, the master-jewel of human 

 glory, I have found blazoned upon no opulent triumph 

 of Nature, but rather within some still, grey, twilight 

 hour, between the passing of the harvest season and 



