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 
