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There mountains hurl themselves against the stars and at their feet lie black and leaden seas.  Above float clouds—­white, gray, and inken, while the clear, impalpable air springs and sparkles like new wine.  Last night we floated on the calm bosom of the sea in the southernmost haven of Mount Desert.  The water flamed and sparkled.  The sun had gone, but above the crooked back of cumulus clouds, dark and pink with radiance, and on the other sky aloft to the eastward piled the gorgeous-curtained mists of evening.  The radiance faded and a shadowy velvet veiled the mountains, a humid depth of gloom behind which lurked all the mysteries of life and death, while above, the clouds hung ashen and dull; lights twinkled and flashed along the shore, boats glided in the twilight, and the little puffing of motors droned away.  Then was the hour to talk of life and the meaning of life, while above gleamed silently, suddenly, star on star.

Bar Harbor lies beneath a mighty mountain, a great, bare, black mountain that sleeps above the town; but as you leave, it rises suddenly, threateningly, until far away on Frenchman’s Bay it looms above the town in withering vastness, as if to call all that little world petty save itself.  Beneath the cool, wide stare of that great mountain, men cannot live as giddily as in some lesser summer’s playground.  Before the unveiled face of nature, as it lies naked on the Maine coast, rises a certain human awe.

God molded his world largely and mightily off this marvelous coast and meant that in the tired days of life men should come and worship here and renew their spirit.  This I have done and turning I go to work again.  As we go, ever the mountains of Mount Desert rise and greet us on our going—­somber, rock-ribbed and silent, looking unmoved on the moving world, yet conscious of their everlasting strength.

About us beats the sea—­the sail-flecked, restless sea, humming its tune about our flying keel, unmindful of the voices of men.  The land sinks to meadows, black pine forests, with here and there a blue and wistful mountain.  Then there are islands—­bold rocks above the sea, curled meadows; through and about them roll ships, weather-beaten and patched of sail, strong-hulled and smoking, light gray and shining.  All the colors of the sea lie about us—­gray and yellowing greens and doubtful blues, blacks not quite black, tinted silvers and golds and dreaming whites.  Long tongues of dark and golden land lick far out into the tossing waters, and the white gulls sail and scream above them.  It is a mighty coast—­ground out and pounded, scarred, crushed, and carven in massive, frightful lineaments.  Everywhere stand the pines—­the little dark and steadfast pines that smile not, neither weep, but wait and wait.  Near us lie isles of flesh and blood, white cottages, tiled and meadowed.  Afar lie shadow-lands, high mist-hidden hills, mountains boldly limned, yet shading to the sky, faint and unreal.