The Hindoos compare the moon to a saintly being who has reached the last stage of bodily existence.

Great restorer of antiquity, great enchanter!  In a mild night, when the harvest or hunter’s moon shines unobstructedly, the houses in our village, whatever architect they may have had by day, acknowledge only a master.  The village street is then as wild as the forest.  New and old things are confounded.  I know not whether I am sitting on the ruins of a wall, or on the material which is to compose a new one.  Nature is an instructed and impartial teacher, spreading no crude opinions, and flattering none; she will be neither radical nor conservative.  Consider the moonlight, so civil, yet so savage!

The light is more proportionate to our knowledge than that of day.  It is no more dusky in ordinary nights than our mind’s habitual atmosphere, and the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminated moments are.

    “In such a night let me abroad remain
    Till morning breaks, and all’s confused again.”

Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn?—­to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul?  It is merely garish and glaring.

When Ossian, in his address to the Sun, exclaims,—­

    “Where has darkness its dwelling? 
    Where is the cavernous home of the stars,
    When thou quickly followest their steps,
    Pursuing them like a hunter in the sky,—­
    Thou climbing the lofty hills,
    They descending on barren mountains?”

who does not in his thought accompany the stars to their “cavernous home,” “descending” with them “on barren mountains”?

Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black; for we see through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day, where the sunbeams are revelling.

* * * * *

ANDANTE.

BEETHOVEN’S SIXTH SYMPHONY.

    Sounding above the warring of the years,
    Over their stretch of toils and pains and fears,
          Comes the well-loved refrain,
          That ancient voice again.

    Sweeter than when beside the river’s marge
    We lay and watched, like Innocence at large,
          The changeful waters flow,
          Speaks this brave music now.

    Tender as sunlight upon childhood’s head,
    Serene as moonlight upon childhood’s bed,
          Comes the remembered power
          Of that forgotten hour.

    The little brook with merry voice and low,
    The gentle ripples rippling far below,
          Talked with no idle voice,
          Though idling were their choice.

    Now through the tumult and the pride of life,
    Gentler, yet firmly soothing all its strife,
          Nature draws near once more,
          And knocks at the world’s door.