It is not a drizzle that falls; it is not a languishing and doubtful rain. The rain grips the earth and beats upon it in serried sullenness, with a heavy, powerful assault. How cool it is, oh frogs, to forget the pond in the thickness of the damp grass! No need to fear that the rain is ceasing. It is copious, it is satisfying. He is thirsty indeed, my brothers, for whom this marvelous beaker does not suffice. The earth has disappeared, the house bathes, the submerged trees stream; the very river, which terminates my horizon like the sea, seems drowned. Time has no duration, and, straining my ears not only for the unlocking of each new hour, I meditate the psalm of the rain, so endless and so neutral in tone. But toward the end of the day the rain ceases, and, while the accumulated clouds prepare for a heavier assault,--as if Iris from the summit of the sky were about to flash straight into the heart of the conflict,--a black spider sways head downward and hung by his rear in the middle of this window which I have opened on the leafage and the walnut-stained North. It is no longer clear. I must strike a light. Meanwhile I shall make to tempests a libation of this drop of ink. NIGHT ON THE VERANDAH Certain redskins believe that the souls of still-born children live in the shells of winkles. I am listening tonight to the uninterrupted chorus of tree-frogs, like childish elocution, like a plaintive recitation of little girls, like an ebullition of vowels. I have long studied the ways of the stars. Some move singly, others mount in squadrons. I have recognized the “Doors” and the “Three Ways.” As the clearest space gains the zenith, Jupiter with pure greenish brilliance moves forth like a golden calf. The position of the stars is not left to chance. The interplay of their distances gives me the proportions of the void. Their swing participates in our equilibrium, vital rather than mechanical. I feel their oscillations beneath my feet. Arriving at the last of these ten windows, the mystic secret consists in surprising at the opposite window, across the shadowy, uninhabited room, another fragment of the heavenly chart. No intrusion will derange your dreams, and no celestial glances into your chamber will disquiet your repose, if before going to bed you are careful to arrange this great mirror before the night. Since the earth presents such a wide sea to the stars, it must also render itself liable to their influence and spread its deep ocean beneath them like a photographic developing bath. The night is so calm that it seems to me embalmed. THE SPLENDOR OF THE MOON By this key which rids me of the world, opening to my blindness a muffled door; by this irresistible drifting away, by the mysterious sweetness which animates me and the deep response of my own heart to a soft explosion of mysterious sounds, I realize that I am asleep, and I awaken.