Europe -- Description and travel; Middle East -- Description and travel; Voyages and travels
as Jacob did, and close their dim eyes, and dream, perchance, of angels
descending out of heaven on a ladder. It was very pretty. But I have
recognized the weary head and the dim eyes, finally. They borrowed the
idea--and the words--and the construction--and the punctuation--from
Grimes. The pilgrims will tell of Palestine, when they get home, not as
it appeared to them, but as it appeared to Thompson and Robinson and
Grimes--with the tints varied to suit each pilgrim's creed.
Pilgrims, sinners and Arabs are all abed, now, and the camp is still.
Labor in loneliness is irksome. Since I made my last few notes, I have
been sitting outside the tent for half an hour. Night is the time to see
Galilee. Genessaret under these lustrous stars has nothing repulsive
about it. Genessaret with the glittering reflections of the
constellations flecking its surface, almost makes me regret that I ever
saw the rude glare of the day upon it. Its history and its associations
are its chiefest charm, in any eyes, and the spells they weave are feeble
in the searching light of the sun. Then, we scarcely feel the fetters.
Our thoughts wander constantly to the practical concerns of life, and
refuse to dwell upon things that seem vague and unreal. But when the day
is done, even the most unimpressible must yield to the dreamy influences
of this tranquil starlight. The old traditions of the place steal upon
his memory and haunt his reveries, and then his fancy clothes all sights
and sounds with the supernatural. In the lapping of the waves upon the
beach, he hears the dip of ghostly oars; in the secret noises of the
night he hears spirit voices; in the soft sweep of the breeze, the rush
of invisible wings. Phantom ships are on the sea, the dead of twenty
centuries come forth from the tombs, and in the dirges of the night wind
the songs of old forgotten ages find utterance again.
In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad compass of the
heavens, and is a theatre meet for great events; meet for the birth of a
religion able to save a world; and meet for the stately Figure appointed
to stand upon its stage and proclaim its high decrees. But in the
sunlight, one says: Is it for the deeds which were done and the words
which were spoken in this little acre of rocks and sand eighteen
centuries gone, that the bells are ringing to-day in the remote islands
of the sea and far and wide over continents that clasp the circumference
of the huge globe?
One can comprehend it only when night has hidden all incongruities and
created a theatre proper for so grand a drama.
CHAPTER XLIX.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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