The light was slowly spreading all over the sky, and coming down nearer and nearer to the ground, and struggling with the entangling fog. In places, along the uplands, there were seen drab dew-soaked expanses, peering out of the night, and plashes of water that shimmered with lack-lustre surfaces, and brooks that poured their streaming contents along, between the dissolving mists and the brightening dawn. And as it grew lighter, the flush in the East changed from livid violet to the blood-red tints of a huge conflagration. Things grew visible: the black circle of forest at the sky-line, the long row of poplars on the ascending road, drooping forward, as though tired by the weary climb, sprang into sight; and the hamlets sprinkled over the country-side, and hitherto buried in shadows, now peeped forth here and there in the morning light, like dark rocks in a swirl of foaming water, and some of the nearer trees were silvered all over with morning dews. The sun had not risen yet, but it was clearly on the point of bursting out of the crimson glory round it, upon the world now just opening its bleared eyes, and stirring a little, but still resting and drowsily enjoying its rest. Now the stillness seemed to ring yet more loudly in the ears, for the earth was, as it were, holding its breath: only a feeble breeze, faint as the breathing of an infant, blew from the woods and shook the dewdrops from the trees. Out of the greyness of the early morn, above those fields still deep in slumber and in shadow, like a church filled with silent worshippers, suddenly rose the ditty of a lark. Up from the ground it soared, and, rising, flapped its wings, twittering with silvery sounds—the tinkling of a Mass-bell, as it were—or like a fragrant column of springtide perfumes, rising, rising upward; and from the hallowed heights and silences of the eastern sky it called aloud to all the country-side. And in a little others joined its song, soaring to heaven, and, as they beat their wings, proclaimed the approach of day to every creature! The sun was coming, it was close at hand. At last it peered above the far-off forest, as if it rose from an abyss; as if divine invisible hands were holding up its huge and glittering paten over the drowsy lands, and blessing with the blessing of its light all things that in them were—living or dead, coming to life or dying out of it—beginning thus the holy offering of the day, while all things fell and worshipped in the dust, mutely closing their unworthy eyes before its sacred majesty. Now day had dawned. Like odoriferous smoke, the haze was wafted upwards from the meadows to the gold-splashed sky; and birds and living things of every kind burst out into a chant ... a cry, a thankful prayer, a prayer rising from the heart!