Nor does the beauty end with the day. "It is nothing to sleep under the
canopy of heaven, where we have the globe of the earth for our place of
repose, and the glories of the heavens for our spectacle?" [6] For my part
I always regret the custom of shutting up our rooms in the evening, as
though there was nothing worth seeing outside. What, however, can be more
beautiful than to "look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with
patines of bright gold," or to watch the moon journeying in calm and
silver glory through the night. And even if we do not feel that "the man
who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been
present like an Archangel at the creation of light and of the world," [7]
still "the stars say something significant to all of us: and each man has
a whole hemisphere of them, if he will but look up, to counsel and
befriend him"; [8] for it is not so much, as Helps elsewhere observes, "in
guiding us over the seas of our little planet, but out of the dark waters
of our own perturbed minds, that we may make to ourselves the most of
their significance." Indeed,
"How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths;
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky;
How beautiful is night!" [9]
I have never wondered at those who worshipped the sun and moon.
On the other hand, when all outside is dark and cold; when perhaps
"Outside fall the snowflakes lightly;
Through the night loud raves the storm;
In my room the fire glows brightly,
And 'tis cosy, silent, warm.
"Musing sit I on the settle
By the firelight's cheerful blaze,
Listening to the busy kettle
Humming long forgotten lays." [10]
For after all the true pleasures of home are not without, but within; and
"the domestic man who loves no music so well as his own kitchen clock and
the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has
solaces which others never dream of." [11]
We love the ticking of the clock, and the flicker of the fire, like the
sound of the cawing of rooks, not so much for any beauty of their own as
for their associations.
It is a great truth that when we retire into ourselves we can call up what
memories we please.
"How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,
When fond recollection recalls them to view.--
The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wildwood
And every lov'd spot which my infancy knew." [12]
It is not so much the
"Fireside enjoyments,
And _all the comforts_ of the lowly roof," [13]
but rather, according to the higher and better ideal of Keble,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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