It was more than that--the hills made, as it
were, the rim of a great cold shadowy goblet; and the light was
poured into it from the uprushing sun, as bubbling and sparkling
wine is poured into a beaker. I found myself thrilled from head to
foot with an intense and mysterious rapture. What did it all mean,
this awful and resplendent solemnity, full to brim of a solitary
and unapproachable holiness? What was the secret of the thing?
Perhaps every one of those stars that we had seen fade out of the
night was ringed round by planets such as ours, peopled by forms
undreamed of; doubtless on millions of globes, the daylight of some
central sun was coming in glory over the cold ridges, and waking
into life sentient beings, in lands outside our ken, each with
civilisations and histories and hopes and fears of their own. A
stupendous, an overwhelming thought! And yet, in the midst of it,
here was I myself, a little consciousness sharply divided from it
all, permitted to be a spectator, a partaker of the intolerable and
gigantic mystery, and yet so strangely made that the whole of that
vast and prodigious complexity of life and law counted for less to
me than the touch of weariness that hung, after my long vigil, over
limbs and brain.
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