ng lights in it. After you see them, the glint
of the fireflies flitting hither and thither, starring the meadows
as thickly as distant suns star the sky, making a milky way of the
brookside and flashing comet-like along the dry upland, is
singularly vivid. They sparkle, these northern fireflies of ours,
with a dainty glint that merely emphasizes the darkness. Now and
then you may see the larva of one of these, which is the glow-worm
beside the path. You may get a very faint real illumination from
him, lighting perhaps the space of your fingernail as he crawls
along. He, too, merely serves to make the darkness visible. The
firefly of the tropics is more spectacular. He blazes forth like a
meteor, setting all the thicket aglow for a moment. The lights of
our fireflies are more like a frosting of the darkness, as when
the moon shines in winter and the light glints from ice crystals
hung on the frozen grass. I like ours best.

The herald of the moon is the whippoor-will. I do not recall
hearing him sing on pitch black nights. Starshine is enough for
him, but I am convinced that he is only half nocturnal and that he
watches for signs of moonlight as eagerly as I do. Last night I
saw the glint of it in the upper sky an hour before the moon rose,
a silvery shine which did not touch the lower atmosphere, but shot
athwart the higher stars like a ghost of aurora. The whippoor-will
saw it, too, and began his call, which I do not find a melancholy
plaint, but rather an eager asking. It was a voice of shrill
longing, sounding out of luminous loneliness after the moon began
to silver all things. Slowly, like a benediction, this silvery
luminosity descended till it touched the tops of eastward hills
with the softest imaginable glow and filled all the sky above them
with light. The glow of the sun drives the darkness before it and
then appears. The glow of the moon is so much the more gentle in
that it fills the world with radiance and leaves the darkness,
which it permeates, but does not destroy. It is a newer evangel,
which does not seek to rebuild the world, but simply takes it as
it is and fills it with clear fire, adding to its rough vigor
purity of motive. I do not see how anyone who loves moonlight can
be bad, or even morose and melancholy. Its light drowns all these
in a deep sea of peace.

As the moon came up, gibbous and glowing, its beams seemed to skim
into the darkness under the pines as a swallow flies, scaling
along