e could sit where he could find a perch."

Consider that the summer day has ended and that you are tired with its
rush and heat. Up you must climb to your house-roof. On the rim of the sky
is the blurred light from the steel furnaces at the city's edge and,
paneling this, stands a line of poplars stirring and sounding in the night
wind.

Alone upon the house-top to the North
I turn and watch the lightnings in the sky.

Is it fanciful to think that into the mind comes a little of the beauty of
the older world when roofs were flat and men meditated under the stars and
saw visions in the night?

Once upon a time I crossed the city of Nuremberg after dark; the market
cleared of all traces of its morning sale, the "Schoener Brunnen" at its
edge, the narrow defile leading to the citadel, the climb at the top. And
then I came to an open parade above the town--"except the Schlosskirche
Weathercock no biped stands so high." The night had swept away all details
of buildings. Nuremberg lay below like a dark etching, the centuries
folded and creased in its obscurities. Then from some gaunt tower came a
peal of bells, the hour maybe, and then an answering peal. "Thus stands
the night," they said; "thus stand the stars." I was in the presence of
Time and its black wings were brushing past me. What star was in the
ascendant, I knew not. And yet in me I felt a throb that came by blind,
circuitous ways from some far-off Chaldean temple, seven-storied in the
night. In me was the blood of the star-gazer, my emotions recalling the
rejected beliefs, the signs and wonders of the heavens. The waves of old
thought had but lately receded from the world; and I, but a chink and
hollow on the beach, had caught my drop of the ebbing ocean.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOURNEYS TO BAGDAD***

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