oet:

The sullen mountain, and the bee that hums,
A flying joy, about its flowery base,
Each from the same immediate fountain comes,
And both compose one evanescent race.

There is no difference in the texture fine
That's woven through organic rock and grass,
And that which thrills man's heart in every line,
As o'er its web God's weaving fingers pass.

The timid flower that decks the fragrant field,
The daring star that tints the solemn dome,
From one propulsive force to being reeled;
Both keep one law and have a single home.

Chapter VII

The Mystery of Night

Every day two worlds lie at my door and invite me into mysteries as far
apart as darkness and light. These two realms have nothing in common
save a certain identity of form; colour, relation, distance, are lost
or utterly changed. In the vast fields of heaven a still more complete
and sublime transformation is wrought. It is a new hemisphere which
hangs above me, with countless fires lighting the awful highways of the
universe, and guiding the daring and reverent thought as it falters in
the highest empyrean. The mind that has come into fellowship with
Nature is subtly moved and penetrated by the decline of light and the
oncoming of darkness. As the sun is replaced by the stars, so is the
hot, restless, eager spirit of the day replaced by the infinite calm
and peace of the night. The change does not come abruptly or with the
suddenness of violent movement; no dial is delicate enough to register
the moment when day gives place to night. With that amplitude of power
which accompanies every movement, with that sublime quietude of energy
which pervades every action, Nature calls the day across the hills and
summons the night that has been waiting at the eastern gates. No stir,
no strife, no noise of great activities, put forth on a vast scale,
break the spell of an hour which is the daily witness of a miracle, and
waits, hushed and silent, in a world-wide worship, while the altar
fires blaze on the western hills.

In that unspeakable splendour, earth and air and sea are for the moment
one, and through them all there flashes a divine radiance; time is not
left without the witness of its sanctity as it fades off the dials of
earth and slips like a shining rivulet into the shoreless sea of light
beyond. The day that was born with seas and suns at its cradle is
followed to its grave by the long procession of t