hat it was not
the light, could not hold the light, might not become as the light, but
must that moment cease when the light began to enter it. Darkness and
moaning was all that the earth contained! Would the souls of the
mariners shipwrecked this night go forth into the ceaseless turmoil? or
would they, leaving behind them the sense for storms, as for all things
soft and sweet as well, enter only a vast silence, where was nothing to
be aware of but each solitary self? Thoughts and theories many passed
through Donal's mind as he sought to land the conceivable from the
wandering bosom of the limitless; and he was just arriving at the
conclusion, that, as all things seen must be after the fashion of the
unseen whence they come, as the very genius of embodiment is likeness,
therefore the soul of man must of course have natural relations with
matter; but, on the other hand, as the spirit must be the home and
origin of all this moulding, assimilating, modelling energy, and the
spirit only that is in harmonious oneness with its origin can fully
exercise the deputed creative power, it can be only in proportion to
the eternal life in them, that spirits are able to draw to themselves
matter and clothe themselves in it, so entering into full relation with
the world of storms and sunsets;--he was, I say, just arriving at this
hazarded conclusion, when he started out of his reverie, and was
suddenly all ear to listen.--Again!--Yes! it was the same sound that
had sent him that first night wandering through the house in fruitless
quest! It came in two or three fitful chords that melted into each
other like the colours in the lining of a shell, then ceased. He went
to the door, opened it, and listened. A cold wind came rushing up the
stair. He heard nothing. He stepped out on the stair, shut his door,
and listened. It came again--a strange unearthly musical cry! If ever
disembodied sound went wandering in the wind, just such a sound must it
be! Knowing little of music save in the forms of tone and vowel-change
and rhythm and rime, he felt as if he could have listened for ever to
the wild wandering sweetness of its lamentation. Almost immediately it
ceased--then once more came again, apparently from far off, dying away
on the distant tops of the billowy air, out of whose wandering bosom it
had first issued. It was as the wailing of a summer-wind caught and
swept along in a tempest from the frozen north.

The moment he ceased to expect