e and disaster upon the earth. Some
fell monster, roaming through the heavens, seeking whom he may
devour,--some dragon, "monstrous, horrible, and waste," whom no
Redcrosse Knight shall pierce with his trenchand blade, is swallowing
with giant gulps the writhing victim. Blow shrill and loud your bugle
blasts! Beat with fierce clangor your brazen cymbals! Push up wild
shrieks and groans, and horrid cries,

"That all the woods may answer, and your echoes ring,"

and the foul fiend perchance be scared away by deafening din.

O, sad for those who lived before the ghouls were disinherited; for
whom the woods and waters, and the deep places, were peopled with
mighty, mysterious foes; who saw evil spirits in the earth forces, and
turned her gold into consuming fire. For us, later born, Science has
dived into the caverns, and scaled the heights, and fathomed the
depths, forcing from coy yet willing Nature the solution of her own
problems, and showing us everywhere, GOD. We are not children of fate,
trembling at the frown of fairies and witches and gnomes, but the
children of our Father. If we ascend up into heaven, he is there. If
we take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of
the sea, even there shall his hand lead, and his right hand hold.

Is it begun? Not--well, I don't know, though. Something seems to be
happening up in the northwest corner. Certainly, a bit of that round
disk has been shaved off. I will wait five minutes. Yes, the battle
is begun. The shadow advances. The moon yields. But there are
watchers in the heaven as well as in the earth. There is sympathy in
the skies. Up floats an argosy of compassionate clouds, and fling
their fleecy veil around the pallid moon, and bear her softly on their
snowy bosoms. But she moves on, impelled. She sweeps beyond the sad
clouds. Deeper and deeper into the darkness. Closer and closer the
Shadow clutches her in his inexorable arms. Wan and weird becomes her
face, wrathful and wild the astonished winds; and for all her science
and her faith, the Earth trembles in the night, and a hush of awe
quivers through the angry, agitated air. On, still on, till the fair
and smiling moon is but a dull and tawny orb, with no beauty to be
desired; on, still on, till even that cold, coppery light wanes into
sullen darkness. Whether it is a cloud kindly hiding the humbled
queen, or whether the queen is indeed merged in the abyss of the
Shad