therwise, who can tell? Here the lot of man born of the flesh is but
to endure midst toil and tribulation, to catch at the bubbles blown by
Fate, which he calls pleasure, thankful if before they burst they rest
a moment in his hand, and when the tragedy is played out, and his hour
comes to perish, to pass humbly whither he knows not.

Above me, as I lay, shone the eternal stars, and there at my feet the
impish marsh-born balls of fire rolled this way and that, vapour-tossed
and earth-desiring, and methought that in the two I saw a type and image
of what man is, and what perchance man may one day be, if the living
Force who ordained him and them should so ordain this also. Oh, that it
might be ours to rest year by year upon that high level of the heart to
which at times we momentarily attain! Oh, that we could shake loose the
prisoned pinions of the soul and soar to that superior point, whence,
like to some traveller looking out through space from Darien's giddiest
peak, we might gaze with spiritual eyes deep into Infinity!

What would it be to cast off this earthy robe, to have done for ever
with these earthy thoughts and miserable desires; no longer, like those
corpse candles, to be tossed this way and that, by forces beyond our
control; or which, if we can theoretically control them, we are at times
driven by the exigencies of our nature to obey! Yes, to cast them off,
to have done with the foul and thorny places of the world; and, like to
those glittering points above me, to rest on high wrapped for ever in
the brightness of our better selves, that even now shines in us as fire
faintly shines within those lurid balls, and lay down our littleness in
that wide glory of our dreams, that invisible but surrounding Good, from
which all truth and beauty comes!

These and many such thoughts passed through my mind that night. They
come to torment us all at times. I say to torment, for, alas! thinking
can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought. What is the
purpose of our feeble crying in the awful silences of space? Can our dim
intelligence read the secrets of that star-strewn sky? Does any answer
come out of it? Never any at all, nothing but echoes and fantastic
visions! And yet we believe that there is an answer, and that upon a
time a new Dawn will come blushing down the ways of our enduring night.
We believe it, for its reflected beauty even now shines up continually
in our hearts from beneath the horizon o