Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (191 page)

It
was
a
lovely
night,
with
a
sky
swept
bare
of
all
but
the
moon.

High
in
the
air,
bare
and
bright
and
round,
she
rode
in
beauty. And,
but
for
her,
we
might
have
seen
how
lonely
was
the
blue serene
that
swung
about
her. Naught
stayed
in
that
immense
for
eye
or
ear.
Naught
stirred
or crept.
All
slept
but
sheer,
clear
space
and
silence.
And
they,
with
the wonder
of
the
wide,
high
heaven,
were
wonderful.

Afar,
apart,
in
lovely
alternating
jet
and
silver,
the
sparse
trees dreamed.
They
seemed
as
turned
upon
themselves.
As
elves
they brooded;
green
in
green;
whisht
and
inhuman
and
serene.

All
moved
within.

All
was
indrawn.

All
was
infolded
and
in
solitude.

The
sky,
the
grass,
the
very
earth
rejected
knowing;
and
we
hied with
the
moon
as
though
she
and
we
were
atune
to
naught
beside.

Against
that
blank
withdrawal
we
struggled
as
the
uneasy
dead
may, who
would
regain
a
realm
in
which
they
can
find
no
footing.
Silence came
on
us
as
at
a
command;
and
we
were
separated
and
segregated, each
from
the
other,
and
from
all
things,
as
by
a
gulf.

I
looked
to
the
faces
on
either
side
of
me.
They
were
thin
and bright
and
utterly
unknown
to
me.
They
seemed
wild
and
questing; stern-poised
eagle
profiles
that
were
alien
in
every
way
to
the
friendly faces
I
had
known.

And
I!
I
could
not
see
my
own
face,
but
I
could
feel
it
as
a
blanch
of
apprehension.

Why
should
fear
thus
flood
my
being?
For
there
was
nothing within
me
but
fear.
I
was
a
blank
that
swirled
with
terror;
and
was stilled
as
suddenly
to
a
calmness
scarcely
less
terrifying.
I
strove
to engage
my
thoughts
in
common
things,
and,
with
that
purpose,
I scanned
on
every
side
so
that
my
mind
might
follow
my
eye
and
be interested
in
its
chances.

But
in
the
moonlight
there
is
no
variety.
Variety
is
colour,
and there
was
about
me
but
an
universal
shimmer
and
blanch,
wherein all
shape
was
suppressed,
and
nothing
was
but
an
endless
monotony and
reduplication
of
formless
form.

So
we
went;
and
in
the
quietude
we
paced
through
and
the
quietness
we
brought
with
us
we
scarce
seemed
living
beings.

We
were
spectres
going
in
a
spectral
world.
Although
we
walked we
did
not
seem
to
move;
for
to
that
petrified
universe
our
movement brought
no
change;
and
each
step
was
but
an
eddy
in
changeless
space.

I
looked
at
them;
at
those
faces
cut
by
the
moon
to
a
sternness of
stone;
and
I
knew
in
a
flash
that
I
was
not
going
between
friends but
between
guards;
and
that
their
intention
towards
me
was
pitiless.