Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/344

but that first faint tinge of moonlight on the gap seen some time ago, a silvery light from the east before day had departed in the west. What an immeasurable interval there is between the first tinge of moonlight which we detect, lighting with mysterious, silvery, poetic light the western slopes, like a paler grass, and the last wave of daylight on the eastern slopes. It is wonderful how our senses ever span so vast an interval; how, from being aware of the one, we become aware of the other. . . . It suggests an interval equal to that between the most distant periods recorded in history. The silver age is not more distant from the golden than moonlight is from sunlight. I am looking into the west where the red clouds still indicate the course of departing day. I turn and see the silent, spiritual, contemplative moonlight shedding the softest imaginable light on the western slopes, . . . as if, after a thousand years of polishing, their surfaces were just beginning to be bright, a pale, whitish lustre. Already the crickets chirp to the moon a different strain, and the night wind rustles the leaves of the wood. . . . Ah, there is the mysterious light which for some hours has illustrated Asia and the scene of Alexander's victories, now at length, after two or three hours spent in "surmounting the billows of the Atlantic, come to shine on America. There on that illustrated