Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/325

( 313 ) IN OUR FOREST OF THE PAST.

January 1877.

pleasant day after weeks of wind and rain, a clear moonlit night heralding storm and flood; the last day of the Old Year and the eve of the New. About ten the bells began ringing for the "watch-night" services, wherein the few still faithful and the many merely curious solemnise the annual death and birth with confessions and litanies and chanting. And while the air rang with the bells, I thought: I have seen so many old years die, so many new years born; but when has the new proved better than the old? and where is omen or hope that the year yet unborn shall prove better than the year now dying? Have I any tender grief for the departure? Have I any joyous welcome for the advent? Let me pass in sleep that narrowest moment of midnight wherein ere a man can cry Now! the one has given place to the other. So I lay down and slept. But though St. Sylvester rules no more, and the weird ghostly masquerades are abolished, the night which was his remains for us mortals potent with sleeping visions as with waking reveries; a night that looks back to the past and forward to the future, a night pregnant with phantasy. Wherefore though I slept, my mind was not at peace, but carried me in sad dream to a forest immense