Page:Francesca Carrara 2.pdf/157

154 "I will not detain you with our toils and our dangers. Worn and weary were we when we stood beneath the purple heights of Jerusalem—so fallen from her beauty and her power, and yet so mighty in her desolation! My companion joined in the hymns raised by the pilgrims; but that very night he sickened, and, ere morning, my arms sustained a corpse! I laid him to his last rest, in a cave among the mountains; the stone was rolled to its mouth, and I sat down to keep that midnight sacred with watch and prayer.

"Bare and bleak, the adjacent hills were yet turned to marble by the moonshine—black and white alternate, as the rays or the shadow predominated. The blue of the overspreading sky was rendered yet deeper by the masses of vapour which the heat of the noon had collected on the atmosphere; a lurid brightness kindled on their edges, as if the lightning slept within them. A few stars shone afar off; but with a faint decaying beauty, fading gradually, as the moon climbed higher in the heavens. Not a breath disturbed the still and silent air, but it was cool with the rising dews, and sweet with the breathings of leaf, grass, and flower, in the plains below. My spirit drank in the calm; the rest which was on