Page:The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, a Book for an Idle Holiday - Jerome (1886).djvu/32

 bat's wing flutters in our face, and the landrail's cry sounds drearily across the fields, the spell sinks deeper still into our hearts. We seem in that hour to be standing by some unseen death-bed, and in the swaying of the elms we hear the sigh of the dying day.

A solemn sadness reigns. A great peace is around us. In its light, our cares of the working day grow small and trivial, and bread and cheese—aye, and even kisses—do not seem the only things worth striving for. Thoughts we cannot speak but only listen to flood in upon us, and, standing in the stillness under earth's dark'ning dome, we feel that we are greater than our petty lives. Hung round with those dusky curtains, the world is no longer a mere dingy workshop, but a stately temple wherein man may worship, and where, at times, in the dimness, his groping hands touch God's.