Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/309

 the moon. When the moon rolls through this shadow it is eclipsed for it has come into our night. This cone of the earth's shadow is our personal night and ours alone, and, although the stars seem enmeshed in its velvet sides, it is not the night of earth that holds the stars,—its darkness merely shuts out the glare of the sun and the stars of the universe therefore become visible. This remarkable view gave to man a science set in beauty so keen that in the world's young days it was thought that it was music too sweet to be heard by any but the gods. But now we know that all Nature is like that, and there is not a cliff, rock, shell, mountain, valley, water, land or any living thing in the botanical or zoological kingdom, no matter how common or how lowly, which does not carry, even as the stars, its quota of science and song.