NIGHT OF STARS

Hokitika Guardian, 3 July 1920, Page 4

NIGHT OF STARS

(Christ’s Collego Magazine.) “It is the stars, the stars above us, that govern our conditions.” The magic and charm of moonlight have moved the minds of poets of count. lesß generations to beautilul expressions; their influence on other men is strangely potent, and strangely difficult to put into words. The vague recognition of this influence gave birth to many suporatitltions, and millions of human beings must have felt that Destiny of Man was controlled in some mysterious way by the motion of tho heavenly bodies.

To stand on a bridge just as the stars are coming out, and the night wind is bringing up tho stream “murmurs and scents of the infinite sea,” to feel the strange majesty of the ceaseless flow of water" beneath, seems to exercise a fascination over us inexplicable yet ever present. Shakespeare has expressed the charm of such scenes in one line: “How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this hank.” and most of the great poets have succeeded in giving us delighful word pictures.- “ The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare, Waters on a starry night • Are beautiful and fair.” “ Still as a slave before her Lord, The ocean bath no blast, His great eye most silently Up to the moon is cast.” Who has not felt the witchery of such scenes, the wonderful sense of communion with nature ‘i When we sec “ The moon lifting her silver rim Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim Coming into the blue with all ker light.” And the stars beginning to “ wash the dusk with silver,” familiar matters ol the "clay" vanish from our minds. We feel “ The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.” And the feeling of melancholy over-, comes us—the inevitable contrast between the vastness of the universe and the’ pettiness of man. A serTse of isolation may pervade ns—“Friends and loves we have none, nor wealth or blessed abode, But the hope of the City of God at the other end erf the road.” and we ask and ask ourselves the meaning of it all. We linger by the shore, fascinated by the beauty and mystified by the wonder of the infinite, till—

“The midnight moon is weaving Her bright ohain o’er the deep, Whose breast is gently heaving As ah infant asleop.” .Mysterious night! The hours ol meditation and thought bring to us to dispel the melancholy of isolation a new influence, which soothes the tired mind, and quiets the sleepless sould. When “ the star-quenching aiigel of tlie dawn” appears, we shall be inspired to nobler thoughts and actions, “ And the cares that infest the day Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, And us silently steal away.”