SONGS IN THE NIGHT; OR, THE TRIUMPHS OF GENIUS OVER BLINDNESS. CARE, with its microscopic eye, magnifies our petty troubles, and a complaining murmur becomes the ordinary tone of voice. As years draw on, routine robs existence of its primal freshness; and commonplace, accepted as a destiny, lays on us "A weight heavy as frost and deep almost as life." I am not familiar with the expression of the human face divine; but from what little I have been able to catch of it, I should say its prevailing tone when in repose, is one of dissatisfaction and discontent. An ear that has become practised and delicate through necessity in interpreting the moods of mind by the inflections of the voice, detects on every hand in these most subtle exponents of character, the presence of weariness and languor. The world freights us with its burdens, and we bear them, for the most part, at best with a dogged indifference. The spirit hath lost its romance: the glory and the dream have disappeared from our universe; utilitarianism scouts the ideal as a vagary, and we plod through the cold, unpoetic earth, saddened and heavy laden, ofttimes longing for the rest of the last silence. I know not a more benign office than the ministry of cheerfulness, nor one more needed. Will you suffer me then to read you a lesson this evening a lesson of content-strength and hope drawn from the story of those whose lot has been far more drear and dismal than your own? Such have been, who have not found the world a workhouse for vagrants and culprits; nor a hospital tenanted by pestilence and helpless misery; nor yet a Potter's Field for the burial of paupers; nor an amphitheatre for gladiatorial exhibitions; nor a tavern for drunken revelry, followed hard by deadly despair; nor a Corso in carnival, where giddy folly and masquerading mirth are bought by a long Lent of vigil, fast, and tearless self-torture. Such have been, who have found the world a system of nice adjustments and beneficent balances, where hearty labor receives its reward, and patient waiting brings the watcher a priceless boon; where infirmity finds amplest compensation; where eternal laws, in their silent majesty, are enforcing order, restoring chaos to harmony and bringing out of evil, good. Such have been-affliction could not subdue them, nor darkness overwhelm them. Would that the chorus of their full voices from their historic heights might fall upon our ears with such stirring power that we should be roused from lethargy and sloth to walk BEAUTY AND EFFECTS OF LIGHT. 87 our way, however rugged, up to the mountain summits, where for all the valiant are crowns and robes and palms of victory. Who in fitting strains shall sing the praise of light? It trembles as it flows in sympathetic currents through the deepening dusk from the sweet star of evening, herald of that pomp or worlds which darkness alone 1eveals, "Piles of crystal light, A glorious company of golden streams, Suns lighting systems with their joyous beams." At dawn it frets and glows along the eastern sky with its grey hue, and therf its purpling or its crimson blush. At the hush of summer mid-day, in country places, it seems to flood the firmament and earth with a silent sea of glory. Behind the retiring storm, it builds across the heavens the triple arch of beauty, not in token of the tempest's victory, but in pledge that floods and winds shall no longer be triumphant. At the end of the day's circuit, it gathers the clouds for the pageantry of sunset, arrays them in their thousand liveries of dazzling, softening radiance, and when the bridegroom clad in amber robes is gone, sends them to sleep, or to float beneath a star-wrought canopy. In the still depths beneath the troubled sea it works its strange and silent alchemy, and the worthless oyster becomes a pearl of price. It enshrines itself in a pebble, and thenceforth men cali that pebble "the mountain of light." It is the apocalypse of the universe. And when you would render to the intellect the loftiest thought of God, you say that he is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all. |