Whatever reasons a man may have for occupying the darkness with his travel
and his weariness, those reasons must be out of the ordinary and must go
with some bad strain upon the mind. Perhaps one undertook the march from
an evil necessity under the coercion of other men, or perhaps in terror,
hoping that the darkness might hide one, or perhaps for cool, dreading the
unnatural heat of noon in a desert land; perhaps haste, which is in itself
so wearying a thing, compelled one, or perhaps anxiety. Or perhaps, most
dreadful of all, one hurried through the night afoot because one feared
what otherwise the night would bring, a night empty of sleep and a night
whose dreams were waking dreams and evil.
But whatever prompts the adventure or the necessity, when the long burden
has been borne, and when the turn of the hours has come; when the stars
have grown paler; when colour creeps back greyly and uncertainly to the
earth, first into the greens of the high pastures, then here and there
upon a rock or a pool with reeds, while all the air, still cold, is full
of the scent of morning; while one notices the imperceptible disappearance
of the severities of Heaven until at last only the morning star hangs
splendid; when in the end of that miracle the landscape is fully revealed,
and one finds into what country one has come; then a great hill before
one, losing the forests upwards into rock and steep meadow upon its sides,
and towering at last into the peaks and crests of the inaccessible places,
gives a soul to the new land.
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