... The sun, in a single moment and with the
immediate summons of a trumpet-call, strikes the spear-head of the high
places, and at once the valley, though still in shadow, is transfigured,
and with the daylight all manner of things have come back to the world.
Hope is the word which gathers the origins of those things together, and
hope is the seed of what they mean, but that new light and its new quality
is more than hope. Livelihood is come back with the sunrise, and the fixed
certitude of the soul; number and measure and comprehension have returned,
and a just appreciation of all reality is the gift of the new day. Glory
(which, if men would only know it, lies behind all true certitude)
illumines and enlivens the seen world, and the living light makes of the
true things now revealed something more than truth absolute; they appear
as truth acting and creative.
This first shaft of the sun is to that hill and valley what a word is to a
thought. It is to that hill and valley what verse is to the common story
told; it is to that hill and valley what music is to verse. And there lies
behind it, one is very sure, an infinite progress of such exaltations, so
that one begins to understand, as the pure light shines and grows and as
the limit of shadow descends the vast shoulder of the steep, what has been
meant by those great phrases which still lead on, still comfort, and still
make darkly wise, the uncomforted wondering of mankind.
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