Crescent

“ Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides. ”

“ In the concave centre of the crescent is an orifice for a helve. It is an instrument denoting skill, and the possession of some mechanical tool for carving it harder than the dark silecious slate, from which it is generally made. ”

“ We feel this mystery whenever we watch how the moon grows from [Pg 155] a silver crescent into a radiant circle. A thing complete dulls an attention that looks on, whereas growth or the suggestion of growth has the stimulus of hope and faith. To culminate is to begin a decline. ”

“ Moreover, just as the disc of the Sun, or the star-like form which the ancients often used to signify the radiate or impregnating Sun, naturally came to be recognised as the symbol of the Male Principle, so the Crescent, as signifying the increasing Moon and the lesser of the two great lights of heaven, in like manner came to be adopted as the natural symbol of the Female Principle. ”

“ Isaiah. 40th chap., 26th verse.]
9. Thirteen times in the year, Night, the teacher, gives extra lessons. Will you be there to learn them? First, she hangs up a pale crescent in the west. The ancient Jews hailed its infant beam, and answering fires of joy were kindled on the hills of Palestine. [Headnote 1]
10. Next, she summons forth a rounded orb, clad in full effulgence, and commits to it the regency when the sun retires. Lastly, a slender, waning crescent appears nightly, like an aged man, ready to descend into the night of the tomb. ”

“ Isis was also represented standing on the crescent moon, with twelve stars surrounding her head. [328:4] In almost every Roman Catholic Church on the continent of Europe may be seen pictures and statues of Mary, the "Queen of Heaven," standing on the crescent moon, and her head surrounded with twelve stars.
Dr. Inman, in his "Pagan and Christian Symbolism," gives a figure of the Virgin Mary, with her infant, standing on the crescent moon. In speaking of this figure, he says:
"In it the Virgin is seen as the 'Queen of Heaven,' nursing her infant, and identified with the crescent moon. ”

“ A fall, and a rise—a rise that reverses the fall, a rise that transcends the glory from which he fell,—that is the Bible's notion of the history of the world, and I, for my part, believe it to be true, and feel it to be the one satisfactory explanation of what I see round about me and am conscious of within me. ”

“ Eternally young and glorious—young, I mean, in the sense of a field of flowers in the Spring looks young; and glorious in the sense the sky looks glorious at dawn or sunset. Something big shone through him like a storm, something that would go on for ever just as the Earth goes on, always renewing itself, something of gigantic life that in the human sense could never age at all—something the old gods had. ”

“ The ascension of the Saviour of men is symbolized by this expansion, this heavenward yearning of nature.... I feel myself born again; all the windows of the soul are clear. Forms, lines, tints, reflections, sounds, contrasts, and harmonies, the general play and interchange of things—it is all enchanting! The atmosphere is steeped in joy. ”

“ Yet if the one expands before us with the magnificent extent, the diversified surface, the endless decorations of the earth itself, the other hangs on high, like a lone, clear star—small but intense—flashing upon us through the night of ages, invested with circumstances of divinity not less unquestionable than those which attend the venerable majesty of the Ancient of Song. ”

“ Thus, one generation after another was consecrated to Heaven by its waters, and cast their waxing and waning shadows into its glassy bosom, and vanished from the earth, as if mortal life were but a flitting image in a fountain. ”

“ CREATION.
"Let there be light!" and Chaos fled
Back to his midnight cell,
And light, the earliest gift of Heaven,
On cradled nature fell.
Earth from the encroaching waters rose,
Strong Ocean knew his place,
Bold rivers forced their unknown way,
Young streams began their race. ”

“ Dreaming of centuries that have gone before;
Great elms rise solemnly by slab and mound,
Arched high above a hidden world of yore.
Round all the scene a light of memory plays,
And dead leaves whisper of departed days,
Longing for sights and sounds that are no more. ”

“ As the rose of dawn blushes on each waving crest in the birth-hour of the day, or the purple splendour invests them in regal robes when the sun goes down, they seem to reveal to us a vision of the other world; those changing lights that fall upon them are surely the passing gleams of wings of angels ”

“ In the Domain of Nature, during early Spring, one sees the Spirit of New Life as an avatar, a coming of the Deity, or manifestation of the Mind in Nature, down to earth—to produce a resurrection of thought, being, joy, from an apparent death and past. ”

“ The desolate leafless months go by, till at last comes the promise of spring, and you are aware of a half unconscious listening for the golden-wings. Presently the loud, long, joyous iteration breaks upon your ear, and you hail the fulfillment of the promise and the blithe new comer, a golden link in the lengthening chain that is encircling the earth. ”

“ He drifted where the rapids play,
His eyes still on that awful glow;
Ah, God! my life seemed snatched away!
I saw a gleam far up the sky
And heard the echo of a cry.
There's a spirit in the rapid, calling, calling through the night,
There's a gleam upon the water, burning pale and burning bright.
Woe to him who hears the calling! Woe to him who sees the light! ”

“ The beam of the dawn is risen, and there shall again be times and seasons, and the Being of the majesty of God is made manifest in form. From the dust of the earth is the earth made again, and of the beams of His glory shall He make new stars. ”

“ And the blue multitudes of the peaks, the perpetual congregation of the mornes, seem to chorus in the vast resplendence,—telling of Nature's eternal youth, and the passionless permanence of that about us and beyond us and beneath,—until something like the fulness of a grief begins to weigh at the heart.... For all this astonishment of beauty, all this majesty of light and form and colour, will surely endure,—marvellous as now,—after we shall have lain down to sleep where no dreams come, and may never arise from the dust of our rest to look upon it. ”

“ And that before a new blossom the old one is slain by a chilling blight;
Visions, all visions grow mute at the vision of souls new-bom,
And God in His temples trembles at new gods that rise to smite. ”

“ Ascend, oh my Soul, on the wings of the choral strain,
Invisible tier above tier upbuilding sublime;
Note as it scales after note in a rhythmical chain
Reaching from chaos and welter of struggle and pain,
Far into vistas empyreal receding from time.
Ascend! take wing on the thoughts of the Dead, my Soul,
Breathing in colour and stone, flashing through epic and song:
Thoughts that like avalanche snows gather force as they roll,
Mighty to fashion and knead the phenomenal throng
Of generations of men as they thunder along. ”

“ With straining eyes, to some far silvern spire;
Flowers among, sing to the gods cloud-hid.
One of these, onetime, opened velvet eyes
Upon the world—the years recall the day;
Those lights still shine, conscious of power alway,
But flattering men with feigned looks of surprise. ”

“ This day with its trivialities dwindles and vanishes before the teeming hours wherein it learned and felt and suffered;--so the circles, which are the tree's memories of its own growth, are more distinct near the centre, where its growth began, than in the outer and later development. Give age the past, and let us be content with our legacy, which is the future. ”

“ Through the else silent darkness of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn footsteps. Onward they pass, like those hoary elders seen in the sublime vision of an earthly Paradise, attendant angels bearing golden lights before them, and, above and behind, the whole air painted with seven listed colors, as from the trail of pencils! ”

“ Deep dwellers in those cells profound
Where dreamless slumbers reign,
No lingering sigh, nor grateful sound
Bursts from your drear domain.
But ye, upon whose unseal'd eye
Creation's glory breaks,
When Morning opes the purple sky,
Or Eve her sceptre takes ”

“ Then, from the center of the growing light, sprang up the sun, crimson and mighty, leaping up above the horizon in a single bound, it seemed, and moving swiftly, ever more swiftly, up toward the zenith. ”

“ We saw last Sunday that we were like men who had just watched a great sunset, that we were standing, as it were, in the beautiful and tender after-glow, which so often follows a beautiful sunset, and we set ourselves to try and gather up and meditate upon some of the great qualities in the character of her whom we have lost, as some explanation, of the influence which made her reign so great. ”

“ To him is clear the shining in the garden, he sees the flower break forth and the streams sparkle; no shout is raised upon the mountain-side but his ear may hear it. He sees the crown grow and the light shoot from it. All Hell is open to him. ”

“ Step by step, in orderly succession, does creation move. In the rising and in the setting of the sun one may see how nature's great processes steal upon us, silently and unnoticed, yet always in sequence, stage succeeding stage, one thing following from another, the spectacular moment of sunset following inevitably from the quiet, unnoticed sinking of the sun in the west, or the startling flash of his rim above the eastern horizon only the fulfillment of the promise of the dawn. ”

“ Do you remember in the Creation the wonderful awakening one feels when they sing, ‘And the Lord said, Let there be light,’ very low, and then with a mighty burst of sound, ‘And there was LIGHT?’ Do you remember how one’s heart leaps and seems to grow big in one’s breast? ”

“ In Earth’s expanding range,
The height and depth, the rise and fall,
The first and last of Change.
“Kings pale and perish, dogmas die,
The world goes slowly on
To greet an all-unclouded sky,
To kiss a purer dawn. ”

“ Now in the springtime and the bounty of heaven is pouring on earth and the fields and rose-gardens are in growth and development. Exert thyself as much as thou canst, in order that through this everlasting bounty and the sprinklings of the clouds of the divine gift, thou mayest grow and thrive like unto a fruitful tree, with the utmost freshness and purity. ”

“ Watching the sun rise from the tomb of night, and the spring return in glory after the death of winter, man reasoned from analogy—justifying a faith that held him as truly as he held it—that the race, sinking into the grave, would rise triumphant over death. ”

“ And it is but an added poignancy to the sense of infinite beauty to know that this word ‘eternal’ is, even for those ancient ‘changeless’ hills, but the idlest hyperbole—as though one were to call the breaking wave everlasting, or the blowing seed of the meadows as timeless as the wind. ”

“ Smooth, smiling plains, gentle hills, verdurous slopes, blue, calm streams, and softly wooded banks,—a courteous, well-bred earth it is, and we forget that it has not been so from the beginning. But here among the mountains, Genesis finds exegesis. We stand amid the primeval convulsions of matter,—the first fierce throes of life. ”

“ And so, through a brilliant cycle of equally holy acts, the beauty of which we have only briefly hinted at, the cradle and the grave, however far asunder they may chance to be, are joined in one continuous circle. ”

“ Soon she realized this, and checked the impulse which, alas! too many of us follow when suddenly we find ourselves close under Calvary—the mount whose crown is a cross, and whose cross is salvation—the impulse to move “out of the shadow into the sun,” out of the cloud which wraps us about in love into the sunlight with which the world seeks to dazzle us into forgetfulness. ”

“ She, stirring up the world, hath shown us riches: Dawn hath awakened every living creature. 5. Rich Dawn, she sets afoot the coiled-up sleeper, one for enjoyment, one for wealth or worship, Those who saw little for extended vision. All living creatures hath the Dawn awakened. 6. One to high sway, one to exalted glory, one to pursue his gain, and one his labour: All to regard their different vocations, all moving creatures hath the Dawn awakened. ”

“ Dawn, at her rising, urges forth the living him who is dead she wakes not from his slumber. 9. As thou, Dawn, hast caused Agni to be kindled, and with the Sun's eye hast revealed creation. And hast awakened men to offer worship, thou hast performed, for Gods, a noble service. ”

“ Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, and silently she disappears beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter,―all are hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace, meeting or overtaking her? ”

“ A new life flashed up every morning before their eyes, and the fresh breezes of the Dawn reached them like greetings wafted across the golden threshold of the sky from the distant lands beyond the mountains, beyond the clouds, beyond the dawn, beyond the immortal sea which brought us hither! The Dawn seemed to them to open golden gates for the Sun to pass in triumph ”

“ Nature will chant, as it [Pg 73] does to-day, the hymn of youth and happiness, and an imperishable spring will bloom for ever in this immense universe where the historian of the past sees nothing but tombs! ”

“ This is the reason why the Past has such magical power. The beauty of its motionless and silent pictures is like the enchanted purity of late autumn, when the leaves, though one breath would make them fall, still glow against the sky in golden glory. ”