Mirage

“ But these images, which are derived from the remembrance of unreal objects of the world, are as unreal as those objects which cast their reflexions in the intellect; just as the waves rising in the river of a mirage, are as unreal as the mirage itself. ”

“ The mirage rose, lifting into space the low line of black hills, and the growing glow set a carpet of cloud ablaze, till it hung, stretched across the sky, like a vast awning of beaten, burnished copper. ”

“ Darkness seemed to dilate upon the sky like an image in the midst of a mirage, expanding into superhuman dimensions—then rapidly losing its shapeliness, and covering the vault above densely and confusedly. ”

“ The far-off mountains are brought near and made to glow in a halo of mellow light. Manifold ocular illusions appear in the mirage and deceive the uninitiated. An indefinable dreamy something steals over the senses and enthralls the soul. ”

“ Far away in the distance, through the quivering air and sunlight, a mirage appears. Now it is a splendid forest and now a refreshing lake. The illusion is perfect. It is a forest without trees and a lake without water. As one travels on, the mirage travels also, but its distance from the observer remains ever the same. ”

“ In the morning, at sunrise, the plain often offers special effects of mirage. Objects on the horizon are two images, both straight: the silhouette of the dunes, by splitting, crowns the first ridge of a second one. ”

“ In fact the whole external world as perceived by us is one great illusion: if we gave the reins to fancy we might call it a mirage, a piece of witchery, conjured up by the spells of some unknown magician to bewilder poor ignorant humanity. ”

“ Hence, the most astonishing mirages, rendering one uncertain whether he may take the evidence of his own eyes as to the reality of any thing that he thinks he sees. Merely aërial reflections and colored mists appear solid masses, castles, cathedrals, islands,—anything; and what you see upright at one moment, is upside down a moment afterwards. The strata of air which produce these effects, are in constant revolution, the lightest ascends above the others, and in an instant the mirage changes form, color, size, and character. ”

“ Although it appears real enough, you ask yourself if it is not a fantastic mirage, a building made of clouds curiously coloured by the sunlight, and which the quivering air will change or cause to dissolve. ”

“ Among the senses the most powerful and reliable is that of sight. This sense views a mirage as a body of water and is positive as to its character, whereas a mirage is nonexistent. The sense of vision, or sight, sees reflected images in a mirror as verities, when reason declares them to be nonexistent. The eye sees the sun and planets revolving around the earth, whereas in reality the sun is stationary, central, and the earth revolves upon its own axis. The sense of sight sees the earth as a plane, whereas the faculty of reason discovers it to be spherical. ”

“ It means that for some people the material universe—the things we see with our eyes—is only a mirage, or say, a symbol, which either hides or shadows forth the eternal truth. And in that sense they see things as they really are, not as they seem to the rest of us. ”

“ It is a singular coincidence{219} with this observation, that the mirage is called by the Arabs of the Desert,—the lake of the gazelles.
I was anxious to learn something further on this curious subject, and not knowing what books to consult, I applied to my uncle. He tells me that a species of mirage is very common at sea; distant ships seem grotesquely caricatured by it either in length or in height; and sometimes, over the real vessel, an inverted picture of it appears suspended in the sky, with the masts of each prolonged, so as to unite. ”

“ Although we knew at once that the ghostly spires were but a trick of the mirage, yet their ever-changing shapes and remarkable mimicry of human habitations were so striking that they never lost their novelty ”

“ What does the hot sand and the trackless waste matter so long as I have these beautiful mirages to look at?' When you say that mirages are insubstantial, evanishing, mere tricks of air and eye, the Clarindas retort, 'But if you take away our mirages, where are we to turn? What will you give us in the place of them?' She thinks, for example, if a dying soldier calls on his mother or his sweetheart that they must be good women. ”

“ Only no boulders in that country are flat-topped like the houses built in lands of the sun, and no dunes are wall-sided. Mirage, we are told, is but a picture of distant things, mirrored on atmospheric planes, but then maybe a ghost is only a mirage deflected on our atmosphere from worlds outside our ken, and it is always easy in the desert to see things that you cannot possibly believe. Whatever they are, mirages are real to the eye. ”

“ The one raises objects above their true position, the other does not. The one plays about, the other is steady; but I cannot hope to give a proper idea either of mirage or refraction so satisfactorily as I could wish. ”

“ Heavy mists go up and down, and create a sort of mirage, till they settle and pack round the iron-tipped hills, and then you know how the moon must look to an inhabitant of it. At twilight, again, the beaten-down ridges and laps and folds of the uplands take on the likeness of wet sand—some huge and melancholy beach at the world's end—and when day meets night it is all goblin country. ”

“ Small houses thus distorted are made to look like palaces; their white color is changed into gray by the diffusion of the light, and they are thereby given an air of greater grandeur. Many persons fail to take notice of these mirages because they regard them as reflections from the water; but it is really possible for one with his eye near the water to see the reflection from it of a distant object on nearly the same level. When an image of such an object is seen, it is most probably a mirage. ”

“ These very mirages are the unthinkable and incalculable congeries of appearances that crowd in upon you and form you out of the past, and that sweep you on into dissemination into other unthinkable and incalculable congeries of appearances to people the ghost land of the future. Life is apparitional, and passes. ”

“ Another great convenience will be found in my system; apparitions may be evoked, in open day,—at noon, if the case should be urgent, in the midst of a field, on the surface of water, or in the glare of a patent-lamp, quite as easily, as in the ‘darkness of chaos or old night.’ Nay, a person rightly prepared may see ghosts, while seated comfortably by his library-fire, in as much perfection, as amidst broken tombs, nodding ruins, and awe-inspiring ivy. ”

“ This form, reflected against the sky, appeared rather the undefined lineaments of a spirit than a mortal, for her person seemed as light and almost as transparent as the thin cloud of mist that surrounded her. The smoky light of the setting sun gave a hazy, dubious, and as it were, phantom-like appearance to the strange apparition. ”

“ At that moment the mysterious illumination suddenly flared to an intense, an almost blinding splendor, flushing the entire sky, extinguishing the stars and throwing the monstrous shadow of himself athwart the landscape. In that unearthly illumination he saw near him, but apparently in the air at a considerable elevation, the figure of his wife, clad in her night-clothing and holding to her breast the figure of his child. ”

“ The Shadow of the Cross At the drowsy dusk when the shadows creep From the golden west, where the sunbeams sleep, An angel mused: "Is there good or ill In the mad world's heart, since on Calvary's hill 'Round the cross a mid-day twilight fell That darkened earth and o'ershadowed hell?" ”

“ Sometimes in dull weather opal clouds would appear in the sky, and the pale angel of death would look down upon the earth with his unswerving gaze, right into the eyes of people who cannot perceive him. ”

“ The illumination had something dismal about it, for the magnificent sphere seemed to have lost the substance of its splendor as at the time of an annular eclipse, and threw, but a pale light upon land and water. The silence of death prevailed over the face of all nature. ”

“ And then the Miracle.
I looked up at the Heavens and my spirit seemed to float farther and farther away right up among the stars, and stay there for a long long pause.
The whole sky seemed to listen to the silence. ”

“ Woe unto us, who have committed ourselves to the black cloud, to be withdrawn from the circle coloured with the blood of divine grace, in which the grace of God, in his well-beloved Son, had inclosed us. ”

“ WATCHING THE SHADOWS. Watching the shadows, the fire-light shadows, That gather and play on the wall; Dark, flitting shadows, fanciful shadows, That gather and rise and fall. Reading the fire shadows' language of shadows, Pages of darkness and light— Watching, watching, Watching the shadows to-night. Watching the shadows, the fire-light shadows, That over the wall fitful play; Dreaming of shadows, dreaming of shadows, Deep darker shadows than they. Heart-shading shadows, soul-darkening shadows, Flitting in memory's light— Dreaming, dreaming, Watching the shadows to-night. ”

“ They cast light into the darkness, and the darkness filled with light. On the day when the light rises, the darkness will return to its place. The souls of this ascension shall approach the cloud of light, to the place of light be their path. ”

“ The Gaelic name da-shealladh does not literally mean “the second sight,” but “the two sights.” The [122] vision of the world of sense is one sight, ordinarily possessed by all, but the world of spirits is visible only to certain persons, and the possession of this additional vision gives them “the two sights,” or what comes to the same thing, “a second sight.” Through this faculty they see the ghosts of the dead revisiting the earth, and the fetches, doubles, or apparitions of the living. ”

“ In these later and more degenerate times the recognized modes of divine communication with men were by oracles, and by casual and unusual sights and sounds, as thunder and lightning, a sudden tempest, an eclipse, a flight of birds,—particularly of birds that mount to a great height, as these were supposed to know the secrets of the heavens,—the appearance or action of the sacrificial victims, or any strange coincidence. ”

“ To have soared so high and to fall so low! To have dreamed of celestial kisses, of mystic caresses and divine possessions and then ... the end of it!... Instead of wide expanses, ablaze with light, where her imagination felt at home among the soaring flights of angels in a trance of joy and affrighted doves—there came night, thick, sinister and haunted by the spectre of her mother, stumbling over tombs and crosses with a piece of cord on her neck. ”

“ Amid the tresses of a burning star,
Whose mysteries from earth are ever sealed!
“It gleams—that fountain of mysterious light
At holy eve, far in the western sky,
And angels smile, when man ascends by night
To read in it his puny destiny! ”

“ When the rising sun, and according to analogy the case will be the same at the setting sun, throws his rays over the Broken upon the body of a man standing opposite to fine light clouds floating around, or hovering past him, he needs only fix his eye steadfastly upon them, and in all probability, he will see the singular spectacle of his own shadow extending to the length of five or six hundred feet, at the distance of about two miles before him. ”

“ The All-Seeing Eye, the Burning Star, the Rough and Perfect Ashlar, the Point within a Circle, the Pentalpha, the Seal of Solomon, the Cubic Stone—all these belong to the most lofty and arcane order of occult symbolism, but in mystic science they illumine more exalted zones of the heaven of mind. ”

“ I was acquainted in my younger days with a very old man, who has assured me that he repeatedly saw the apparition when on its twilight peregrinations along the road; and once as he lay a-bed in the morning in his mother’s cottage, long after the sun had risen. There was a broad stream of light falling through an opening in the roof, athwart the grey and mottled darkness of the interior, and the apparition stood partly in the light, partly in the shadow. ”

“ Hands of angels hidden from mortal eyes shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of the dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes ”

“ Prayer-meeting bells were ringing, and old men and old women came out of the dark shadow of the trees, into the light that burned in front of a church—hearts that with age were slow and heavy, praying for the blessing of an Infinite Mystery. ”

“ The metaphor of a mirror does not wholly serve us here. When the sunbeams fall upon it, it flashes in the light, just because they do not enter its cold surface. It is a mirror, because it does not drink them up, but flings them back. ”

“ Well, at night they are said to fly up to the gates of heaven and listen to the conversation of the angels. When the angels see their hidden foes, they hurl fiery shooting stars at them and with so good an aim that for every shooting star we may be sure there is one spirit of evil less in the world. ”

“ Stand in the light of Christ's life, and Christ's death, and Christ's rising, till you feel, 'Thou art a shadow, not a substance—no real thing at all.' Yes, a shadow; and where a shadow falls there must be sunlight above to cast it. ”

“ Miracles are seen in light.
I cannot see in darkness. Let the light of holiness and truth light up my mind, and let me see the innocence within.
Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one. ”