Penumbra

“ Oh, I love a storm. I love the grand jubilee of the earth, when sea, and wind, and lightning, and storm, all join in the glorious hymn of the tempest. Oh, the nights that I have spent on sea when nothing was to be seen but the black pall of the heavens above, rent every instant by the forked lightning, while the crash of the thunder, and the roar of the wind and waves mingled together in the sublime refrain, and our ship went driving on, as if mad. ”

“ With the approach of morning the air grows cooler, and slumber comes,—a slumber of exhaustion, dreamless and sickly; and perhaps when you would rise with the sun you feel such a dizziness, such a numbness, such a torpor, that only by the most intense effort can you keep your feet for the first five minutes. You experience a sensation that recalls the poet's fancy of death-in-life, or old stories of sudden rising from the grave: it is as though all the electricity of will had ebbed away,—all the vital force evaporated, in the heat of the night.... ”

“ As the Spirits continue their song, accompanying the watches of the night, the dawn approaches to the ear of mortal men calmly and gently, but to the sense of Spirits, the march of the hours is heard as a storm: the gigantic rock-gates of the East creak fearfully; Phœbus rolls his chariot wheels in thunder; and eye and ear are startled at the strong coming of the day. ”

“ With points of mist; and, orbing, dim
With fog the sunflower’s ruined rim.—
With fog, through which the moon at night
Would glimmer like a spectre sail;
Or, sullenly, a blur of light,
Like some great glow-worm, dimly trail;
’Neath which she’d hear, wrapped deep in white,
The far sea moaning on its shale:
While in the garden, pacing slow,
And listening to its surge and flow,
She’d seem to hear her own heart’s woe. ”

“ It was such a night as comes in summer after perfect weather, frightening in its heat, and silence, which was broken by the distant thunder travelling low along the ground like the muttering of all dark places on the earth—such a night as seems, by very breathlessness, to smother life, and with its fateful threats to justify man's cowardice. ”

“ Thunder split the deeps of heaven,
And the wild rain swept thy hair.—
What art thou, whose presence, even
While with fear my heart was riven,
Healed it as with prayer?
[29]
A STORMY SUNSET
I
Soul of my body! what a death
For such a day of grief and gloom,
Unbroken sorrow of the sky!—
'Tis as if God's own loving breath
Had swept the piled-up thunder by,
And, bursting through the tempest's sheath,
Cleft from its pod a giant bloom.
II
See how the glory grows! ”

“ The noise of the wind, too, beat in one's ears louder than the water. One had no time for meditation. One was hurried as the wind, speeding as the sunshine. Yet the spring more than any other season is the time when one thinks of the generations that pass—perhaps from the very transitoriness of the visual images, their evanescence and momentary changes reminding one so of the dead. ”

“ I feel not the red rains fall, Hear not the tempest at all, Nor thunder in heaven any more. All the distance is white With the soundless feet of the sun. Night, with the woes that it wore, Night is over and done. ”

“ But where is the opaque breath of the storm, where are the clouds? None seem to hang on the horizon, and the sky is as limpid and clear as the dawn of a new life. Glorious, this interval between night and dawn. ”

“ Prudence murmured, and listened to the falling of the rain without—wet darkness everywhere, the dismal darkness of a winter world sodden with the sky’s incessant weeping.
She clenched her hands upon the wet sill, and felt the rain drops on her hair.
“He is out there in the sunshine,” she thought; “and I’m here in the dark and the rain alone. It is easy to forget when the sun shines always.” ”

“ So day by day they strove to be oblivious of one another and not heed the cloud that impended—a bald-headed, gray-eyed cloud which rumbled enigmatic thunder threats—and the time grew shorter before their month's reprieve, when Limes would be away. ”

“ Like frosty autumn gleams that scud
Tempestuous dusks and stormy dawns
Above the wind-dishevelled lawns.
With tired eyes and heart grown grave,
And thoughts more weary than the night,
I watch the dwindling of the light,
And hear the rising night-winds rave,
As one might hear, when half asleep,
Another self make moan and weep.
XLIX
Behold, the winds have speech and speak! ”

“ For in man’s soul there is an answering mood,
A passionate storm with wind and driving rain
All through a night—love by dull pain pursued,
Then days when skies are kind and blue again,—
Blue, but they shed their bitter, biting frost,
And the sun burns with but a mocking heat,
While ghost-like zephyrs seek for something lost,
Like followers in the summer’s slow retreat. ”

“ If the day opens clear, then becomes cloudy, and goes out in storm, there will be happiness in the beginning, but sorrow at the close; but if clouds and rain herald its awakening, then pass over and leave the sky blue and sunny, there will be trouble at first, but smiling peace as life progresses and declines. Our sky is bright as heart could wish. ”

“ The wind, too, was very warm, and it came in sudden gusts and died again, and she did not know which was sweeter, the deep warm silence when the wind died and the smell of the earth came up from the ploughed fields, or the windy fragrance of the gusts. But walking thus in the silences and in the sudden winds, she felt her body strong and full and young, and a great new longing seized her for the man. ”

“ Unrebuked, the skies now reveal the brightness of day, now shroud the daylight in the darkness of night; the year may now engarland the face of the earth with flowers and fruits, now disfigure it with storms and cold. The sea is permitted to invite with smooth and tranquil surface to-day, to-morrow to roughen with wave and storm. Shall man's insatiate greed bind me to a constancy foreign to my character? ”

“ Where all the world by frozen field and wood, Chilled into numbness, sleeps.
Here dwell no pallid spirits of the day, But out across the icy, desolate dream, The world of night is all storm-blown one way, In a loud, gusty gleam. [Pg 38]
Soon, soon from arctic cave and bastion strong, With elves of frost and wrinkled, sleep-eyed ghosts, Out of the north with hornings loud and long, Will come the grim storm-hosts.
And faster and faster on the shadowy air, Across the phantom glimmerings of the moon, Will fold the silences, far, chilled and bare, In one white, mantling swoon ”

“ For a long time the sky had been overcast with multitudes and endless hurrying processions of wild-looking clouds—torn, wind-chased fugitives, of every mournful shade of color, from palest gray to slatey-black; and storms of rain had been frequent, impetuous, and suddenly intermitted, or passing away phantom-like towards the misty hills, there to lose themselves among other phantoms, ever wandering sorrowfully in that vast, shadowy borderland where earth and heaven mingled ”

“ They felt that spring was theirs too, as it was—glory as fair as brief—with promise as a beginning and storm and desolation as an ending; like two trees that put forth green leaves in the sunshine, only later to have them torn and destroyed, and they themselves fall stricken by the storm to earth. ”

“ I never in my life have known an evening pass as slowly as that one. Towards nightfall a wind sprang up, and as the darkness deepened it blew harder and harder, until a terrible gale was whistling over the moor. As I looked out of my window I could not catch a glimpse of a star, and the black clouds were flying low across the heavens. ”

“ At night the moon hung in the starless sky like a globe of blood, and day by day the dimness of the air increased. The cloud took no form of cloud, and not a sound came through it except for the voice of the water, and the occasional roll and clangour of the trains. ”

“ All day the air is heavy and still; the sky the colour of iron.
Nights are heavy and still as the days, and people turn wearily from the glow in the east at dawn; but the days go on, for months, one after the other, hot, breathless, of dazzling radiance, or wrapped in the red haze of a dust storm. ”

“ And then there is a sudden lull in the storm; the moon is hidden by clouds once more, and the infant's wail, the strong man's cry, and the shriek of the wind, gloating in savage exultation over its ghastly secrets, die away into a distant rumble, and all is still save the beating of my heart, and the stealthy creaking of door and casement. ”

“ Silent the wind — silent the strain
Of the rain-drops dropping slow.
All would be silent and with one sigh
A silent world would float on the sky.
Worlds such as these, made of silent tears,
They call the music of the spheres! ”

“ The night waxed wilder and wilder; and, to augment the tempest, the fires flashed and the thunder roared in such rapid succession that the walls of the chamber appeared in continual flame, and the furniture shook and clattered. Now I have heard of lovers who considered a stormy tryste night as a kind gift of fortune, and who could enlist the tempest which 'roared and rustled' around them into the service of love, and compel it to make a pathetic supplication in their behalf to an unmerciful mistress. ”

“ There's a misty glare in the yellow moon, And the drift is scudding fast, There'll be storm, and rattle, and tempest soon, When the heavens are overcast. The neutral tint of the sullen sea Is fleck'd with the snowy foam, And the distant gale sighs drearilie, As the wanderer sighs for his home. ”

“ Thoughts, which day turns into smoke and mist, stand about us in the night as lights and flames: even as the column which fluctuates above the crater of Vesuvius, in the daytime appears a pillar of cloud, but by night a pillar of fire. ”

“ Night shuts down darker. You can not tell, when you try to look about you, what is sky and what is earth; for all is storm. You feel more and more tired. All at once, you find that the wind which was at your side a while ago, as you kept beating into it on your course toward help and shelter, is now at your back. ”

“ Hour followed hour and day followed day, remorselessly, while we lay there, hours and days which we could measure only by the steady circling of the sunlight that slanted through our tiny windows. With each night came cold, a bitter cold that penetrated to our bones, and for all the red splendor of the dying sun above, the days were far from warm. ”

“ Through blood and brain courses and speeds exultingly the gentle call: 'the spring is come!' Then all the little spirits feel the sweet waves, and creep with laughing eyes out of their dark corners; they stretch their delicate little crystal limbs, and plunge to bathe in the wine-flood, and plash and shoot, and rise quivering out again, and shake their sparkling spirits' wings, that, as they rustle, the clear drops fall from the little plumes. ”

“ Once, when the sky was young and the spirits were expressing their wishes, peals of light and thunder damaged the heavens until they were swollen and purple. Rain fell like leaves as the victors banished the fallen from the clouds. ”

“ To us, the storm being over, the wind is only chilly, bringing with it a dull sky, and the desire for exercise, but the invalids shrivel up in it like rose-leaves in a frost,—the hectic gives place to deadly pallor, and the purple hues that mark the orbit of the eye come out, stronger than ever. ”

“ Each year the fog horn blows a louder blast, until finally the softened haze of creeping years, like a white fog in the sea air, muffles the sound, and we sink to rest at last, some of us with the wild clamor hushed to the measure of a good-night song. ”

“ With what a loud incessant noise the wind must be clamouring about on this fearful night, how the great elm swayed and cried in the storm, and the rain dashed and pattered on the windows, and dripped on the sodden earth from the shaking shrubs beside the door. ”

“ Once more the gentle first theme, followed by those imploring minor cadences and a repetition of the strong, courageous climax, and then the tempest breaks again with renewed intensity, the stress of desperate strife, the agony of terror, a seething, surging, rushing torrent of tone, as if men and demons were struggling for life in a swirling vortex, where the elemental forces of ocean and fire had met in a death-grapple. ”

“ It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary ”

“ We proceeded to lower the foresail and make it fast. The night was dark, greatly impeding our labor. Still, though not a star or the moon could pierce the black masses of storm clouds that obscured the sky as they swept along before the gale, nature aided us in a measure. ”

“ And broken mutterings, all declare
The fearful dream that haunts her now.
The storm-wind, rushing through the sky,
Wails from the depths of cloudy space;
Shrill, piercing as the seaman's cry
When death and he are face to face. ”

“ Ever with beautiful pity, she watches, she weeps, and she wanes,
Blind as a flame on the hills of the Winter in hours appointed
For the life of the foam and the thunder—the strength of the imminent rains. ”

“ In fact, they all of them felt like those whom the ominous silence and repose of surrounding nature—a portentous calm and gloom overhead—fill with trembling apprehension of the coming storm. Their fears are quickened by the occasional falling of large spreading drops of rain through the sultry sky, not a breath of air stirring. ”

“ No pleasant boughs are stirred:
No gentle sun, no quiet snow,
No English bee or bird.
The suns of springtime scorch the stone,
In summer, storm and rave
The winds that herald the cyclone,
The rains that lash the grave. ”