"The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration."

Instantly the whole scene, steeped in the beams of the sinking sun, is
flooded with a light that illuminates the sunlight, a spiritual light.
The scene is transfigured before their eyes: it is as if the heavens
had opened, and inundated all its features with a celestial
subtilizing aura. How has this been accomplished? The first line has
little of the quality of poetic imagination.

"A fairer face of evening cannot be."

is simple and appropriate, but in it there is no fresh glow, no
mysterious throb. Above the level of this line rise suddenly the first
three words of the second, "the holy time." The presence of a scene
where sky, earth, and ocean combine for the delight of the beholders
puts them in a mood which crowns the landscape with a religious halo.
That the time is holy they all feel; and now, to make its tranquillity
appreciable by filling the heart with it, the poet adds--"is quiet as
a nun breathless with adoration." By this master-stroke of poetic
power the atmospheric earthly calm is vivified with, is changed into,
super-earthly calm. By a fresh burst of spiritual light the mind is
set æsthetically aglow, as by the beams of the setting sun the
landscape is physically. By an exceptionally empowered hand the soul
is strung to a high key. Fullness and range of sensibility open to the
poet[4] a wide field of illustration; its exacting fineness reveals
the one that carries his thought into the depths of the
reader's mind, bringing him that exquisite joy caused by keen
intellectual power in the service of pure emotion.