which is the landscape of sunshine. Facing a May sun you see little
except an infinite number of shadows. Atoms of shadow--be the day bright
enough--compose the very air through which you see the light. The trees
show you a shadow for every leaf, and the poplars are sprinkled upon the
shining sky with little shadows that look translucent. The liveliness of
every shadow is that some light is reflected into it; shade and shine
have been entangled as though by some wild wind through their million
molecules.

The coolness and the dark of night are interlocked with the unclouded
sun. Turn sunward from the north, and shadows come to life, and are
themselves the life, the action, and the transparence of their day.

To eyes tired and retired all day within lowered blinds, the light looks
still and changeless. So many squares of sunshine abide for so many
hours, and when the sun has circled away they pass and are extinguished.
Him who lies alone there the outer world touches less by this long
sunshine than by the haste and passage of a shadow. Although there may
be no tree to stand between his window and the south, and although no
noonday wind may blow a branch of roses across the blind, shadows and
their life will be carried across by a brilliant bird.

To the sick man a cloud-shadow is nothing but an eclipse; he cannot see
its shape, its color, its approach, or its flight. It does but darken
his window as it darkens the day, and is gone again; he does not see it
pluck and snatch the sun. But the flying bird shows him wings. What
flash of light could be more bright for him than such a flash of
darkness?

It is the pulse of life, where all change had seemed to be charmed. If