In the deepest darkness of the night the same thought rose in my
mind as in the bright light of noontide. What is there which I
have not used to strengthen the same emotion?

CHAPTER II

SOMETIMES I went to a deep, narrow valleyin the hills, silent and solitary.
The sky crossed from side to side, like a roof supported on two walls of
green. Sparrows chirped in the wheat at the verge above, their calls
falling like the twittering of swallows from the air. There was no other
sound. The short grass was dried grey as it grew by the heat; the sun hung
over the narrow vale as if it had been put there by hand. Burning, burning,
the sun glowed on the sward at the footof the slope where these thoughts
burned into me. How many, many years, how many cycles of years, how many
bundles ofcycles of years, had the sun glowed down thus on that hollow?
Since it was formed how long? Since it was worn and shaped,groove-like, in
the flanks of the hills by mighty forces which had ebbed. Alone with the
sun which glowed on the work when it was done, I saw back through space to
the old time of tree-ferns, of the lizard
flying through the air, the lizard-dragon wallowing in sea foam, the
mountainous creatures, twice-elephantine, feeding on land; all the crooked
sequence of life. The dragon-fly which passed me traced a continuous
descent from the fly marked on stone in those days. The immense time lifted
me like a wave rolling under a boat; my mind seemed to raise itself as the
swell of the cycles came; it felt strongwith the power of the ages. With
all thattime and power I prayed: that I might have in my soul the
intellectual part of it; theidea, the thought. Like a shuttle the mind shot
to and fro the past and the present, in an instant.