everything were full of summer, and I knew that the night would be
short; a midsummer night; and I had lived half of it before attempting
repose. Yet, I say, I woke shivering and also disconsolate, needing
companionship. I pushed down through tall, rank grass, drenched with
dew, and made my way across the road to the bank of the river. By the
time I reached it the dawn began to occupy the east.

For a long time I stood in a favoured place, just above a bank of
trees that lined the river, and watched the beginning of the day,
because every slow increase of light promised me sustenance.

The faint, uncertain glimmer that seemed not so much to shine through
the air as to be part of it, took all colour out of the woods and
fields and the high slopes above me, leaving them planes of grey and
deeper grey. The woods near me were a silhouette, black and
motionless, emphasizing the east beyond. The river was white and
dead, not even a steam rose from it, but out of the further pastures a
gentle mist had lifted up and lay all even along the flanks of the
hills, so that they rose out of it, indistinct at their bases,
clear-cut above against the brightening sky; and the farther they were
the more their mouldings showed in the early light, and the most
distant edges of all caught the morning.

At this wonderful sight I gazed for quite half-an-hour without moving,
and took in vigour from it as a man takes in food and wine. When I
stirred and looked about me it had become easy to see the separate
grasses; a bird or two had begun little interrupted chirrups in the
bushes, a day-breeze broke from up the valley ruffling the silence,
the moon was dead against the sky, and the stars had disappeared. In a
solemn mood I regained the road and turned my face towards the