She did not know the yielding up of the senses and the possession of the
unknown, through the senses, which happens under a superb moon. The
all-glorious sun knows none of these yieldings up. He takes his way. And
the daisies at once go to sleep. And the soul of the old spinning-woman
also closed up at sunset, the rest was a sleep, a cessation.

It is all so strange and varied: the dark-skinned Italians ecstatic in
the night and the moon, the blue-eyed old woman ecstatic in the busy
sunshine, the monks in the garden below, who are supposed to unite both,
passing only in the neutrality of the average. Where, then, is the
meeting-point: where in mankind is the ecstasy of light and dark
together, the supreme transcendence of the afterglow, day hovering in
the embrace of the coming night like two angels embracing in the
heavens, like Eurydice in the arms of Orpheus, or Persephone embraced
by Pluto?

Where is the supreme ecstasy in mankind, which makes day a delight and
night a delight, purpose an ecstasy and a concourse in ecstasy, and
single abandon of the single body and soul also an ecstasy under the
moon? Where is the transcendent knowledge in our hearts, uniting sun and
darkness, day and night, spirit and senses? Why do we not know that the
two in consummation are one; that each is only part; partial and alone
for ever; but that the two in consummation are perfect, beyond the range
of loneliness or solitude?



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