ACROSS THE YEAR.

Month by month as you came down the valley of the year the
days were shrinking; but as you watched they poured across the
autumn steeps a glory that seemed too secure to move and pass.
They soothed your disarray. Every to-day glowed richer than
yesterday. The great golden spaces breathed no hint of that which
was to come. You dreamed and you forgot; until in a stormy day
and night, in clouds and darkness, with moaning and tears the
magic failed and faded from the year. Awakened and free you rose
then and turned half guessing, half in glad remembrance, to face
the farthest deep. Through the drifting mists the days pushed,
pursuing you. They eked out their poverty, purpling the swift-
falling twilights, linking them to nights of veiled moonlight.
They sent strange moonlit dawns. But the gladness you gave as
you turned now and again to their gleaming moments was new and
none of theirs - a new deep gladness born of your knowledge of
the imminent end of your quest.

You pressed onwards unlingering even while you turned
to gaze, you passed the borderland and reached where the little
days can but peer one by one between the close-drawn curtains of
the darkness. They do their utmost. Into the narrow span of
hours they pour all their riches. They flash their jewels.

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They flood the silver fields with morning rose - a moment, and the evening gold is there. They pluck the last plumage from your picture and beckon you with long vistas. They make the woodland a pillared temple and draw out across the levels wide waters to mirror the hurrying light. But they cannot claim even the working hours. The morning's business begins round the radiance of lamp or candle standing in the hush of a lingering gloom, and ends in spaces of light shining here and there upon the full darkness. The coming and going of workers is the sudden sound of unseen footsteps. They come in a glimmer, they go beating away down the lane in the early night. And a day comes when even sound is gone; when the sea-mist drifts in over the marshes under the heavy curtain of the sky, when the sky droops until it is one with the driving mist and you are left in a darkling garden whose margin marks the edge of the world.

You may forget in mid-morning that the furrows are drawing across the high breast of the near field down to the edge of the wood. The intermittent strain and groan of the windmill can scarcely penetrate your closed windows. You do not know when milking-time comes. You do not hear the gentle pattering of hoofs along the lane, the click of the paddock gate, the clinking of pails.

Into the listening room drops the song of the burning sap. It rises and falls, dying away to a soft slurring to rise again as

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the logs stir and settle and the little flames leap out. Visions
of ancient seas come forth in the silence from the unlit depths
of shells shining in dim corners on mat and polished shelf. In
the soft light glass-shaded posies bear their part once more with
gentle pride, quenching the claim of the frail passing blossoms
in the bowl among the table ornaments. From the faded bindings
of the books close packed upon the shelf in the fireside recess
comes no disturbing thought. Old-world eyes look down from their
time-worn frames upon the flowered wall. There is nothing to
parcel out the sweetness of the hours. . . . Dominated and ban-
ished the days yield at last their richest treasure. They come
at your will, slow-drifting phantoms along the margin of your
deep content. They show you beauties you never saw for your
eagerness in seeking. They are yours to hold or to cast away. . . .

Wakening some night at the goal of your journey into the darkness
and with deep hours ahead, you may see for a moment the flaming
summit of the year. You may, if you care, accept the flashed
challenge and set your feet upon the steep uplands lying between
the year's end and the bleak plateau of March. You may pass in
a dream along the high-hung valley of April and up May's winding
pathway to the height. There you may watch the serene swing of
widespread days and see the sunlight on earth's brimming goblet;
you may feel the swift touch of twilit nights across the June
meadows. . . . The night stirs and is silent.

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You relinquish your visions. They pass and are blotted
out in the flowing darkness. You are left, full awake, cradled
and secure at the heart of the year.