Imperceptibly, almost, it fades, and is replaced by one of a different quality—the light of day—which creeps over the world until at length one is aware that that other, which was neither of the night nor of the day, has gone. Long pale lines of fog and fleecy banks of clouds now evolve upon the horizon. The earth remains suffused in this cold light, which fascinates and still repels, making the ranges look distant and severe, and giving to the whole face of Nature an unsympathetic look. It is the beauty of marble, a Gorgon beauty, which chills the heart. In that scene is no note of human passion. Those pale clouds, cold and gray as the ashes of the fire, seem to lure to some beyond, as if they would draw one from the world of life and warmth to some region of cold and death.
Presently comes a faint blush in the sky and over the hills, a new warmth of light, as if blood now ran in those marble veins. It is the foreglow, which is to the sunrise what the afterglow is to the sunset. Color is again born into the world, and the earth is once more alive and sympathetic. As the sun rises, dawn, the exquisite dawn, the most ethereal thing that mortal eyes shall ever behold, flees away into the uttermost parts of space. The mystical, alluring quality slowly dies, and it is once more the matter-of-fact light of day.
With the appearance of the sun these subtle impressions vanish, like a dream vague and unreal. Nature reasserts herself in the robust sense of existence; now the smell of frying bacon, the comforting effect of the morning coffee in a tin cup, are the real and important things. Physical life is enough in itself—so concentrated, vigorous, aggressive it is. The mere breathing, seeing, tasting are more in themselves than is possible under other conditions. How good the resiny odor of the forest! How exhilarating the scene in its pure savagery! How stimulating the morning air! How the stream lures as I get down the trout-rod, and climbing out on a sugar-pine log cast a brown hackle on the swirling glassy flood!
[THE SEA]
The sea ever baffles description. It is a living thing, pulsating with energy, and, possessed of a subtle consciousness, elusive and full of moods—changeable as woman and as incomprehensible. Now it is tender and appealing; again distant and cold. Perhaps it is because of its essentially feminine traits that it so beguiles. Certainly it fascinates as nothing else fascinates in Nature.
There is what may be called a sense of the sea, which is indefinable. No lesser body of water, no other aspect of Nature affords this. It is in the air, like a touch of autumn, and we know it as much through feeling as through seeing. The coast is saturated for some distance inland with this presence of the sea, much as the beach is soaked with salt water. It is music and poetry to the soul and as elusive as they, wrapping us in dreams and yielding fugitive glimpses of that which we may never grasp, but which skirts, like a beautiful phantom, the mind's horizon. Like music, it is an opiate, and unlocks for us new states of mind in which we wander, as in halls of alabaster and mother-of-pearl, but where, alas, we may not linger. We can as readily sound the ocean as fathom the feelings it inspires. It is too deep for thought. As often as the sea speaks to us of the birth of Venus and of Joy, so also does it remind of Prometheus bound and the thrall of Nature.
Who can recall those impressions of the sea which were his as a child—a relish, a vividness, perhaps never experienced in after life? What wonderful thing was the pure white sand; what fascinating objects the sea-shells—and the boom of the surf, what thrilling music! No longer is it that simple strain, but inwrought with hopes and fears and memories. The children on the beach play in an ocean of their own; we cannot put foot on their shore, try as we will. Sometimes, as the salty fragrance is wafted over the sands, one is on the point of regaining that lost consciousness, and then it eludes and is gone. Never again shall we find that alluring and altogether wonderful sea upon which we happened in childhood. Yet who knows but in some auspicious moment we may come upon one still more entrancing.