over its brethren, but longs for the old original levels; sheds its
singleness and its superiorities. We become, God be thanked, less
considerable under the moon as time advances; more of a piece with
life; better blended with the days; a part of all dawns and sunsets--we
who before had but one of each to our credit.
"I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions
in the course of a day besides my dinner," says Lamb. "I want a
form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble,
for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for
books, those spiritual repasts--a grace before Milton--a grace before
Shakespeare--a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the
'Fairy Queen'?"
I own also to a disposition to celebrate many birthdays rather than
one, and am inclined to be thankful on twenty other occasions in the
course of the year besides that one which falls so personally for
me--even if so negligible--on a certain February morning. I confess
to a love of calendars that sometimes give me two or three great
names to celebrate in a single day; nor am I ashamed to admit that
the sun rises for me the statelier if it be upon an anniversary which
commemorates Camoens or Michael Angelo. It has long been my habit, to
celebrate quietly in my heart, when all the birds are singing, that day
in April when, it is said,--uncertainly enough,--Shakespeare came to
the earth; nor have I failed often to note that other day also, when,
impartially in the same April weather, it is said, he--and Cervantes on
the same day with him--departed from it.
And if such remembrances as these may seem still to tend toward
egotism, yet I think that claim can hardly be proved valid. For
these,--celebrate them as personally as we may,--these are not men of
one season but of all time, blended with all days, impartially a part
of all weathers, and of the very fibre and lives of most of us; and,
even though we should forget them, yet memorably forgotten in those
unforgettable companionships that they have bestowed upon us. These are
our stars and moons, differing in glory one from another, with which,
in the midst of our mortality, we answer, not ignobly, the shining
challenge of the stars; these are they innumerable whose beauties and
nobilities, coupled with our own inconsiderable lives, lend at last
some glory to our days so frail, so ephemeral.
As a child, I used to love to count the stars, beginning with the very
first one that pricked its way through the twilit blue, and by a pretty
conceit always called that first one my own, and put a most personal
wish upon it. For a long time it always stood single in the heavens,
and then another here or there, and there, and there, appeared, which
I counted with delight. But always the moment came when the count was
irretrievably lost; when stars bloomed, not by ones and twos, but by
myriads, no more to be counted than the unnumbered sands of the sea;
and over me was stretched the jeweled beauty of the infinite heavens,
just breathing with the breathing of the night; and I, looking up
glorified into that beauty, a little inconsiderable child, standing
beside the soft dark shadow of the cypresses.
THE END
Transcriber's Notes
Errors in punctuation have been fixed.
Page 172: "Superflous precaution" changed to "Superfluous precaution"