_May 2l_.--Back in Camden. Again commencing one of those unusually
transparent, full-starr'd, blue-black nights, as if to show that however
lush and pompous the day may be, there is something left in the
not-day that can outvie it. The rarest, finest sample of long-drawn-out
clear-obscure, from sundown to 9 o'clock. I went down to the Delaware,
and cross'd and cross'd. Venus like blazing silver well up in the west.
The large pale thin crescent of the new moon, half an hour high, sinking
languidly under a bar-sinister of cloud, and then emerging. Arcturus
right overhead. A faint fragrant sea-odor wafted up from the south.
The gloaming, the temper'd coolness, with every feature of the scene,
indescribably soothing and tonic--one of those hours that give hints to
the soul, impossible to put in a statement. (Ah, where would be any food
for spirituality without night and the stars?) The vacant spaciousness
of the air, and the veil'd blue of the heavens, seem'd miracles enough.
As the night advanc'd it changed its spirit and garments to ampler
stateliness. I was almost conscious of a definite presence, Nature
silently near. The great constellation of the Water-Serpent stretch'd
its coils over more than half the heavens. The Swan with outspread wings
was flying down the Milky Way. The northern Crown, the Eagle, Lyra, all
up there in their places. From the whole dome shot down points of light,
rapport with me, through the clear blue-black. All the usual sense of
motion, all animal life, seem'd discarded, seem'd a fiction; a curious
power, like the placid rest of Egyptian gods, took possession, none
the less potent for being impalpable. Earlier I had seen many bats,
balancing in the luminous twilight, darting their black forms hither
and yon over the river; but now they altogether disappear'd. The evening
star and the moon had gone. Alertness and peace lay camly couching
together through the fluid universal shadows.
_Aug. 26_.--Bright has the day been, and my spirits an equal _forzando_.
Then comes the night, different, inexpressibly pensive, with its
own tender and temper'd splendor. Venus lingers in the west with a
voluptuous dazzle unshown hitherto this summer. Mars rises early, and
the red sulky moon, two days past her full; Jupiter at night's meridian,
and the long curling-slanted Scorpion stretching full view in the south,
Aretus-neck'd. Mars walks the heavens lord-paramount now; all through
this month I go out after supper and watch for him; sometimes getting
up at midnight to take another look at his unparallel'd lustre. (I see
lately an astronomer has made out through the new Washington telescope
that Mars has certainly one moon, perhaps two.) Pale and distant, but
near in the heavens, Saturn precedes him.