_12th December 1895._
The other evening I was reading an English book of criticisms, full of all
manner of disputations about Poetry, Art, Beauty, and so forth and so on.
As I plodded through these artificial discussions, my tired faculties
seemed to have wandered into a region of empty mirage, filled with the
presence of a mocking demon.
The night was far advanced. I closed the book with a bang and flung it on
the table. Then I blew out the lamp with the idea of turning into bed. No
sooner had I done so than, through the open windows, the moonlight burst
into the room, with a shock of surprise.
That little bit of a lamp had been sneering drily at me, like some
Mephistopheles: and that tiniest sneer had screened off this infinite
light of joy issuing forth from the deep love which is in all the world.
What, forsooth, had I been looking for in the empty wordiness of the book?
There was the very thing itself, filling the skies, silently waiting for
me outside, all these hours!
If I had gone off to bed leaving the shutters closed, and thus missed this
vision, it would have stayed there all the same without any protest
against the mocking lamp inside. Even if I had remained blind to it all my
life,--letting the lamp triumph to the end,--till for the last time I went
darkling to bed,--even then the moon would have still been there, sweetly
smiling, unperturbed and unobtrusive, waiting for me as she has throughout
the ages.