No More Learning

But the moon is not to be judged alone by the quantity of light she
sends to us, but also by her influence on the earth and its
inhabitants. "The moon gravitates toward the earth, and the earth
reciprocally toward the moon. " The poet who walks by moonlight is
conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar
influence. I will endeavor to separate the tide in my thoughts from
the current distractions of the day. I would warn my hearers that they
must not try my thoughts by a daylight standard, but endeavor to
realize that I speak out of the night. All depends on your point of
view. In Drake's "Collection of Voyages," Wafer says of some albinos
among the Indians of Darien: "They are quite white, but their
whiteness is like that of a horse, quite different from the fair or
pale European, as they have not the least tincture of a blush or
sanguine complexion. . . . Their eyebrows are milk-white, as is likewise
the hair of their heads, which is very fine. . . . They seldom go abroad
in the daytime, the sun being disagreeable to them, and causing their
eyes, which are weak and poring, to water, especially if it shines
towards them, yet they see very well by moonlight, from which we call
them moon-eyed.
"

Neither in our thoughts in these moonlight walks, methinks, is there
"the least tincture of a blush or sanguine complexion," but we are
intellectually and morally albinos, children of Endymion, such is the
effect of conversing much with the moon.

I complain of arctic voyagers that they do not enough remind us of the
constant peculiar dreariness of the scenery, and the perpetual
twilight of the arctic night. So he whose theme is moonlight, though
he may find it difficult, must, as it were, illustrate it with the
light of the moon alone.

Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a very different
season. Take a July night, for instance. About ten o'clock,--when man
is asleep, and day fairly forgotten,--the beauty of moonlight is seen
over lonely pastures where cattle are silently feeding. On all sides
novelties present themselves. Instead of the sun there are the moon
and stars; instead of the wood thrush there is the whip-poor-will;
instead of butterflies in the meadows, fireflies, winged sparks of
fire! who would have believed it? What kind of cool deliberate life
dwells in those dewy abodes associated with a spark of fire? So man
has fire in his eyes, or blood, or brain. Instead of singing birds,
the half-throttled note of a cuckoo flying over, the croaking of
frogs, and the intenser dream of crickets. But above all, the
wonderful trump of the bullfrog, ringing from Maine to Georgia. The
potato vines stand upright, the corn grows apace, the bushes loom, the
grain-fields are boundless. On our open river terraces once cultivated
by the Indian, they appear to occupy the ground like an army, their
heads nodding in the breeze.