No More Learning

You lie on your back on a rock in a pasture on the
top of some bare hill at midnight, and speculate on the height of the
starry canopy. The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance
surpass anything which day has to show. A companion with whom I was
sailing one very windy but bright moonlight night, when the stars were
few and faint, thought that a man could get along with _them_, though
he was considerably reduced in his circumstances,--that they were a
kind of bread and cheese that never failed.

No wonder that there have been astrologers, that some have conceived
that they were personally related to particular stars. Dubartas, as
translated by Sylvester, says he'll

"not believe that the great architect
With all these fires the heavenly arches decked
Only for show, and with these glistering shields,
T' awake poor shepherds, watching in the fields. "
He'll "not believe that the least flower which pranks
Our garden borders, or our common banks,
And the least stone, that in her warming lap
Our mother earth doth covetously wrap,
Hath some peculiar virtue of its own,
And that the glorious stars of heav'n have none. "

And Sir Walter Raleigh well says, "The stars are instruments of far
greater use than to give an obscure light, and for men to gaze on
after sunset;" and he quotes Plotinus as affirming that they "are
significant, but not efficient;" and also Augustine as saying, "_Deus
regit inferiora corpora per superiora_:" God rules the bodies below by
those above. But best of all is this which another writer has
expressed: "_Sapiens adjuvabit opus astrorum quemadmodum agricola
terrae naturam_:" a wise man assisteth the work of the stars as the
husbandman helpeth the nature of the soil.

It does not concern men who are asleep in their beds, but it is very
important to the traveler, whether the moon shines brightly or is
obscured. It is not easy to realize the serene joy of all the earth,
when she commences to shine unobstructedly, unless you have often been
abroad alone in moonlight nights. She seems to be waging continual war
with the clouds in your behalf. Yet we fancy the clouds to be _her_
foes also. She comes on magnifying her dangers by her light,
revealing, displaying them in all their hugeness and blackness, then
suddenly casts them behind into the light concealed, and goes her way
triumphant through a small space of clear sky.

In short, the moon traversing, or appearing to traverse, the small
clouds which lie in her way, now obscured by them, now easily
dissipating and shining through them, makes the drama of the moonlight
night to all watchers and night-travelers. Sailors speak of it as the
moon eating up the clouds.
The traveler all alone, the moon all alone,
except for his sympathy, overcoming with incessant victory whole
squadrons of clouds above the forests and lakes and hills. When she is
obscured he so sympathizes with her that he could whip a dog for her
relief, as Indians do. When she enters on a clear field of great
extent in the heavens, and shines unobstructedly, he is glad. And when
she has fought her way through all the squadron of her foes, and rides
majestic in a clear sky unscathed, and there are no more any
obstructions in her path, he cheerfully and confidently pursues his
way, and rejoices in his heart, and the cricket also seems to express
joy in its song.

How insupportable would be the days, if the night with its dews and
darkness did not come to restore the drooping world. As the shades
begin to gather around us, our primeval instincts are aroused, and we
steal forth from our lairs, like the inhabitants of the jungle, in
search of those silent and brooding thoughts which are the natural
prey of the intellect.

Richter says that "the earth is every day overspread with the veil of
night for the same reason as the cages of birds are darkened, viz. ,
that we may the more readily apprehend the higher harmonies of thought
in the hush and quiet of darkness. Thoughts which day turns into smoke
and mist stand about us in the night as light and flames; even as the
column which fluctuates above the crater of Vesuvius, in the daytime
appears a pillar of cloud, but by night a pillar of fire. "

There are nights in this climate of such serene and majestic beauty,
so medicinal and fertilizing to the spirit, that methinks a sensitive
nature would not devote them to oblivion, and perhaps there is no man
but would be better and wiser for spending them out-of-doors, though
he should sleep all the next day to pay for it,--should sleep an
Endymion sleep, as the ancients expressed it,--nights which warrant
the Grecian epithet ambrosial, when, as in the land of Beulah, the
atmosphere is charged with dewy fragrance, and with music, and we take
our repose and have our dreams awake,--when the moon, not secondary to
the sun,--

"gives us his blaze again,
Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.
Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime. "

Diana still hunts in the New England sky.

"In Heaven queen she is among the spheres.
She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.
Eternity in her oft change she bears;
She Beauty is; by her the fair endure.

"Time wears her not; she doth his chariot guide;
Mortality below her orb is placed;
By her the virtues of the stars down slide;
By her is Virtue's perfect image cast.