The next morning he awoke at early dawn, hearing the birds at his window.He rose and went out.The air was clear and fresh as a new-made soul.Bars of mottled cloud were bent across the eastern quarter of the sky, which lay like a great ethereal ocean ready for the launch of the ship of glory that was now gliding towards its edge.Everything was waiting to conduct him across the far horizon to the south, where lay the stored-up wonder of his coming life.
The lark sang of something greater than he could tell; the wind got up, whispered at it, and lay down to sleep again; the sun was at hand to bathe the world in the light and gladness alone fit to typify the radiance of Robert's thoughts.The clouds that formed the shore of the upper sea were already burning from saffron into gold.A moment more and the first insupportable sting of light would shoot from behind the edge of that low blue hill, and the first day of his new life would be begun.He watched, and it came.
The well-spring of day, fresh and exuberant as if now first from the holy will of the Father of Lights, gushed into the basin of the world, and the world was more glad than tongue or pen can tell.The supernal light alone, dawning upon the human heart, can exceed the marvel of such a sunrise.
And shall life itself be less beautiful than one of its days? Do not believe it, young brother.Men call the shadow, thrown upon the universe where their own dusky souls come between it and the eternal sun, life, and then mourn that it should be less bright than the hopes of their childhood.Keep thou thy soul translucent, that thou mayest never see its shadow; at least never abuse thyself with the philosophy which calls that shadow life.Or, rather would I say, become thou pure in heart, and thou shalt see God, whose vision alone is life.
Just as the sun rushed across the horizon he heard the tramp of a heavy horse in the yard, passing from the stable to the cart that was to carry his trunk to the turnpike road, three miles off, where the coach would pass.Then Miss Lammie came and called him to breakfast, and there sat the farmer in his Sunday suit of black, already busy.Robert was almost too happy to eat; yet he had not swallowed two mouthfuls before the sun rose unheeded, the lark sang unheeded, and the roses sparkled with the dew that bowed yet lower their heavy heads, all unheeded.By the time they had finished, Mr.
Lammie's gig was at the door, and they mounted and followed the cart.Not even the recurring doubt and fear that hollowness was at the heart of it all, for that God could not mean such reinless gladness, prevented the truth of the present joy from sinking deep into the lad's heart.In his mind he saw a boat moored to a rock, with no one on board, heaving on the waters of a rising tide, and waiting to bear him out on the sea of the unknown.The picture arose of itself: there was no paradise of the west in his imagination, as in that of a boy of the sixteenth century, to authorize its appearance.It rose again and again; the dew glittered as if the light were its own; the sun shone as he had never seen him shine before; the very mare that sped them along held up her head and stepped out as if she felt it the finest of mornings.Had she also a future, poor old mare? Might there not be a paradise somewhere? and if in the furthest star instead of next-door America, why, so much the more might the Atlantis of the nineteenth century surpass Manoa the golden of the seventeenth!