A Girl's Musings: Light

The sun neared its setting, and we stood together bidding farewell to that red disk as it sent forth its golden ray, streaming through every tangle and threading every gap within it. And behold, the gleaming clouds began to take on the color of the sun, appearing like a bashful beauty with reddened cheeks who has lowered her drowsy eyelids in modesty; and we saw the rays of the sun that pierced through the clouds as though they were the glances of the dreaming beauty...

And the ray pierced through the pine trees and through their fine, hair-like needles... and the pine tree seemed a beautiful head, its hair hanging loose, whose gleam in the light almost dazzled the eyes...

And the ray pierced through our two souls, and they showed themselves as they truly were, beautiful and alike... We looked at our souls and found them wholly absorbed away from us, clinging to the sun's ray and gazing longingly at the far horizon, where the sun was about to set... And we glimpsed in our souls a touch of anxiety and fear... and we knew that its source was the approaching end of our day... for it had been full of beauty and happiness and love... and it was about to end... A dreadful silence fell upon us, and we knew not how to face that ending when we had not yet had our fill of the beginning...

We turned to cast our last glances at the sun, its rim now drawn near that blue horizon... and we saw the sea as a great vessel yearning to fold that red sphere within its folds... And the sphere began to sink into it slowly and warily, trying first with its lower rim; and when it was reassured of its new resting place, it grew bold and waded in to its middle; then it began to lose its will, and it sank, and sank, until it vanished wholly beneath the water...

We felt its torment and its pain as it drowned; we saw how it breathed out its last breaths; we witnessed how its red color paled and how the light of its eyes went out... And yet we were watching nothing but the end of our own day. Yes... we had bidden farewell to the sun of a happy day.

And darkness crept in, occupying the mountains and the hills and the valleys; it crept with its desolation to settle over our two hearts, and we were afraid; a shiver and an awe came over us... And we had need of our souls: to draw us together, for fear of loneliness; to calm our state, for fear our happiness be exchanged for sorrow; to guide us, for fear of straying in that pitch darkness; and to restore our confidence to us, for fear of despair...

Hope came back, fluttering its wings to fill the void that light had left for darkness to roam in. So we changed our course toward the hills and turned our backs on the sunset; we forsook despair to welcome hope... As for the sky, it began to take on the light advancing from beyond the horizon... The hills were crowned with a magical halo, and light burst forth once more through the clouds, and the pines were clothed in the reflection of the glowing light... We stood together watching that full moon as it rose upon us with its shining face, in bashfulness and modesty, like that shy beauty on the point of drawing the veil from her enchanting face — but slowly, and warily...

And we sat beneath a pine tree, whispering together and talking, and drinking from the divine happiness which nature and love and beauty and hope had bestowed upon us.