Night Amid "The Fair Hills"

Irish Jesuit Province

Night Amid "The Fair Hills"Author(s): Elsa SchmidtSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 41, No. 484 (Oct., 1913), pp. 564-566Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20503466 .

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[ 564 ]

NIGHT AMID "THE FAIR HILLS"

H ERE I sit, alone in the white, unfamiliarroom. Unfamiliar, yet a subtle sense of almost forgotten acquaintance seems for me to pervade its restful space. The stars

glow through the pines like the candles that were set on the branches of the Chris-tmas Trees we knew and loved so a little time ago, when we were children. The mellow light of the lamp diffuses a golden harmony that seems more in keeping with the -grave simplicity of the guardian hills around than would the -obtrusive modernity of the comfortable electric switch. The

meadow that rolls in emerald billows from my window to the dark belt of trees bounding it in the distance is drowned to-night in mystery. For, all around, half blotting the soft gold of the new and modest-seeming moon, lies the fleecy, first hair of the rich autumn time. It lies in long, cloudy bars upon the grass, the light upon it from my unshuttered window picks out a misty gleam in the distance there, like the glimmer of a half hid pearl.

And it is a very mysterious thing. It wraps around those bushes and walls, those trees and hills that were becoming, even to me, commonplaces of the golden days. And lo! straightway their -ndefined forms, the strangeness of the altered landscape take on

a new and wonderful significance. Might not, in very deed, the

-wisdom and the ancient truth of bygone ages that gave its own -magic to each ordinary daily sight, might it not have been of

deeper depth than we who touch but the surface of mysteries may dream?

Silence, duskv, tender darkness, and the mystery of that cloudy veil that lightly yet so closely folds the land. And beyond, the brooding of the ancient hills that are withdrawn to-night from ken, curtained in a wan, impenetrable softness. A few

insects, creatures of the twilight, aie astir. The silly moths blunder eagerly around the focus of the subdued gold glimmer that fills the room. The winged beetle that sleeps in the light, soft earth by day has soared into the air that welcomes usually

with the scent of pines and roses, and caresses with the warmth of the sun's last smile. But, despite the coolness and the en tangling wreaths of mist that gather here and there, he passes to

and fro, sweeping by with a deep mellow sound as of a fairy organ's solemn chord.



NIGHT AMID "' THE FAIR HLLS " 565

And, ere the day was done, the sky was rich yet calm restrained though gorgeous-a more pensive beauty stamped upon the half-rebelling glory of the sunset that seemed fain of summer's wine stained riot with the clouds again. But that fierce smoulder flamed its heart out, like the dying of a passionate emotion, and the solem i radiance of the season reigned supreme. It was like a queenly beauty who had taken the veil.

One by one the exquisite tones have faded, in death as lovely, if not lovelier indeed. The tranquil twilight with its wrappings of haze came like the gentle nurse to the tired child, veiling us

with unhuirried graciousness. The flowers have bent their fra grant faces and are sleeping quietly in the green and free-spaced garden that is sister to the wide meadow without the low grey

wall where the ivy climbs near the hawthorn tree. The moth has at last abandoned his frantic wooing of that intense and merciless beauty that consumes its suitors for reward. The beetles are gone, and the dusky, handsome butterflies are perched with folded wings upon some branch or stem in shelter.

"The world is left to darkness and to me." But what world is this ? Not indeed that cheerful, brilliant one of Sackville

Street, or of Princes Street even, whose mystic Castle Hill, lonely and lovely, makes it more akin to this. No; the world of the silent, misty hills and plains in the darkness oI a Celtic

midnight is far enough removed from such as these. And I am alone. Alone, an alien, in the midst of those that are terrible and to be spoken of with bated breath, even to you that know

them, or whose ancestors have known them, and well. For these are they whom to meet is death; and what if they chance to come by, they who are not of mortal frame nor of immortal soul.?

The choiring of the tranquil birds has ceased. For they are all abed and waiting for the dawn. The few passers-by have gone home, the cows and the poultry have hushed their com fortable domestic clamour. The night is silent with an almost terrible silence. It is like a heavy pall of stifling velvet all about one. Anon it is so deep, the soundless quietude seems athrill

with an intangible life that pulses fiercely. A strange thought daunts me, almost I had said a strange

fear seizes me. I tell myself on a sudden that the house is empty,

that there is none save I in this solitary abode in the midst of hills and silences, of mysteries and shadows, of terrors and lone linesses. I continue-I have heard such things-that this silent

white apartment whose chairs and books await, invite; this

refuge of mine may, after all, be but a phantasm, a dream, sweet



566 THE, IRISH MONTHLY

with the flowers that lend their rainbow radiance from the garden, cheerful with the white and gold company of the lamp. And I, perchance, shall waken from the spell and find me alone, alone on the haunted plain, the faint moonbeams scarcely piercing the adamantine wall of awful mist. It may be I shall find myself in a weird vault in some forgotten tower that echoed to steps and voices years on years ago, perhaps still echoes them on chosen nights, hours set apart of them that are not mortal. Or it might be that the soundless cloisters of some abbey ruin shall surround me. I know not, indeed, which I should dread the

most, or whether worst of' all it would be to wander among the whispering trees that lean in confidential intercourse, past the threatening volubility of the angry streams, over the watching

hills and through the crowded meadows almost noiselessly echoing to thronging, dread footsteps and swirl of robes.

The mood passes, yet I am glad of the mute companionship of the lamp-my windows are shuttered against the unearthly seeming meadow; and I am not sorry. To-morrow the eternal,

mystic wind of the hills will sweep around the house loud-voiced? it will be dark and lonely. But the lovely stars will shine clear and patient, the moon will smile, and night " amid the fair hills of Ireland " will be a vision of beauty as to-night it is a revelation of the ancient and pre-Christian mysticism that once had domi nation over all the land.

ELSA SCHMIDT.

THE FAIRIES

WHEN little folks are sleeping, And shadows are a-creeping, The fairies come a-peeping

To see if all is still.

Then finding all is right, They go out into the night,

To dance around the garden Until the morning light.

EILEEN O'C.

[The regiment of the poets never falls below full strength. These lines are from the pen of the latest recruit-a child of Io years.-ED.]



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Night Amid "The Fair Hills"