Sunsets

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 88, 7 January 1933, Page 16

Sunsets

MR. SYDNEY IV ALTON in the “Scotsman” describes a wonderful sunset over Ben Wyvis and the Moray Firth when staying at Nairn in Scotland, A stranger stood near him. “I had observed him day after day and secretly had admired his cast of countenance, the lineaments shaped, as they seemed to me, by the serenities of culture and the study and quest of things lovely and of good report,” writes Mr. Walton. “Even now, I do not know his name, but suddenly in that ecstasy of sunset, his pulses and mine passionately beating in the sheer beauty of the scene, suddenly he said to me: — “ ‘Sir, if I don’t speak these very stones will cry aloud. I must share my emotions. I have wandered all over Europe in search of sunsets; a strange pilgrimage, you may think, but to me a sunset is what music is to many, what Bach is to the Duchess of Atholl, for example; it brings heaven near to earth, gives solace and sacrament to the spirit. “ ‘And, sir, this is the first time I have seen/he sun setting in magnificence over the Moray Firth, and I made a special journey to Nairn simply because of the fame of the sunsets. Look, sir, it’s so wondrous and magical, so rich and nye a psalm and poem, that my joy breaks into speech. I can understand Browning’s longing when he desired Raphael’s skill and Michael Angelo’s, and prayed for all the instruments of high expression that he might utter forth the inexpressible.’ “We watched and waited by the shore of the Firth. Ben Wyvis was mistless for all the Gaelic of its christening, and above its broad brow of sterness, austerity glorified, we saw the enchanting fires of sunset, saw the bold and scarlet of a marvellous burning over the head of Ben Wyvis, and the ethereal flame thereof encircled range after range and wove a halo for the shore which became lustrous to the left of us as far as to the entering-in of Loch Ness. And the waters of the Firth were turned into wine, and wc be-

held the glory of it and were astonished as were they in Cana in Galilee-long, long ago. “I never have seen a sight more beautous, nor one which gave such emphasis to the poor impossibilities of words. “Deep darkness had enfolded the Sutors, and in Cromarty the lamps were being lighted before we left the shore, the mysterious acquaintance and I, and strolled through the garden into the lounge of the hotel. “In the lounge 'he began once more to speak, and I noted the careful choice of phrase, and the hesitancy as of one who wished the word might be as beautiful as the thought and was not sure. “ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘you may think it strange in me to be a seeker of sunsets, but there is that in me and in my experience which only finds healing jud peace when the sun is asserting himself in glory against the stealthy darkness. I took ship to Bergen, because they told me about the sunsets there, and on the heights above Bergen I stood marvelling as the sun outpoured his chalice upon seas and mountains at the day’s end. And I sailed once upon a time into the JEgean that I might see the sun. set over the Isles where the dreamer-exile saw the New Jerusalem. In Constantinople I have stood to see the minarets take the splendours of the departing sun. I have sojourned in Switzerland, there to fill my heart with the divinity of the Alpenglut, and to see the snows on the far summits turn into roses. But to-night my heart has been uplifted by as wonderful a sunset as ever I did see in these, my wanderings, and now I can for ever understand the affections and adorations which the Moray Firth quickens in the hearts of her lovers.’ “I give what he said, this seeker of sunsets. When in church or cathedral I hear them sing that hymn about the hour of the sun’s setting and the bringing of the sick-to the Great Physician that He might touch them, I shall remember him I met in a garden at Nairn at that holy moment which set Ben Wyvis into golden flames and most imperial excitement, and filled the waters of the Firth with the fruit of a heavenly vintage.”