A NOCTURNE OF THE SHORE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXVII, Issue 120, 23 May 1903, Page 2 (Supplement)

A NOCTURNE OF THE SHORE.

BY A BANKER.

The sh.ades of evening are fast falling, the incarnadined, golden glow, which had suffused the western horizon in a flood of glory, and had gemmed the rippling wavelets with sparkling diamonds, and chrysolites, and glittering sapphires, has softly faded away, and has given place to an empurpled, ever deepening twilight, its shadows soon to melt away before the advancing reign of night.

And now the stars of heaven one by one shine forth ; first the brightest of them all, soon to ba followed by the constellations in all their glory. But to us, far more brilliant than all those mighty suns i 3 Heaperus, the evening star, now shitting in all her vivid beauty with a splecidour so intense that a thin broken line of light is pencilled on the rippling sea. But not for long ; for in the opposite quarter of the watery horizon a pale flood of ligbt is slowly appearing, and soon the upper limb of the almost full-orbed queen of night appears, like a ruddy conflagation far away on the rcean, soon, however, mounting higher and higher ; her blood-red hue transmuted into silver, and her glistening transplendeuce, though not overpowering the brightest of the stars, yet soon again obliterating all trace of ihose of minor magnitude. How fortunate? for us that we have but one satellite, however beautiful they may be; forbad we as ■ many as our neighbours Jupiter or Saturn, tho star-gemmed vault of heaven would scarce ever be seen ; perhaps not more than odco in a long lifetime ; while many even of the planets themselves would be invisible, and astronomy in great measure an unknown science.

And now she has risen high, a broad stream of sparkling silver rippling on the waves, which, as they break with ever varying cadence oa the sand, glitter as though formed of molten metal, while the white surffoam which the night breezti is driving before it has a weird spectral appearance as its tuffced wisps drift along by the edge of the receding surge. Aye, and this sea-scape of the night thrills through and through with its beauty and its soft harmouy. Tbe genial air is delicately perfumed with the delicious aroma of the sea ; the melodious rhythm of the ever tonef'il musio of the waves, accompanied at times by a sonorous boom as the ground swell heavily strikes the rocks of a jutting promontory hard by, the placid, tranquil lustre of the moon, and the flood of silvery light which glints and dances upoo the ever restless ocean, all combine to produce a glow of fervid ecslaay and rapt fascination.

How grateful we should be to tho Creator for makiDg the earth so beautiful, and for giving us the capacity to appreciate all its sublime adornments. But it was fit that the one orb in the wide universes of God where the Redeemer was to make expiation for sin should be one of His masterpieces. But to those who avail themselves of that expiation are reserved far greater glories and far greater enchantments than any which this earth affords.