COLUMBUSES OF THE SKY.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLII, Issue 12823, 15 April 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

COLUMBUSES OF THE SKY.

A RETURN TO "PRIMITIVE APPRECIATIONS.

(By Victor Carter.)

We have re-discovered the night skies! For generations the moon and the stars have been disconsolately disappearing from the ken of an all-sufficient and self-contained mankind. We have manufactured our own moon and starsand wanted none other. And now, suddenly, the heavens have once more entered* the human horizon, hitherto bounded by the highest houses. The war has created innumerable Columbuses of the sky. Every man who makes a really vital discovery for himself is in a true sense a Columhus. He experiences the same thrill of the hitherto unknown; he finds that which was non-existent to him before.

We had been taught' in our schools that above us was a deep dome. Our umbrellas suggested that a fantastic and filmy curtain of cloud was sometimes drawn overhead, but of the myriad golden lamps, of the rich velvety black of moonless midnights- we know nothing—until the Zeppelins came and caused us to revert to a forgotten habit of looking upwards and making amazing discoveries. The dim illumination of the pettiroatcd and painted terrestrial orbs helped to restore the natural light of the firmament- to its primitive importance in the phenomena of city life, and the average townrdweller was at last really aware of the celestial arch under which he walked. He has found with" a fine shock of awakened wonder the unreniem bored dimension in which he moves. The under air has become an actuality to him for the first time in his life. He stands, a curious little cockney figure in-the darkened.streets of London, and he gazes heavenwards with a sense of amazement at the glories of the glittering canopy, a startled adventurer who has come within sight of unknown regions—

'Like stout Cortez, when, ■with eagle eyes, He stared at the Pacific —and all Mis men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien." CULTS OF KEATS.

From tho_ days of the great war will date this discovery of- the night skies. ! The poetry of the "gold-painted floor" has. been revived, and. the cult which Keats began'tin his age of worshipping the majesty of the night, and of bringing down to Endymion the-legendary spirit of the 'nocturnal goddess, .. will need no conscious pen to reproduce in our day. Endymion is the common man of the suburbs; and to him descends the silver-sandalled queen as he contemplates by his garden-gate the pageantry of ..the Putney sky. Wo wandered.about the city ways in the uncovered glare of electric arc lamps, which made a .brightness more dazzling,than day. They were our fixed starsi-the handiwork of man. We Icnew h'orw they were, made and erected and snatched into glowing life. And we, -raj-pur way, were like Pope, who considered' the beauty of a star (which he had probably Inever seen) as not to be compared with the beauty of a pair of carriage lamps-(which picked out the ■ path . for him from one luminous interior,', to another luminous- interior). The artificial, so- close'.to us,, rretted out so- far: from us. The moon, "in a"' literal sense, 'suffered an eclipse.- The stars were under; a- cloud —the - blinding cloud ;of the closer lights v They; had'-lost their use for J the modern worlds and the .modern | world'promptly forgotthem./

Among those who had not yet been sophisticated by civilisation, of course, the moon and the stars retained their ancient place in the heavens. The farmer still counted on the punctual appearance of the rolling spheres; the fisherman was still a picturesque figure drawn in a bold chiaroscuro of shadow and shine on the eternal sea. But the town-dweller, he may have taken an evening stretch over Hampstead Heath, .was rarely smitten by the magic and immensity of the "great overhead," and certainly -was more impressed .with 'the lights of London twinkling in the twilight than with the lights of limitless space. Now the mystery and magic, the feeling for infinitude, has returned, and modern man experiences the same awe, the same littleness and yet lai-geuess, under stars at once far off and near to his life, at once ancient and ever new, as did the earlier generations who lived nearer to nature. TEUE ROMANCE.

You can see him pause in the .street on his homeward journey, probably attracted by the weird tracery of ' a searchlights making queer pictures on the clouds." Starting, as it were, from man-made things, his gaze goes higher, and presently lie is surveying the night sky for itself. The has become to him, consciously or unconsciously, n part of his life.

There is true romance in this return to the primitive applications which of old the Psalmist sang. It is not the civilian alone who is impressed by a new vision of the everiastinir things. Our soldiers, living in the midst.of the the elemental duel of life and death, are not, as an indifferent psychologist might suppose, obsessed with the two ideas of food and fighting. Their letters are stammeringly expressive of a fresh poetry; and nature is in no aspect ■worshipped so sincerely as in the night sky.

The sense of wonder which had almost- vanished from tho world has returned; and we are more primitive than before. The trivial complexities and minor subtleties of existence, which closed our eyes to the bigger simplicities, have been swept away, and we shall bo better men and women — though maybe sadder men and women —because of the war. With this fresh interest in the heavens has come, and will come "with ever-increasing force, a fresh feeling for the Maker of heaven and earth. There is, and will bo, a tremendous religious awakening. Not a narrow leligion of dogma and doctrine; but a breeze blowing out of the sky—an authentic message from above. Men's minds are turning to graver thoughts —their relation to each other, to the universe, and to God.

So that dropping down from the placid moon is a beautiful beneficence which will heal a weary and wounded world: and the starlight sheds golden balm upon the troubled spirits and the struggling nations.