THE END OF A DAY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4536, 13 February 1942, Page 5

THE END OF A DAY

MAGNIFICENT SUNSET COLOURFUL SPECTACLE J.T.P.’s halting pen and feeble imagination seized a colourful vision as the sun last evening died in the west near the end of a perfect day. “You see, but you do not observe,” remarked Sherlock Holmes to Dr Watson. And those who did not observe last night missed a gorgeous spectacle to which no artist’s brush could do justice, let alone portray. Yet, in all, a fitful reminder that no one day is commonplace if only we have eyes to see its splendour. It was the splendour of the setting sun, of the cloud pageant, at its best. The western horizon appeared as a vast canopy of shell pink, a sun-fired surface like an opal sea, rippled and webbed with the exquisite texture of an Oriental fabric, pure, delicate, lovely as no work of human hands can be. This grand and mystic spectacle—a transformation of colour and shade —went on swiftly as if the gods were changing the scenes of a Titanic stage. The vast glare of gold dominated Pirongia Mountain, which stood put in sculptural sublimity. And so the burnished gold turned to rose, it lost its fire, it faded to quiet cold grey. The sun had set. And loneliness and solitude brooded over the countryside with eternal significance. So, in the words of Adam Lindsay Gordon: ' .. / ' Lost rose end my story, ' “ Dead core and dry husk, • ■ ■■- Departed thy glory " '■ And tainted thy musk! Night spreads her dark wings on The rays of the dim Sun, And red fades to crimson, And crimson to dusk.