Henceforward the evenings will grow darker and darker; and when,
to-morrow, I come over from the office, this moon, the favourite companion
of my exile, will already have drifted a little farther from me, doubting
whether she had been wise to lay her heart so completely bare last
evening, and so covering it up again little by little.
Nature becomes really and truly intimate in strange and lonely places. I
have been actually worrying myself for days at the thought that after the
moon is past her full I shall daily miss the moonlight more and more;
feeling further and further exiled when the beauty and peace which awaits
my return to the riverside will no longer be there, and I shall have to
come back through darkness.
Anyhow I put it on record that to-day is the full moon--the first full
moon of this year's springtime. In years to come I may perchance be
reminded of this night, with the tee-tee of the bird on the bank, the
glimmer of the distant light on the boat off the other shore, the shining
expanse of river, the blur of shade thrown by the dark fringe of trees
along its edge, and the white sky gleaming overhead in unconcerned
aloofness.
SHELIDAH,
7_th April_ 1892.
The river is getting low, and the water in this arm of it is hardly more
than waist-deep anywhere. So it is not at all extraordinary that the boat
should be anchored in mid-stream. On the bank, to my right, the ryots are
ploughing and cows are now and then brought down to the water's edge for a
drink.
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