SUNRISE
Reading edition
To ride alone beneath the stars, through the long indefinite hours of the night; to climb the slumbering mountain-hulks; to hear the dull roar of the river, toiling unwearied through the darkness below; to break, with a sudden clattering of hoofs, the gloomy stillness of distant village-streets, and on through the twilight that precedes the dawn, to journey, without flagging, high up against the sky, across a desolate, limitless plain.
To scout the future; to unlearn the past; and to brood vaguely, as the night broods....
To elude desire; to disdain the thrill of hate; to forget the long aching of love, and to commune, in tender serenity, with the grave-eyed Spirit of Rest.
And then, while the night slinks away across the hills, to push on towards the sunrise; to watch the marshalling of ruddy heralds across 50the East, and at last to meet the Great God’s dazzling glory, bursting in splendour across the empty land.