Page:Language of the Eye.djvu/20

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6
THE LANGUAGE

arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, ye of little faith?"

When the fair one is content to trust to Nature, she will be a bright monument of loveliness and beauty. Then will that raven hair hang as a dark cloud on the fair brow of morn, and her form shall move, her slender figure wave, like some light cypress when the merry winds carol midst the yielding boughs and wake young Echo from her noontide lair. Then shall light dart through the young eye-lash and steal away to melt in many a heart. Then will life be an impassioned dream of innocence and truth; the fairy foot shall press the earth as sighs of evening hour. Then shall the virgin hue and pleasant shade be loved, and light, that one apparition of divinity be adored; it shall appear to clothe the silver moon, the billows of the west in all their shadowy glory, and many a ray shall play in dimpled joy on crystal rivers' tide. Sweet light shall couch by flowery sapphire and blue violets, and dance with jocund joys where the white daisies tesselate the mead; then memory shall illuminate itself—turn out its store of images bright as at their creation; then shall the soul arrange its myriad hues of by-gone time; dwell over the glory of the spiritual scene, until, in extasy and grateful joy, a voice shall shout,—"How beautiful is Light."

The great authority on the doctrine of light and colour, was the renowned Claude de Loraine, who said the sky always graduates one way or the other, and that the rising or setting of the sun evinces the beautiful blending of colour beyond all other natural appearances. He observed that, in animated nature, the colours seen in the peacock's tail yield the painter's gamut. He also refers us to the three colours seen in flames of fire and the seven colours