The spacious mansions were
not far away. They were my home. I had known them, and should
return to them again.
This dim half-memory, which perhaps comes to all children, I had
felt when younger still, almost before I could walk. Sitting on
the floor in a square of sunshine made by an open window, the
leaf-shadows from great boughs outside dancing and wavering
around me, I seemed to be talking to them and they to me in
unknown tongues, that left within me an ecstasy yet unforgotten.
These shadows had brought a message to me from an unseen
Somewhere, which my baby heart was to keep forever. The wonder of
that moment often returns. Shadow-traceries of bough and leaf
still seem to me like the hieroglyphics of a lost language.
The stars brought me the same feeling. I remember the surprise
they were to me, seen for the first time. One evening, just
before I was put to bed, I was taken in somebody's arms--my
sister's, I think--outside the door, and lifted up under the
dark, still, clear sky, splendid with stars, thicker and nearer
earth than they have ever seemed since.
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