The altar fire

Something -- far-off, faint, joyful -- cried out suddenly in the depths of my spirit to-day. I felt -- I can but express it by images, for it was too intangible for direct utterance -- as a woman feels when her child's life quickens within her; as a traveller's heart leaps up when, lost among interminable hills, he is hailed by a friendly voice; as the river-water, thrust up into creeks and estuaries by the incoming tide, is suddenly freed by the ebb from that stealthy pressure, and flows gladly downwards; as the dark garden-ground may feel when the frozen soil melts under warm winds of spring, and the flower-roots begin to swell and shoot.

Some such thrill it was that moved in the silence of the soul, showing that the darkness was alive.