She effaces us and takes complete possession of our souls.

Not so, however, does she usurp the throne of our own personal life in those early hours when the sun, the master artist, whose touch has coloured every leaf and tinted every flower, demands her adoration.
Then it is, perhaps, that she turns her thoughts from all lesser companionships and, rapt in universal worship, suffers us to pass and repass as unnoticed as the idlers in the cathedral by those who kneel at the chancel rail.
I confess I never find myself quite unmoved in this sacred hour, announced only by the stars veiling their faces and the birds breaking the silence with their tumultuous song.

The universal faith becomes mine also, and from the common worship I am not debarred.

My thought rises whither the mists, parted from the unseen censers, are rising: I feel within me the revival of aspirations and faiths that were fast overclouding; the stir of old hopes is in my heart; the thrill of old purposes is in my soul.

Once more Nature is serving me in an hour of need; serving me not by drawing me to herself, but by setting me free from a world that was beginning to master and make me its slave.
Now all that insensibly growing servitude slips from me; once more I am free and my own.