Across, above them, was the faint, rousing dazzle of snow. They never
looked up. But the dazzle of snow began to glow as they walked, the
wonderful, faint, ethereal flush of the long range of snow in the
heavens, at evening, began to kindle. Another world was coming to pass,
the cold, rare night. It was dawning in exquisite, icy rose upon the
long mountain-summit opposite. The monks walked backwards and forwards,
talking, in the first undershadow.
And I noticed that up above the snow, frail in the bluish sky, a frail
moon had put forth, like a thin, scalloped film of ice floated out on
the slow current of the coming night. And a bell sounded.
And still the monks were pacing backwards and forwards, backwards and
forwards, with a strange, neutral regularity.
The shadows were coming across everything, because of the mountains in
the west. Already the olive wood where I sat was extinguished. This was
the world of the monks, the rim of pallor between night and day. Here
they paced, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, in the
neutral, shadowless light of shadow.
Neither the flare of day nor the completeness of night reached them,
they paced the narrow path of the twilight, treading in the neutrality
of the law.
Pages:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54