The west is full of storm. A closing cloud comes up out of the west:
the western sea is utterly hopeless, the moving south inexorable.
There is terror in the west.
Evening is more below me than above me. Night is coming to me over the
dark woods. The foam on the rocks below is like a milk-white robe.
As I walk the first miles downhill I begin to hear the sound of the
waves. The sea is beginning to roar, and the wind rushing up to me
tells me that the lines of the sea are its stormy waves ridden forward
to the shore by a gale.
I stood on the platform where the many-domed temple was built, and
watched the gathering night. Unnumbered trees lay beneath me, but it
was so dusk I hardly knew them to be trees. The gigantic black cliff
that shuts off the west stood blank into the heaven like a great door:
to the east lay the ghostly fading coast-line of Aloopka. Among the
black clouds overhead danced out happy fires, and, answering their
brightness, windows lighted up in cottages far below, and lanterns
gleamed on a little steamer just puffing over the horizon.
There came the pure December evening with frost and Christmas bells,
and happy hearths somewhere in the background. The one star in the sky
was a beckoning one: my heart yearned.
I dipped down upon the road, and in a few minutes was looking at the
temple from below, seeing it entirely silhouetted against the sky.
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