and action combined;
and at last a peaceful, contemplative old age.

I cleared away ashes and rubbish, and marked out the very spot where
Rima's separate bower had been for my habitation, which I intended to
make small. In five days it was finished; then, after lighting a fire,
I stretched myself out in my dry bed of moss and leaves with a feeling
that was almost triumphant. Let the rain now fall in torrents, putting
out the firefly's lamp; let the wind and thunder roar their loudest, and
the lightnings smite the earth with intolerable light, frightening the
poor monkeys in their wet, leafy habitations, little would I heed it
all on my dry bed, under my dry, palm-leaf thatch, with glorious fire to
keep me company and protect me from my ancient enemy, Darkness.

From that first sleep under shelter I woke refreshed, and was not driven
by the cruel spur of hunger into the wet forest. The wished time had
come of rest from labour, of leisure for thought. Resting here, just
where she had rested, night by night clasping a visionary mother in her
arms, whispering tenderest words in a visionary ear, I too now clasped
her in my arms--a visionary Rima. How different the nights had seemed
when I was without shelter, before I had rediscovered fire! How had I
endured it? That strange ghostly gloom of the woods at night-time full
of innumerable strange shapes; still and dark, yet with something seen
at times moving amidst them, dark and vague and strange also--an owl,
perhaps, or bat, or great winged moth, or nightjar. Nor had I any choice
then but to listen to the night-sounds of the forest; and they were
various as the day-sounds, and for every day-sound, from the faintest
lisping and softest trill to the deep boomings and piercing cries, there
was an analogue; always with something mysterious, unreal in its tone,
something proper to the night. They were ghostly sounds, uttered by the
ghosts of dead animals; they were a hundred different things by
turns, but always with a meaning in them, which I vainly strove to
catch--something to be interpreted only by a sleeping faculty in us,
lightly sleeping, and now, now on the very point of awaking!

Now the gloom and the mystery were shut out; now I had that which stood
in the place of pleasure to me, and was more than pleasure. It was a
mournful rapture to lie awake now, wishing not for sleep and oblivion,
hating the thought of daylight that would come at last to drown
and scare away my