the midnight sun
And there was something impressive in the sight of the majestic orb holding such imperial revel at midnight , -- something almost unearthly in the light and life of the heavens , as compared with the referential and seemingly worshipping silence of the earth , -- that , for a few moments , awed him into a sense of the spiritual and unseen . Mythical passages from the poets he loved came into his memory , and stray fragments of old songs and ballads he had known in his childhood returned to him with haunting persistence . It was , for him , one of those sudden halts in life which we all experience , -- an instant , -- when time and the world seem to stand still , as though to permit us easy breathing ; a brief space , -- in which we are allowed to stop and wonder awhile at the strange unaccountable force within us , that enables us to stand with such calm , smiling audacity , on our small pin 's point of the present , between the wide dark gaps of past and future ; a small hush , -- in which the gigantic engines of the universe appear to revolve no more , and the immortal Soul of man itself is subjected and over-ruled by supreme and eternal Thought . Drifting away on those delicate imperceptible lines that lie between reality and dreamland , the watcher of the midnight sun gave himself up to the half painful , half delicious sense of being drawn in , absorbed , and lost in infinite imaginings , when the intense stillness around him was broken by the sound of a voice singing , a full , rich contralto , that rang through the air with the clearness of a golden bell . The sweet liquid notes were those of an old Norwegian mountain melody , one of those wildly pathetic _ folk-songs _ that seem to hold all the sorrow , wonder , wistfulness , and indescribable yearning of a heart too full for other speech than music . He started to his feet and looked around him for the singer . There was no one visible .