midnight
This report gained me protection and respect ; and , after I had ordered my agent at Ravenna to forward to the excellent Abbot a piece of plate , and a huge cargo of a rare Hungary wine , it was not the Abbot 's fault if I was not the most popular person in the neighbourhood . But to my description : my home was a cottage ; the valley in which it lay was divided by a mountain stream , which came from the forest Apennine , a sparkling and wild stranger , and softened into quiet and calm as it proceeded through its green margin in the vale . And that margin , how dazzlingly green it was ! At the distance of about a mile from my hut , the stream was broken into a slight waterfall , whose sound was heard distinct and deep in that still place ; and often I paused , from my midnight thoughts , to listen to its enchanted and wild melody . The fall was unseen by the ordinary wanderer , for , there , the stream passed through a thick copse ; and even when you pierced the grove , and gained the water-side , dark trees hung over the turbulent wave , and the silver spray was thrown upward through the leaves , and fell in diamonds upon the deep green sod . This was a most favoured haunt with me : the sun glancing through the idle leaves ; the music of the water ; the solemn absence of all other sounds , except the songs of birds , to which the ear grew accustomed , and , at last , in the abstraction of thought , scarcely distinguished from the silence ; the fragrant herbs ; and the unnumbered and nameless flowers which formed my couch , -- were all calculated to make me pursue uninterruptedly the thread of contemplation which I had , in the less voluptuous and harsher solitude of the closet , first woven from the web of austerest thought . I say pursue , for it was too luxurious and sensual a retirement for the conception of a rigid and severe train of reflection ; at least it would have been so to me .