midnight
how the glorious nightingale notes of his unworded poesy came dropping through the air like pearls , rolling off the magic wand of the Violin Wizard , whose delicate dark face , now slightly flushed with the glow of inspiration , seemed to reflect by its very expression the various phases of the mighty composer 's thought ! Alwyn half closed his eyes and listened entranced , allowing his soul to drift like an oarless boat on the sweeping waves of the music 's will . He was under the supreme sway of two Emperors of Art , -- Beethoven and Sarasate , -- and he was content to follow such leaders through whatever sweet tangles and tall growths of melody they might devise for his wandering . At one mad passage of dancing semitones he started , -- it was as though a sudden wind , dreaming an enraged dream , had leaped up to shake tall trees to and fro , -- and the Pass of Dariel , with its frozen mountain-peaks , its tottering pines , and howling hurricanes , loomed back upon his imagination as he had seen it first on the night he had arrived at the Monastery -- but soon these wild notes sank and slept again in the dulcet harmony of an Adagio softer than a lover 's song at midnight . Many strange suggestions began to glimmer ghost-like through this same Adagio , -- the fair , dead face of Niphrata flitted past him , as a wandering moonbeam flits athwart a cloud , -- then came flashing reflections of light and color , -- the bewildering dazzlement of Lysia 's beauty shone before the eyes of his memory with a blinding lustre as of flame , . . the phantasmagoria of the city of Al-Kyris seemed to float in the air like a faintly discovered mirage ascending from the sea , -- again he saw its picturesque streets , its domes and bell-towers , its courts and gardens .