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You'll just hate 'em as your folks have always hated 'em; an' you'll vow from now on that if Heaven ever gives you the chance you'll get even with 'em." The tense voice ceased. Through the stillness the whispers of the great elm on the lawn could be heard blending with the song of a vesper sparrow.
He ends the story because he hears "the little vesper bell" which bids him to prayer. When you read his "Hymn Before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamounix" you find yourself reading the Nineteenth Psalm. He calls on the motionless torrents and the silent cataracts and the great Mont Blanc itself to praise God. Coleridge never had seen Chamounix, nor Mont Blanc, nor a glacier, but he knew his Bible.
He had been wholly lost in silent admiring wonder of the dauntless little Kingbird. A Vesper Sparrow ran along the road before them, flitting a few feet ahead each time they overtook it and showing the white outer tail-feathers as it flew. "A little Graybird," remarked Sam. "No, that isn't a Graybird; that's a Vesper Sparrow," exclaimed Yan, in surprise, for he knew he was right.
This sense of utter isolation depressed him greatly. He was alone; from this world with its vesper lights and hues, and fires, and stars, and human sounds, he stood aloof and apart, as though shut close within a dark room.
On the topmost twig of the tallest tree a mocking-bird poised himself, and sympathetically poured out his vesper canticle, a song of condolence to the prostrate figure who, just then, would have preferred the echo of a man's deep voice to all Pergolese's strains.
During the day I observed several pine finches, a dark brown or brindlish bird, allied to the common yellowbird, which it much resembles in its manner and habits. They lingered familiarly about the house, sometimes alighting in a small tree within a few feet of it. In one of the stumpy fields I saw an old favorite in the grass finch or vesper swallow.
But in the ancient basilica of Saint Peter there was peace; there the white-haired priests solemnly officiated in the morning and at noon, and toward evening more than a hundred rich voices of boys and men sang the vesper psalms in the Gregorian tones; there slim youths in violet and white swung silver censers before the high altar, and the incense floated in rich clouds upon the sunbeams that fell slanting to the ancient floor; there, as in many a minster and cloister of the world, the Church was still herself, as she was, and is, and always will be; there words were spoken and solemn prayers intoned which had been familiar to the lips of the Apostles, which are familiar to our lips and ears to-day, and of which we are sure that lips unborn will repeat them to centuries of generations.
She greeted the stranger with a Puritan undemonstrativeness, and as if not exactly aware of his presence. "I should like to have gone to vespers if I had known," said Mr. Lyon, after an embarrassing pause. "Yes?" asked the girl, still abstractedly. "The world seems in a vesper mood," she added, looking out the west windows at the red sky and the evening star.
The memories of the last notes of the vesper bell which I had heard pealing over our dear hills, and of the last sunset upon our peaceful plains, pricked me like pointed darts. According to every rule of medicine I ought to have died; and it is perhaps a pity that I did not. Two friends whom I brought with me from Brittany, in the following year gave this clear proof of fidelity.
At this vesper meeting He gave to priests the power to offer the sacrifice of the Mass, to change bread and wine into His body and blood. In the evening our Lord's body was taken down from the cross. At the approach of evening Christ appeared to His disciples at Emmaus and revealed to them His divinity. At Vespers we thank God for the Eucharist.
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