Friday, July 29, 2005

A Thousand, Thousand Points of Light

In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it. The horse seemed to like it too; he gave the sort of whinney a horse would give if, after years of being a cab-horse, it found itself back in the old field where it had played as a foal, and saw someone whom it remembered and loved coming across the field to bring it a lump of sugar.

"Gawd!" said the Cabby. "Ain't it lovely?"

Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn't come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out - single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.

"Glory be!" said the Cabby, "I'd ha' been a better man all my life if I'd known there were things like this."
~C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew, "The Founding of Narnia", (1955)

4 Comment(s):

At Fri Jul 29, 06:21:00 AM EST, Blogger Roger Parkinson said...

Whenever I read this (and the same applies to lots of the rest of the Narnian stories) I realise all over again how profoundly my views of heaven, holiness and our proper response to it have been shaped by Lewis' writings. I find myself saying 'of course, it would have to be something like that. How else could it be?'

It is all so vivid too. I sometimes feel like I was there.

 
At Fri Jul 29, 08:55:00 PM EST, Blogger Arevanye said...

And I just love the name of "First Voice" for the Creator. How right it seems that a world would be sung into existance!

 
At Sat Jul 30, 10:53:00 AM EST, Blogger kapihan sa kanto said...

I appreciate this blog! Please keep it up, I'll definitely drop by often. :)

 
At Sat Jul 30, 10:35:00 PM EST, Blogger Arevanye said...

And another thing I wanted to add:

Job 38:4-7

4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. 5 Who determined the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who stretched the line upon it? 6 Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner-stone thereof, 7 When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

:)

 

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