Death or distance soon consumes them: wind

What most I may eye after, be in at the end

I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.

Hopkins “The Lantern Out of Doors”

I watched the lantern pace along the greensward way - bobbing up and down, held by some hand I did not know and had never grasped. It streeled slowly, like the easy meanders of a stream in an alder-holt, passing behind a hedge. Here and there the dimmed light shone through the leaves and stock of the tall, green hedge, and then it broke forth into the sweep of bracken-fern that rolled down from my feet to the distant river. It shone bright for a single moment, and I saw Light, as if it were a star thrown earthward - as if, for a moment, I sensed a reflection of the One who first wrought Light. But then the light faded again, and stumbled - a clefted rill cut across the meadows, and the light-bearer fell. The lantern tumbled down and went out. It was only a reflection, and it stopped. Besides, the lantern-glass was smudged, and drear. I don’t suppose its bearer could clean it - it was badly dirtied, as all our lights become. And now the light was extinguished, gone. I stood upon the ridge, looking down - looking down upon this man and his withered light. I looked down upon Mankind, Mankind and his withered lights, drafted and executed with his greatest care; but still found to flame and flicker out, or flare violently and consume, yet go out.

Behind me the trees whispered, their leaves clasping together in some voice, and I listened for a moment. I looked down again on the man below me. He had relit his light; there had been a burst of flame, and that pale, smudged light grew up again and cast a dim glimmer on the bracken and grass. I watched him go on, but suddenly he stopped, and turned towards me - towards the ridge I was standing on. I don’t suppose he saw me, for I was standing among a copse of trees along the crest, and the moon was shrouded by cloud. But he turned my way nonetheless. He trudged slowly up the slope, which was wet with a recent rain, and the grasses were slick and treacherous. I suppose he had found his path blocked; the rills beyond were perhaps flooded, or the ground turned too wet. The river was nigh his path, and it had risen in spots two days before, leaving the low-lying lands wet and boggy. Yet he laboured upwards, and I watched him go, the light bobbing, his form barely evident. I saw it, and I did not see it. I saw man.

Man, struggling forward, up from the mires of his first path. He inclines upward, or perhaps downward, but the labour is too hard, and he cannot gain the ridge-crest. He sets his face grimly, or he gives in to despair and accepts his lot. On he struggles, carrying his dirtied light as a guide.

The man with the lantern climbed further along the winding slope. He was some distance below me, and further yet beneath the stars. I still looked down at him, and between us steep slopes and stony crags intertwined. I don’t suppose I thought to call out to him - it would be sheer impropriety for two strangers to frighten each other on a dark night such as that. For surely he must think he was alone, alone in his journey, and it would be impolite for me to jar him into a strange and confusing revelation. So I watched him, and watched the stars; I must confess, I thought little of him, save to think of the humor of his lantern bobbing, bobbing so dimly.

I sat down on an olden, weathered boulder that perched out above the valley below, and gazed across it to the distant hills. The lantern continued, but then he stopped, faced by crags he could not climb. I saw the lantern stop, and it sat still. As he sat down, the lantern went out. It flickered one last time and passed.

But even as its light died, the moon came out, and a glorious white light shone forth over the rock, the river valley, and the man. I saw him more clearly now, but I doubt he saw me. Instead, his gaze seemed to turn to a tree above him, which was lit with that lovely light the moon gives forth on such nights. The tree was perched in a little gap, and the path to it was free of stones and steeps. The man dropped his lantern to his side, its own light gone, the pure sheen of the moon filling it instead. He trudged up the gentle slope towards the tree, walking lightly. The path was now clear and safe, though it cut narrowly in a cleft through the stones. He came to the tree, which stood on the crest of the ridge. Overhead, the stars and moon shone, and a breath of breeze shook the leaves of the tree, rippling the man’s clothes. He turned and looked out over the valley, then dropped down behind the tree in the gap and onto the path which I suppose led to his home. There was more of a spring in his step, I think.