When Vincent walked along the dike at nightfall, he encountered another flock of sheep with a shepherd on the muddy dirt road. He walked with them briefly to see how the animals disappeared into the sheepfold:
"And then, when dusk fell imagine the silence, the peace…
When Vincent walked along the dike at nightfall, he encountered another flock of sheep with a shepherd on the muddy dirt road. He walked with them briefly to see how the animals disappeared into the sheepfold:
"And then, when dusk fell imagine the silence, the peace of that moment! Imagine, right then, an avenue of tall poplars with the autumn leaves, imagine a broad muddy road, all black mud with the endless heath on the right, the endless heath on the left, a few black, triangular silhouettes of sod huts, with the red glow of the fire shining through the tiny windows, with a few pools of dirty, yellowish water that reflect the sky, where bogwood trunks lie rotting. Imagine this muddy mess in the evening twilight with a whitish sky above, so everything black on white. And in this muddy mess a rough figure the shepherd a throng of oval masses, half wool, half mud, that bump into one another, jostle one another the flock. You see it coming you stand in the midst of it you turn round and follow them."
"With difficulty and reluctantly they progress along the muddy road. Still, there’s the farm in the distance a few mossy roofs and piles of straw and peat between the poplars. Again the sheepfold is like a triangle in silhouette. Dark. The door stands wide open like the entrance to a dark cave. The light from the sky behind shines through the cracks in the boards at the back. The whole caravan of masses of wool and mud disappears into this cave the shepherd and a woman with a lantern shut the doors behind them. That return of the flock in the dusk was the finale of the symphony that I heard yesterday."
