The Wind in the Willows Moment of Clarity

In Chapter 7 The Piper and the Gates of Dawn, Ratty and Mole are paddling

 up stream in search of the otter pup gone missing.  The moon, a 

dim light in the night slowly fades away leaving the two rescuers to navigate the river in darkness, until the moment happens. 

"Then a change began slowly to declare itself. The horizon became clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and somehow with a different look; the mystery began to drop away from them...'So beautiful and strange and new! Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever.'"

A moment of clarity, a second in time when everything is perfect and in unison with each other.  The planet is a peace for that one moment.  Ratty has that moment and recognizes it in these lines.  He captures it for but a second and it is gone again, never to return to that state of pure utopia.  This moment--in my version of the novel--comes directly in the middle of the novel, could this be a coincidence?--or is Grahame teaching us a lesson about moments of nirvana? Why the middle of the story and not the end to complete the tale with clarity?  Are stories supposed to have epiphanies in them but not conclude them? 

"Sudden and magnificent, the sun's broad golden disc showed itself over the horizon facing them...when they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished, and the air was full of carol of birds that hailed the dawn..." The whole chapter the moment in which they feel afraid and brave.  Ratty and Mole experience together.  It is like in Eliot's Burnt Norton the vision of sunlight and water and birds singing.  It ties together to form the perfect moment of simplicity and wholeness.  All is felt and all is understood at that single moment.  The pipers are piping at the sight of dawn, singing the praises of life. 

By concluding a story with an epiphanic moment can there be anything learned by that epiphany? It would seem not, because you must experience life after the epiphany to truly understand it, so the moment has to come before the end in order to complete the story.  It would be terrible story to have the moment of clarity at the very end with no explanation or follow up emotions/reactions to the character having that epiphany.  If it did end in an epiphany it would be too much like the way real life could end up.  Where everything you've ever wanted to know you learn on your death bed, how convenient.  I guess that is still a good way to go out--being the smartest person in the world. 

Eureka! I'm learning.

~L.