How they and
all grow into me, day after day--everything in keeping--the
wild, just palpable, perfume, and the dapple of leaf-shadows,
and all the natural-medicinal, elemental-moral influences of the
spot."
If these two passages be taken together, there will be few
elements of mystic influence left unnoted. And how deeply
significant the fact that each author instinctively and
spontaneously associates with the limpid flow of the water the
ideas of life and health! Were the old mythologists so very far
from the truth? Is it so very hard to understand why wells and
springs have had their thousands of years of trust and affection?
Was it mere caprice that led our Teutonic fathers to place under
the roots of the world-tree the three wells of force and life and
inspiration?
A fine example of a more definitely mystic use of the ideas
prompted by the sight of springing water, is found in Dante's
"Earthly Paradise"--an example the more interesting because of
its retention of what may be called the "nature-elements" in the
experience.
"The water, thou behold'st, springs not from vein,
Restored by vapour, that the cold converts;
As stream that intermittently repairs
And spends his pulse of life; but issues forth
From fountain, solid, undecaying, sure:
And, by the will omnific, full supply
Feeds whatsoe'er on either side it pours;
On this, devolved with power to take away
Remembrance of offence; on that, to bring
Remembrance back of every good deed done.
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