Evidently the extension of the original
thought to cover its seeming opposite has a basis in the nature
of things. Its most elaborate presentment is in the ancient myths
of the nether regions and of the seven streams that watered
them--from Styx that with nine-fold weary wanderings bounded
Tartarus, to where
"Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the river of oblivion runs."
Nor has Christianity disdained to adapt the idea. Bunyan, for
example, brings his two pilgrims within sight of the heavenly
City. "Now I saw further that between them and the gate was a
river; but there was no bridge, and the river was very deep. At
the sight therefore of this river, the pilgrims were much stunned;
but the men that went with them said, you must go through or
you cannot come at the gate."
What suggestive power has the river to induce this more sombre
train of reflection? Surely that embodied in the old proverb--
Follow the river and you will come to the sea. Clough, in his
little poem, "The Stream of Life," concludes with a note of
sadness, almost of despair:
"O end to which all currents tend,
Inevitable sea,
To which we flow, what do we know,
What shall we guess of thee?
A roar we hear upon thy shore,
As we our course fulfil;
Scarce we divine a sun will shine
And be above us still."
The rushing rapid and the plunging waterfall have an influence
all their own in rousing intuitions of more than human life and
power.
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