"The seer at last constrained by force, rolled on
him eyes fierce-sparkling with grey light, and gnashing his teeth
in wrath, opened his lips to speak the oracles of fate."
Once more the transient must be allowed to fall away, and the
central intuition be recognised and grasped. The sense of a
secret to be gained, of a mystery to be revealed--of a broken
reflection of some fuller world--has been nurtured by the
reflections of form and light and colour in nature's mirror. The
older, simpler impressions made by such phenomena persist
with deeper meanings. The "natural" emotion they stimulate
affords the kind of sustenance on which Nature Mysticism can
thrive. Longfellow, in his poem, "The Bridge," strikes the
deeper note. The rushing water draws the poet's reflections
away from a world of imperfection to the sphere of the ideal.
"And for ever and for ever,
As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
As long as life has woes;
The moon and its broken reflection
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven
And its wavering image here."
And thus the mountain tarn, the placid lake, the quiet river
reaches, the hidden pool, and the ocean at rest, have each and all
their soul language, and can speak to man as a sharer of
soul-nature. Well might the Hebrew psalmist give us one of the
marks of the Divine Shepherd--"He leadeth me beside the still
waters.
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