That poet knew but little of either streams or hearts who wrote -- "Nor ever had the breeze of passion The lonely fisher, the lover of streams and living fountains, knows that when the stream stops it is turbid. The deep pools and still flats are always brown -- always dark -- the mud lies in them, the trout sleep in them. When they are clearest they are still tinged brown or gray with some foreign matter held in solution -- the brown of selfish sensuality or the gray of morbid melancholy. But when they are free again! when they hurry over rock and weed and sparkling pebble-shallow, then they are clear! Then all the foreign matter, the defilement which earth pours into them, falls to the ground, and into them the trout work up for life and health and food; and through their swift yet yielding eddies -- moulding themselves to every accident, yet separate and undefiled -- shine up the delicate beauties of the subaqueous world, the Spirit-glories which we can only see in this life through the medium of another human soul, but which we can never see unless that soul is stirred by circumstance into passion and motion and action strong and swift. Only the streams which have undergone long and severe struggles from their very fountain-head have clear pools. MS. 1843. |
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