"If wish were mine some type of thee to view Thee, and not thee thyself, I would not do Like Grecian artists, give the human cheeks Channels for tears; no Naiad shouldst thou be,-- Have neither limbs, feet, feathers, joints, nor hairs; It seems the Eternal Soul is clothed in thee With purer robes than those of flesh and blood, And hath bestowed on thee a safer good; Unwearied joy, and life without its care." Again, what natural feeling declares itself in the delightful Spanish poem translated by Longfellow: "Laugh of the mountain! lyre of bird and tree! Pomp of the meadow! mirror of the morn! The soul of April, unto whom are born The rose and jessamine, leaps wild in thee!" How deep, once more, the note sounded by Brown in his lines on "The Well": "I am a spring-- Why square me with a kerb? . . . O cruel force, That gives me not a chance To fill my natural course; With mathematic rod Economising God; Calling me to pre-ordered circumstance Nor suffering me to dance Over the pleasant gravel, With music solacing my travel-- With music, and the baby buds that toss In light, with roots and sippets of the moss!" The longing for freedom to expand the dimly realised and mystic elements in his soul-life was stirred within him by the joyous bubbling of a spring. To kerb the artless, natural flow is to "economise God"--so the limitations and restrictions of the life that now is artificialise and deaden the divine within us. There is more than metaphor in such a comparison; there is the linkage of the immanent idea. His emotion culminates in the concluding lines: "One faith remains-- That through what ducts soe'er, What metamorphic strains, What chymic filt'rings, I shall pass To where, O God, Thou lov'st to mass Thy rains upon the crags, and dim the sphere. So, when night's heart with keenest silence thrills, Take me, and weep me on the desolate hills." There are indeed but few with any feeling for nature who have not been moved to special trains of thought, the outcome of characteristic moods, by the babblings and wayward wanderings of brooks and rivulets. The appeal, therefore, is to a wide experience. Can we be satisfied to join with Tylor in his sense of disillusionment? Or shall we strive to get yet nearer to the heart of things? If we cling to the deeper view, to us, as to the men of old, the running stream will sing of the soul in nature. CHAPTER XX RIVERS AND LIFE A river is but a larger brook. And yet by virtue of its volume, it manifests features which are peculiarly its own, and exerts influences which have not alone affected individual moods and imaginings, but often profoundly modified and moulded the destinies of peoples and civilisations. The two outstanding instances are the Nile and the Ganges.