Thus the journey
begins; and with ever-increasing strength the stream carves a way
through the dear brown peat, wears a fresh wrinkle on the patient
stones, and patters merrily under a clapper bridge which spanned
its breadth when the mistletoe reigned and Bottor, the grim rock
idol, exacted the toll of human life that made him great. On and
on goes the stream, for it may not stay; leaving of its freshness
with the great osmunda that stretches eager roots towards the
running water; flowing awhile with a brother stream, to part again
east and west as each takes up his separate burden of service--my
friend to cherish the lower meadows in their flowery joyance--and
so by the great sea-gate back to sky and earth again.
The river of God is full of water. The streets of the City are
pure gold. Verily, here also having nothing we possess all things.
The air was keen and still as I walked back in the early evening,
and a daffodil light was in the sky as if Heaven mirrored back
earth's radiance. Near the station some children flitted past,
like little white miller moths homing through the dusk. As I
climbed the hill the moon rode high in a golden field--it was
daffodils to the last.
CHAPTER V
The seagulls from the upper reaches pass down the river in sober
steady flight seeking the open sea. I shall miss the swoop and
circle of silver wings in the sunlight and the plaintive call which
sounds so strangely away from rock and shore, but it is good to
know that they have gone from mudbank and murky town back to the
free airs of their inheritance, to the shadow of sun-swept cliffs
and the curling crest of the wind-beaten waves, to brood again over
the great ocean of a world's tears.
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