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THE DREAMS THAT CAME |
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water answered the moon with flashes of its own— white flashes breaking everywhere from its rock-encountered flow ! And a great jubilant song arose from its bosom, the song of new-born liberty. I stood a moment gazing, and my heart also began to exult: my life was not all a failure ! I had helped to set this river free !—My dead were not lost! I had but to go after and find them ! I would follow and follow until I came whither they had gone ! Our meeting might be thousands of years away, but at last—at last I should hold them ! Wherefore else did the floods clap their hands ?
I hurried down the hill: my pilgrimage was begun ! In what direction to turn my steps I knew not, but I must go and go till I found my living dead ! A torrent ran swift and wide at the foot of the range : I rushed in; it laid no hold upon me; I waded through it. The next I sprang across; the third I swam ; the next I waded again.
I stopped to gaze on the wondrous loveliness of the ceaseless flash and flow, and to hearken to the multitudinous broken music. Every now and then some incipient air would seem about to draw itself clear of the dulcet confusion, only to merge again in the consorted roar. At moments the world of waters would invade as if to overwhelm me—not with the force of its seaward rush, or the shouting of its liberated throng, but with the greatness of the silence wandering into sound.
As I stood lost in delight, a hand was laid on my shoulder. I turned, and saw a man in the prime of strength, beautiful as if fresh from the heart of the glad creator, young like him who cannot grow old. I looked: it was Adam. He stood large and grand, clothed in a white robe, with the moon in his hair.
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