glittering light, clustered
like the diamonds of a brooch, separate, yet linked, and tremulously
bright. This, also, did I note; but below my feet the river flowed
darker and more deeply, darkness and depth broken only by the glancing
fins of little fishes, that slanted downward, catching a gleam as they
went. No other light pierced the sullen, apprehensive flood that rolled
past in tranquil gloom, leaden from the skies above, and without ripple
or fall to break its glassy quiet. Beside the wall grew a witch-hazel;
in my vague grasp at outside objects I saw it, full of wrinkled and
weird bloom, as if the golden fleece had strayed thereby, and caught
upon the ungainly twigs of the scragged bush, and left glittering curled
threads in flecked bunches scattered on every branch; the strange
spell-sweet odor of the flowers struck me before I saw them, and the
whole expression of their growth affected me with helpless admiration,
so brave as it was!--defying all Autumn to daunt the immortal Spring
ever surviving in its soul,--here, on October's edge, putting out its
freshness and perfume, as if seasons were an accident, and circumstance
a chimera,--as if will, good-will, will to be of strength and cheer,
were potent enough to laugh at Nature, and trust the God-given
consciousness within, whatever adverse fate ruled and triumphed without.
Not that all these ideas came to me then, else perhaps I had been spared
that morning's experience; but they entered my brain as lightning is
sometimes said to enter a tree and stamp some image from without
upon its heart, thereafter to be revealed by the hewing axe and the
persistent saw. No! I sat by the river and looked down into its dark
serenity, and again the horror of the past day swept over me with fresh
force. Could I live? The unswerving river lay before me; in its bed
nothing stirred; neither pang nor passion in those chill depths could
utter a cry; there she could not come; there was rest. I did not yield;
oh, no, I did not yield! I resisted,--passively. I laid hold upon the
eternal fact that there was a God; the blind and blank universe spun
about me; its pillars of support wavered like waterspouts; all that I
had ever believed or loved whirled up and down in one howling chaos,
and circled through all space in clouds of dust and floating atoms; but
through all I knew there was a God,--feel it I could not, neither did I
see nor did one of Nature's tongues spell me the lesson,--I onl