Little Rivers [1]
apology has been offered by those ambitious persons who have fallen
in love with the sea. But, after all, that is a formless and
disquieting passion. It lacks solid comfort and mutual confidence.
The sea is too big for loving, and too uncertain. It will not fit
into our thoughts. It has no personality because it has so many.
It is a salt abstraction. You might as well think of loving a
glittering generality like "the American woman." One would be more
to the purpose.
Mountains are more satisfying because they are more individual. It
is possible to feel a very strong attachment for a certain range
whose outline has grown familiar to our eyes, or a clear peak that
has looked down, day after day, upon our joys and sorrows,
moderating our passions with its calm aspect. We come back from
our travels, and the sight of such a well-known mountain is like
meeting an old friend unchanged. But it is a one-sided affection.
The mountain is voiceless and imperturbable; and its very loftiness
and serenity sometimes make us the more lonely.
Trees seem to come closer to our life. They are often rooted in
our richest feelings, and our sweetest memories, like birds, build
nests in their branches. I remember, the last time that I saw
James Russell Lowell, (only a few weeks before his musical voice
was hushed,) he walked out with me into the quiet garden at Elmwood
to say good-bye. There was a great horse-chestnut tree beside the
house, towering above the gable, and covered with blossoms from
base to summit,--a pyramid of green supporting a thousand smaller
pyramids of white. The poet looked up at it with his gray, pain-
furrowed face, and laid his trembling hand upon the trunk. "I
planted the nut," said he, "from which this tree grew. And my
father was with me and showed me how to plant it."
Yes, there is a good deal to be said in behalf of tree-worship; and
when I recline with my friend Tityrus beneath the shade of his
favourite oak, I consent in his devotions. But when I invite him
with me to share my orisons, or wander alone to indulge the luxury
of grateful, unlaborious thought, my feet turn not to a tree, but
to the bank of a river, for there the musings of solitude find a
friendly accompaniment, and human intercourse is purified and
sweetened by the flowing, murmuring water. It is by a river that I
would choose to make love, and to revive old friendships, and to
play with the children, and to confess my faults, and to escape
from vain, selfish desires, and to cleanse my mind from all the
false and foolish things that mar the joy and peace of living.
Like David's hart, I pant for the water-brooks. There is wisdom in
the advice of Seneca, who says, "Where a spring rises, or a river
flows, there should we build altars and offer sacrifices."
The personality of a river is not to be found in its water, nor in
its bed, nor in its shore. Either of these elements, by itself,
would be nothing. Confine the fluid contents of the noblest stream
in a walled channel of stone, and it ceases to be a stream; it
becomes what Charles Lamb calls "a mockery of a river--a liquid
artifice--a wretched conduit." But take away the water from the
most beautiful river-banks, and what is left? An ugly road with
none to travel it; a long, ghastly scar on the bosom of the earth.
The life of a river, like that of a human being, consists in the
union of soul and body, the water and the banks. They belong
together. They act and react upon each other. The stream moulds
and makes the shore; hollowing out a bay here, and building a long
point there; alluring the little bushes close to its side, and
bending the tall slim trees over its current; sweeping a rocky
ledge clean of everything but moss, and sending a still lagoon full
of white arrow-heads and rosy knot-weed far back into the meadow.
The shore guides and controls the stream; now detaining and