"To the soul then, weak with the long flesh fight and filled with
a sluggish languor by those wearisome disappointments
which arise from the constant contemplation of men's weaknesses,
and from the constant back-thrusting of one's consciousness of impotence
to strengthen them -- thou, with thy nimble fancy, canst imagine
what ethereal and yet indestructible essences of new dignity, of new strength,
of new patience, of new serenity, of new hope, new faith, and new love,
do continually flash out of the gorges, the mountains, and the streams,
into the heart, and charge it, as the lightnings charge the earth,
with subtle and heavenly fires.
"A bewildering sorcery seems to spread itself over even those things which
are commonplace. The songs and cries of birds acquire a strange sound to me:
I cannot understand the little spontaneous tongues, the quivering throats,
the open beaks, the small bright eyes that gleam with unknown emotion,
the nimble capricious heads that twist this way and that
with such bizarre unreasonableness.
"Nor do I fathom this long unceasing monotone of the little shallow river
that sings yonder over the rocks in its bosom as a mother crooning
over her children; it is but one word the stream utters:
but as when we speak a well-known word over and over again until it comes
to have a frightful mystery in it, so this familiar stream-sound fills me
with indescribable wonder.
"Nor do I comprehend the eloquence of the mountains which comes
in a strange `patois' of two tongues; for the mountains speak at once
the languages of repose and of convulsion, two languages which
have naught in common.
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