You avow high purposes, and clench them with
round utterance; and your voice, like a sparrow's, is caught up in the
roar of the fall, and thrown at you from the cliffs, and dies away in
the solemn thunders of nature. Great thoughts of life come over you--of
its work and destiny--of its affections and duties, and roll down
swift--like the river--into the deep whirl of doubt and danger. Other
thoughts, grander and stronger, like the continuing rush of waters, come
over you, and knit your purposes together with their weight, and crush
you to exultant tears, and then leap, shattered and broken, from the
very edge of your intent into mists of fear!
The moon comes out, and gleaming through the clouds, braids its light
fantastic bow upon the waters. You feel calmer as the night deepens. The
darkness softens you; it hangs--like the pall that shrouds your mother's
corpse--low and heavily to your heart. It helps your inward grief with
some outward show. It makes the earth a mourner; it makes the flashing
water-drops so many attendant mourners. It makes the Great Fall itself a
mourner, and its roar a requiem!
The pleasure of travel is cut short. To one person of the little company
of fellow-voyagers you bid adieu with regret; pride, love, and hope
point toward her, while all the gentler affections stray back to the
broken home.
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