Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/75

Rh “I used to love, at Trenton, to go to that place where the water seemed collecting its energies so quietly, gliding on so stealthily, you could scarcely believe it was firmly resolved to display such vehemence in one more moment of time and rood of space.

“I love the force of water much, but its subtlety is magic in its effects. Perfectly do I comprehend what I have heard of gazers on a river-side being tempted to drown themselves by sight of the water, and all those tales of mermaid enchantments which embody this feeling. This morning I felt a sort of timidity about standing quite at that point to which the undulatory motions (of all earthly things most lovely) seemed to tend. I felt that, unless I had an arm of flesh and blood to cling to, I should be too much seduced from humanity.

“These undulations I have seen compared in poesy to the heaving of the bosom, and they do create a similar feeling, — at least, I, when I see this in the human frame, am tempted to draw near with a vague, instinctive anticipation (as far as ever I could analyze the emotion) that a heart will leap forth, and I be able to take it in my hand.

“I dislike the comparison, as I always do illustrating so-called inanimate nature by man or any shape of animal life. Byron’s comparisons of a mountain splendor to the ‘light of a dark eye in woman,’ the cataract to a tiger’s leap, etc., displease my taste. Why, again? I am not sure whether it is because man seems more than nature, or whether less, and that the whole is injured in illustrating it by a part, or whether it is that one hates to be forced back upon personalities when one is getting calmed by meditations on the elemental manifestations. Yet, though these comparisons displease my taste, they