Oh, the joyful place
of streams! River and leat and back-water here ran clear among
willow-clad islands, all fringed deep with meadow-sweet and comfrey
and butterbur and melilot. The sun shone overhead among big, white,
racing clouds; the fish poised in mysterious pools among trailing
water-weeds; and there was soon no room in my heart for anything
but the joy of earth and the beauty of it. What did the weary days
before and behind matter? What did casuistry and determinism and
fate and the purpose of life concern us then, my friend and me? As
little as they concerned the gnats that danced so busily in the
golden light, at the corner where the alder dipped her red rootlets
to drink the brimming stream.
There we chartered a boat, and all that hot forenoon rowed lazily
on, the oars grunting and dripping, the rudder clicking softly
through avenues of reeds and water-plants, from reach to reach,
from pool to pool. Here we had a glimpse of the wide-watered valley
rich in grass, here of silent woods, up-piled in the distance,
over which quivered the hot summer air.
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