But as he sat beside God's loveliest idea, exposed to the
mightiest enchantment of life, little imagining it an essential heavenly
decree for the redemption of the souls of men, he saw, for broken
moments, and with half-dazed glimpses, into the eternal, and spoke as
one in a gracious dream:
"If one might sit forever thus!" he said, almost in a whisper,--"forever
and ever, needing nothing, desiring nothing! lost in perfect, in
absolute bliss! so peacefully glad that you do not want to know what
other joy lies behind! so content, that, if you were told there was no
other bliss, you would but say, 'I am the more glad; I want no other! I
refuse all else! let the universe hear, and trouble me with none! This
and nought else ought ever to be--on and on! to the far-away end. The
very soul of me is music, and needs not the softest sound of earth to
keep it alive.'"
At that moment came a sigh of the night-wind, and bore to their ears the
whispered moan of the stream away in the hollow, as it broke its being
into voice over the pebbly troubles of its course. It came with a swell,
and a faint sigh through the pines, and they woke and answered it with
yet more ethereal voice.
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