s no wrinkle" on my forehead.
Listen to me! All tongues are spoken on my shores, but I have only one
language: the winds taught me their vowels the crags and the sands
schooled me in my rough or smooth consonants. Few words are mine but I
have whispered them and sung them and shouted them to men of all tribes
from the time when the first wild wanderer strayed into my awful
presence. Have you a grief that gnaws at your heart-strings? Come with
it to my shore, as of old the priest of far-darting Apollo carried his
rage and anguish to the margin of the loud-roaring sea. There, if
anywhere you will forget your private and short-lived woe, for my voice
speaks to the infinite and the eternal in your consciousness.

"To him who loves the pages of human history, who listens to the voices
of the world about him, who frequents the market and the thoroughfare,
who lives in the study of time and its accidents rather than in the
deeper emotions, in abstract speculation and spiritual contemplation, the
RIVER addresses itself as his natural companion.

"Come live with me. I am active, cheerful, communicative, a natural
talker and story-teller. I am not noisy, like the ocean, except
occasionally when I am rudely interrupted, or when I stumble and get a
fall. When I am silent you can still have pleasure in watching my
changing features. My idlest babble, when I am toying with the trifles
that fall in my way, if not very full of meaning, is at least musical. I
am not a dangerous friend, like the ocean; no highway is absolutely safe,
but my nature is harmless, and the storms that strew the beaches with
wrecks cast no ruins upon my flowery borders. Abide with me, and you
shall not die of thirst, like the forlorn wretches left to the mercies of
the pitiless salt waves. Trust yourself to me, and I will carry you far
on your journey, if we are travelling to the same point of the compass.
If I sometimes run riot and overflow your meadows, I leave fertility
behind me when I withdraw to my natural channel. Walk by my side toward
the place of my destination. I will keep pace with you, and you shall
feel my presence with you as that of a self-conscious being like
yourself. You will find it hard to be miserable in my company; I drain
you of ill-conditioned thoughts as I carry away the refuse of your
dwelling and its grounds."

But to him whom the ocean chills and crushes with its sullen
indifference, and the river disturbs with its never-pausing