The red of the Basin sunset, that would be by and by unsurpassed, glowed in her cheeks.
As for me—forever a Basin—I dashed my hand across my eyes. A Voice above land and sea rolled toward me in that moment, through her voice, in gathering waves that covered all the pitiful accident and despair of a maimed, halting, birth-marked universe:
"And the crooked places shall be made straight; and the rough places plain. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart."
XXVI
JUST THE SCHOOL-HOUSE
Waves, slowly, softly breaking, not on the Basin shore: though ever, in remotest lands, we dream of that.
We hold it mystic more and more, for love of it!—ay, we have it mingled in our thoughts with that one safe and sweet possession, the Land unspoken, the Basin whose colors dawn at eventide!
And we never count: "Such an one was lost," and, "Such an one was living, when we knew." For there, there are none lost. They live again!
I suggested once that we should build a house fitting those grand sea-cliffs, sometimes to occupy it.