AN AUTUMN REVERIE.
The dreamy hush of a warm autumn noon, broken only by the sweet murmurous sound of the falling water as it leaps from its shining pebbled shallows into the rock-encompassed linn. What could give more peace and quiet delight than this? Let us sit for one brief half-hour under the fresh green hazels and drink in the varied charms of sight and sound. We are ‘far from the madding crowd,’ and have left all care leagues behind. Let us rest on this mossy bank in the delight of dreamy ease, with the delicious fragrance of the wild thyme wafted to us on the wing of the gentle breeze. We are here seeking rest, and that sweet dreamy pleasure which a mind can get when it is in the delicious equipoise that repose and the beauties of nature can bring. The stream’s melodious wanderings in this sunny hour are of more importance to us than all the anxious worldly sounds of a city’s din; and the glowing petals of that wild red rose wooing its own shadow in the stream are better far to our eyes in our present mood than any of the exquisite studies of Salvator Rosa or Claude Lorraine. What wealth of light and shadow is given to us in the far-stretching umbrageous vista! Never had cathedral aisles more perfect and graceful roof, or more radiant lights from painted windows; and is not the music here of stream and hazel-haunting warblers sweeter and more heart-inspiring than the organ’s swell? The interlacing branches through which the filtered sunlight comes, rendered in flashes of green and gold, are better than the Gothic roof of cathedral aisle or dome; and the eerie cry of the curlew commends itself more to our soul—in the midst of heather and mountains as we are—than would the richest chorus of human song.
This is not the time or place for preaching or moralising; but is it out of place for us to consider in this delectable hour the exquisite delight that we poor unworthy souls get by an intense reverence for the harmonies that nature has for us! This glen, these sheltering hazels, this melodious mountain rill, are all our own. For the time we are the possessors of these green grottos and flashing waves and bird-notes, which exceed in excellence anything that kings’ palaces can give.
Every rustle of the breeze turns over for us a fresh leaf of Nature’s wondrous, inexhaustible book; and the flash of emerald from the kingfisher’s breast, or the glorious note from the blackbird’s mellow throat, gives us sudden and bright revelations of sweetness and joy, that we can call up with a lingering delight and tenderness of feeling when we are far away. Up the bed of the glistening stream there, at a perfect artistic distance, are the silent shadowy rocks, overlooking and guarding the deep and sullen linn, and working out Nature’s will with a quiet watchfulness, and with a changeless solemnity and patience. And see! right above the sombre linn there are rainbow-fringed cloudlets of spray, brought down by the laughing stream, that comes with soothing unobtrusive din over its rocky ledges.
That sound of falling waters is like a lullaby, and contains in it more of the hush of rest than anything else in nature.
What a history this mountain stream must have had in all the seasons and the centuries! and how many hearts has it not gladdened in its lights and shadows and silvery song! Its waters have chiselled these overhanging rocks into a stern beauty, and those boulders have been moulded by them into a soft symmetry and grace. Its changes are like the mutations that belong to human life, now the roar of the torrent, and now the deep calm of the clear crystalline pool. The sportive trout has long leaped from the quiet breast of its limpid shallows, and its woodlands have resounded to the song of the mavis and blackbird. The swallows that have passed their winter amid the slopes of Carmel, the groves of Sharon, or the gardens of Damascus, may be those that are now skimming over the sunlit pools there in the hush of this noontide hour. But their aërial and graceful flight is as pleasing here to us poor rest-seeking pilgrims as ever it was to the eye of vizier or khan; and the cottage eaves in this glen echo the twitter to human ears as deliciously as do the frescoed piazzas of Athens, Venice, or Rome.
What a temple is here for the worship, with reverent spirit, with silent tongue, of the One who made and loveth all! Ferns and flowers, birds and wandering bees, sunshine and singing waters! What lessons of tenderness, natural piety, and reverence may we not get here! Yon shaft of sunlight, filtered through the hazels, striking the stream, and lighting its still bosom with emerald and gold, brings before us some of the finest lines of Lycidas, that peerless poem of the lights and shadows and music of Arcadia.
All around us, the brightness that fills the spirit, the deep shadows beneath scaur and tree, the sound of bleating upon the hills, and the melody of waters dashing past boulders or rolling with an onward, free, and joyous music over pebbled beds, lead us alike to reverence and gratitude. Nature is a gentle, sweet, and loving teacher. We shall never touch the hem of her garment in vain. She giveth us grace and sympathy and love.
But we must leave our bosky dell in the midst of this Highland glen. We can carry away, however, memories from it that shall be always our own. The indescribable yet fascinating music of the waters falling into the linn yonder is ours for ever now; so is the rock there, cushioned with the tender green moss, that moss that comes in silence, and lays its gentle covering mantle over the mounds of our beloved dead. There, too, a few yards from us, is a still pool which might remain for ever in one’s memory. How the shadows are reflected from the flowers! Here we have the fable of Narcissus told us again in this Highland dell. But that flower near us droops—it is almost touching its shadow: they have been wooing each other long. By-and-by they will clasp each other, and wooed and wooer will float away. But it is autumn, and flowers must wither and die. When our autumn departure cometh, may our passing away be as calm!