Led by the pipes of Pan, I again descended. Once more that sound,
almost overtaken, interwove itself with the water’s cry, and I merged
body and soul with the stream and the music. The margin of another
cataract crashed upon me. In the recklessness of pleasure, one arm
swung into the main current. Then the water threatened my life. To save
myself, I was kneeling on one knee. I reached out blindly and found
a hold at last in a slippery cleft, and later, it seemed an age, with
the other hand I was able to reach one leaf. The leaf did not break. At
last its bough was in my grasp and I crawled frightened into the sun. I
sat long on a warm patch of grass.
But the cliffs and the water were not really my enemies. They sent a
wind to give me delight. Never was the taste of the air so sweet as
then. The touch of it was on my lips like fruit. There was a flattery
in the tree-limbs bending near my shoulders. They said, “There is
brotherhood in your footfall on our roots and the touch of your hand on
our boughs.”
The spray of the splashed foam was wine. I was the unchallenged
possessor of all of nature my body and soul could lay hold upon. It
was the fair season between spring and summer when no one came to
this place. Like Selkirk, I was monarch of all I surveyed. In my
folly I seemed to feel strange powers creeping into my veins from the
sod. I forgot my near-disaster. I said in my heart, “O Mother Earth
majestical, the touch of your creatures has comforted me, and I feel
the strength of the soil creeping up into my dust. From this patch of
soft grass, power and courage come up into me from your bosom, from the
foundation of your continents. I feel within me the soul of iron from
your iron mines, and the soul of lava from your deepest fires.”