X.
AT the beginning, while gazing south, east, west, to the rim of
the world, all laughed, shouted, interchanged the quick delight
of new impressions: every face was radiant. … Now all look
serious;—none speak. The first physical joy of finding oneself
on this point in violet air, exalted above the hills, soon yields
to other emotions inspired by the mighty vision and the colossal
peace of the heights. Dominating all, I think, is the
consciousness of the awful antiquity of what one is looking
upon,—such a sensation, perhaps, as of old found utterance in
that tremendous question of the Book of Job:—"Wast thou brought
forth before the hills?" … And the blue multitude of the peaks,
the perpetual congregation of the mornes, seem to chorus in the
vast resplendence,—telling of Nature's eternal youth, and the
passionless permanence of that about us and beyond us and
beneath,—until something like the fulness of a great grief
begins to weigh at the heart. … For all this astonishment of
beauty, all this majesty of light and form and color, will surely
endure,—marvellous as now,—after we shall have lain down to
sleep where no dreams come, and may never arise from the dust of
our rest to look upon it.
