CHAPTER XXIX

STILL WATERS Tiefer Stille herrscht im Wasser, Ohno Regung ruht das Meer, Und bekümmert sieht der Schiffer Glatte Flache rings umher. Keine Luft von keiner Seite! Todesstille fürchterlich! In der ungeheuern Weite Reget keine Welle sich. Thus does Goethe, in this little poem of two verses, with a masterly ease that carries conviction, suggest to us the subtle power of a calm at sea. The mountain tarn, alone with the sky, has a charm that is all its own. The shining levels of the lake, in the lower hollows of the hills; the quiet reaches of a river where the stream seems to pause and gather strength for its onward course; even the still pool that hides in the meadows among the alders and willows: each of these has its own peculiar charm--a charm which is hard to analyse but almost universal in its range of appeal. But potent above them all is this Meeresstille, this calm at sea--when, as Bowring finely translates Goethe's second verse: "Not a zephyr is in motion! Silence fearful as the grave! In the mighty waste of ocean Sunk to rest is every wave." Turner, in his "Liber Studiorum," attempted to depict a calm at sea. The picture is not one of his most successful efforts: but so great an artist could not fail to seize on the essential features of his subject. The sun is heralding his advent by flinging upward athwart the mists and cloudlets a stream of diffused light which fills the scene with a soft pervading glow. The surface of the water is glassy, not much more substantial than the haze which floats above it. But deep as is the calm, old ocean cannot quite forget his innate restlessness; he gently urges onward a succession of slow risings and fallings, with broad ripples to mark their boundaries, and to tell of spent billows and far-heaving tides. The movement of the waters is, as it were, subconsciously felt rather than perceived; or, if perceived, it is lost in the pervading sense of placid spaciousness. The boats and their occupants, so far from disturbing the sense of calm, are made to enhance it. And the unruffled surface of the water is rendered palpably impalpable by the magic of reflections. Morris has given us a word-picture of similar import. "Oh, look! the sea is fallen asleep, The sail hangs idle evermore; Yet refluent from the outer deep The low wave sobs upon the shore. Silent the dark cave ebbs and fills Silent the broad weeds wave and sway; Yet yonder fairy fringe of spray Is born of surges vast as hills." Jefferies gives us a companion picture of a calm sea in full sunshine. "Immediately in front dropped the deep descent of the bowl-like hollow which received and brought up to me the faint sound of the summer waves. Yonder lay the immense plain of the sea, the palest green under the continued sunshine, as though the heat had evaporated the colour from it; there was no distinct horizon, a heat-mist inclosed it, and looked farther away than the horizon would have done." In each of these seascapes, the same essential features find a place--the calm expanse without any defined boundary--the silence--the play of delicate colour--the suggestions of rest after toil, of peace after storm--and chiefest of all, the strangely moving contrast of power and gentleness, the suggestion of hidden strength. Doubtless we have in these the secret of much of the mystic influence of the mighty ocean in its serenest moods; doubtless we have in these the manifestations of immanent ideas which have subtle power to subdue the human soul to pensive thought and unwonted restfulness. Not unlike them in general character and function, save for the element of vastness, are the influences immanent in the calm of evening or night landscapes. Goethe has an exquisite fragment which is a fitting pendent to his Meeresstille: Ueber alien Gipfeln Ist Ruh, In allen Wipfeln Spürest du Kaum einen Hauch; Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde. Warte nur, balde Ruhest du auch. Thus translated by Bowring: "Hush'd on the hill Is the breeze; Scarce by the zephyr The trees Softly are pressed; The woodbird's asleep on the bough. Wait, then, and thou Soon wilt find rest." Who does not sympathise, in the measure possible to him, with Wordsworth's interpretations and premonitions? "It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven is on the sea." And a less well-known passage: "Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal eve, But long as godlike wish, or hope divine, Informs my spirit, ne'er can I believe That this magnificence is wholly thine! --From worlds not quickened by the sun A portion of the gift is won." Yes, the nature-mystic might well be content to rest his case on the influences of a calm at sea or a peaceful sunset. These will maintain their power as long as there are human eyes to see and human emotions to be stirred. Not the least of the charms of still water is one which was mentioned in the description of Turner's picture--the charm of reflections. And here we discover a fresh vein of Nature Mysticism. As Hawthorne says, there is "no fountain so small but that heaven may be reflected in its bosom." Nay, as painters well know, the very puddles in a country lane, or in a London street, may be transfigured by thus reflecting lights and colours, and become indispensable factors in a composition. The phenomena of perfect reflection are often of exceptional beauty. How perfect the effect of Wordsworth's lines: "The swan on sweet St. Mary's Lake Floats double, swan and shadow." And, more generally, of another lake: "The mere Seems firm as solid crystal, breathless, clear, And motionless; and, to the gazer's eye, Deeper than ocean, in the immensity Of its vague mountains and unreal sky." So on the broad, slowly moving waters of peaty rivers, the reflections of sky and landscape seem almost to exceed the originals in lustre and delicate detail. Some of the Tasmanian rivers possess this reflecting quality in an exceptional degree. Nor are the phenomena of broken reflections inferior in beauty and suggestion. Instead of motionless repetition of given detail, there are flickering, sinuous, mazy windings and twistings of colour, light, and shadow--a capricious hurrying from surface to surface. Knowledge of optics cannot rob them of their marvel and their glamour. And if such be their effect on the modern mind, what must it have been on that of primitive man! No laws of reflection came within his ken. He looked down on the still surface of tarn, or pool, or fountain, and saw, sinking downwards, another world, another sky, losing themselves in mystery. Mere wonder would yield place to meditation. Ah! what secrets must lurk in those crystal depths, if only one could surprise them--wrest them from the beings who inhabit that nether realm! Possibly even the world-riddle might so be solved! And thus it came to pass that most water spirits were deemed to be dowered with prophetic gifts. The Teutonic water-gods were "wise"--they could foretell the future. In classical mythology, Proteus, the old man of the sea, presents himself as a well-developed embodiment of this belief. Old Homer knew how to use the material thus provided, and Virgil, in his choicest manner, follows the lead so given. In the fourth book of the Georgics, Aristaeus, who had lost his bees, in despair appealed to his mother, the river-nymph, Cyrene. She bids him consult Proteus, the old prophet of the sea. He follows her counsel, captures Proteus, and compels him to tell the cause of his trouble. "The seer at last constrained by force, rolled on him eyes fierce-sparkling with grey light, and gnashing his teeth in wrath, opened his lips to speak the oracles of fate." Once more the transient must be allowed to fall away, and the central intuition be recognised and grasped. The sense of a secret to be gained, of a mystery to be revealed--of a broken reflection of some fuller world--has been nurtured by the reflections of form and light and colour in nature's mirror. The older, simpler impressions made by such phenomena persist with deeper meanings. The "natural" emotion they stimulate affords the kind of sustenance on which Nature Mysticism can thrive. Longfellow, in his poem, "The Bridge," strikes the deeper note. The rushing water draws the poet's reflections away from a world of imperfection to the sphere of the ideal. "And for ever and for ever, As long as the river flows, As long as the heart has passions, As long as life has woes; The moon and its broken reflection And its shadows shall appear, As the symbol of love in heaven And its wavering image here." And thus the mountain tarn, the placid lake, the quiet river reaches, the hidden pool, and the ocean at rest, have each and all their soul language, and can speak to man as a sharer of soul-nature. Well might the Hebrew psalmist give us one of the marks of the Divine Shepherd--"He leadeth me beside the still waters."