At the Water’s Edge 
were struggling for utterance. There is no 
passion to be found in nature like the anger of 
the stormy sea, when wildly dark, beneath a 
blackening sky, it hurls its furious billows in 
sublime assault against some towering and in- 
vulnerable cliff, that stands upon the world’s 
foundations in supreme repose, and spurns the 
raging flood in silent and contemptuous disdain 
—the most stupendous picture of nature’s an- 
tagonistic forces, the finest symbol earth can 
yield of the universal warfare between light and 
darkness, good and evil. But anger is not its 
ruling passion. Beneath a radiant sky, before 
a freshening breeze, its rejoicing waves sweep 
onward in a buoyant humor, dashing them- 
selves against the rocks only in harmonious 
encounter, with the reaction of a sparkling re- 
bound, quickened into an exalted liveliness of 
hue and motion, as if land and sea were two 
great kindred souls experiencing the stimulus 
of eager, exhilarating converse. 
What endless graduation in the pulsations of 
the deep, from the terrible sublimity of storm 
to the majestic peace, approaching nearest 
slumber, that broods at other times upon the 
main; in all its wide diversities of character 
presenting aspects multitudinous as are the 
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