44 UNDER THE TREES. 



voice will ever be strong enough to match its awful 

 monody. 



It is because the sea preserves its secret that it 

 sways our imagination so royally, and holds us by 

 an influence which never loosens its grasp. Again 

 and again we return to it, spent and worn, and it 

 refills the cup of vitality ; there is life enough and 

 to spare in its invisible and inexhaustible chambers 

 to reclothe the continents with verdure, and recreate 

 the shattered strength of man. Facing its unbroken 

 solitudes the limitations of habit and thought be 

 come less obvious ; we escape the monotony of a 

 routine, which blurs the senses and makes the spirit 

 less sensitive to the universe about it. Life becomes 

 free and plastic once more ; a deep consciousness 

 of its inexhaustibleness comes over us and recreates 

 hope, vigor, and imagination. Under the little 

 bridges of habit and theory, which we have made 

 for ourselves, how vast and fathomless the sea of 

 being is ! What undiscovered forces are there ; 

 what unknown secrets of power ; what unsearchable 

 possibilities of development and change ! How 

 fresh and new becomes that which we thought out 

 worn with use and touched with decay ! How 

 boundless and untraveled that which we thought 

 explored and sounded to its remotest bound ! 



At night, when the vision of the waters grows in 

 distinct, what voices it has for our solitude ! The 

 &quot; eternal note of sadness,&quot; to which all ages and 

 races have listened, and the faint echoes of which 



