12 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
where this wide river shall disappear like a dew- 
drop in its flood, ah, river, whatsoever name 
thou wearest and wheresoever thy fountains are, 
thou hast a charmed life. By thy side nearsighted 
eyes grow farsighted and uneventful souls catch 
glimpses of the eventful and undying. 
So a river—any river—clear as sunshine, or 
brown as the Missouri, or red as Red River, or 
green as the Yellowstone, or wild like Green 
River by the Pacific Sea, or somnolent as the 
Colorado, which is so fast asleep (as it neighbors 
on its last march to the toiling sea), so fast 
asleep that it mirrors not the stars and has not 
any flash of wave—a river, let me stand upon 
its bank and lean ear toward its plaintive whisper 
and fasten eyes on its sure-going flood and dream 
out and on with those waters which shall know 
no return and shall challenge no regret. What 
cared I for a crossing or who crossed? What 
was footpath across a wandering river? And 
the request, with oneself, was in a manner just. 
The river would seem to be the chief person- 
ality, whatever landscape it wore its highway 
across. You can scarcely in moods of extrav- 
agant dreaming express a formulary of sublimity 
more engaging and enthralling than a river. 
Sometimes it holds me even as an ocean cannot. 
Truly, not at all times. In the long reach of 
years and life the ocean has easy transcendency. 
It doeth with us as it will. It has not a com- 
petitor save the sky. Its engulfing is as the 
