the wood dove would have built her nest in the trees beside it; and
singing, singing, always singing, it would have made its way at last to the
great sea, whose far-off call all waters hear.

"'But it hesitated.--It might have been, that, had but some hand been there
to move but one stone from its path, it would have forced its way past
rocks and ridges, and found its way to the great sea--it might have been!
But no hand was there. The streamlet gathered itself together, and (it
might be, that it was even in its haste to rush onwards to the sea!)--it
made one leap into the abyss.

"'The rocks closed over it. Nine hundred fathoms deep, in a still, dark
pool it lay. The green lichen hung from the rocks. No sunlight came
there, and the stars could not look down at night. The pool lay still and
silent. Then, because it was alive and could not rest, it gathered its
strength together, through fallen earth and broken debris it oozed its way
silently on; and it crept out in a deep valley; the mountains closed it
around. And the streamlet laughed to itself, 'Ha, ha! I shall make a
great lake here; a sea!' And it oozed, and it oozed, and it filled half
the plain. But no lake came--only a great marsh--because there was no way
outwards, and the water rotted. The grass died out along its edges; and
the trees dropped their leaves and rotted in the water; and the wood dove
who had built her nest there flew up to the mountains, because her young
ones died. And the toads sat on the stones and dropped their spittle in
the water; and the reeds were yellow that grew along the edge. And at
night, a heavy, white fog gathered over the water, so that the stars could
not see through it; and by day a fine white mist hung over it, and the
sunbeams could not play on it. And no man knew that once the marsh had
leapt forth clear and blue from under a hood of snow on the mountain's top:
aye, and that the turning of one stone might have caused that it had run on