all is a vague sense of irresistible power. How touching, how
profoundly true, the story in "Eckehard" of the little lad and his
sister who wandered off until they came to the Rheinfal. There,
gazing at the full sweep of that magnificent fall the little fellow
throws into the swirling emerald of the waters at his feet a
golden goblet, as an offering to the God whom he felt to be so
near. Unconsciously he was a natural mystic. Movement, sound,
and colour combined to produce in him, what it should produce
in all, a sense of immanent Reality, self-moving, self-sustained.
And yet even a waterfall may suggest far other thoughts--a
downward course from the freshness of the uplands of youth to
the broadening stream of manhood declining towards old age
and the final plunge. The fall itself would thus convey vague
feelings of loss of power and vigour--a loss that gathers speed
as it approaches the end. So in Campbell's well-known "River
of Life":

"When joys have lost their bloom and breath
And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of Death,
Feel we its course more rapid? "

If so sad a train of reflections can be stimulated by the rapids
and the falls of rivers, how much more so by their ending in the
ocean! Old age and death can hardly fail to assert themselves in
the minds of those who sail down some noble river and
meditate:

"As the banks fade dimmer away,
As the stars come out, and the night wind