I thought the voice of that great ocean of restlessness sounding along
the shore might quiet my unrest, but the beat of the waves, the growing
gloom of that still evening hour, oppressed me with a feeling unutterably
sad. I could not bear it, at last. It seemed as though another deep was
rising and breaking in my heart, the flood of proud, half-stifled passion
waking in one awful moment to overwhelm me. No light upon that sea--but
hope wronged, the mockery of death for yearning love, the unguided clash
of drifting human lives!
An agony of blindness swam before my eyes. I felt my weak hands clutching
at the grass, and gasped, as though it had been indeed in the blindness
and pain of physical death, the prayer wrung from my selfish need. But
the answer was of infinite love and compassion. It came to me then--not
as some grave revelation of truth to the "enlightened seeker," but like
the kiss or peace to a tired child, a door mysteriously opened to the
self-bound captive, to one ignorant, the light shining along a plain,
straight way. And the doubt and terror and anguish went out of the world;
even the sorrowless farewell of frozen lips changed to tender
benediction.
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