"Will the time ever come," I thought, "when man shall
be able to store up even this force for his own ends? Who can tell?" The
solitary form of a man stood at some distance gazing, as I was gazing, out
on the ocean. I walked towards him, thinking with myself who it could be
that loved Nature so well that he did not shrink from her even in her most
uncompanionable moods. I suspected, and soon found I was right; it was
Percivale.
"What a clashing of water-drops!" I said, thinking of a line somewhere in
Coleridge's Remorse. They are but water-drops, after all, that make this
great noise upon the rocks; only there is a great many of them."
"Yes," said Percivale. "But look out yonder. You see a single sail,
close-reefed--that is all I can see--away in the mist there? As soon as you
think of the human struggle with the elements, as soon as you know that
hearts are in the midst of it, it is a clashing of water-drops no more. It
is an awful power, with which the will and all that it rules have to fight
for the mastery, or at least for freedom.
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