Man Tames Nature Only That He May At Last Make Her
More Free Even Than He Found Her, Though He May Never Yet Have
Succeeded.
With this propitious breeze, and the help of our oars, we soon
reached the Falls of Amoskeag, and the mouth of the Piscataquoag,
and recognized, as we swept rapidly by, many a fair bank and
islet on which our eyes had rested in the upward passage.
Our
boat was like that which Chaucer describes in his Dream, in which
the knight took his departure from the island,
"To journey for his marriage,
And return with such an host,
That wedded might be least and most. . . . .
Which barge was as a man's thought,
After his pleasure to him brought,
The queene herself accustomed aye
In the same barge to play,
It needed neither mast ne rother,
I have not heard of such another,
No master for the governance,
Hie sayled by thought and pleasaunce,
Without labor east and west,
All was one, calme or tempest."
So we sailed this afternoon, thinking of the saying of
Pythagoras, though we had no peculiar right to remember it, "It
is beautiful when prosperity is present with intellect, and when
sailing as it were with a prosperous wind, actions are performed
looking to virtue; just as a pilot looks to the motions of the
stars." All the world reposes in beauty to him who preserves
equipoise in his life, and moves serenely on his path without
secret violence; as he who sails down a stream, he has only to
steer, keeping his bark in the middle, and carry it round the
falls.
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