Oh, that limpid September sea! Calm and guileless as a sleeping child,
it lay outstretched beneath the pearly sky--now green, the delicate and
precious green of malachite, the little red sails upon it like
flickering tongues of fire, now intensely--almost one might call it
heraldically--blue, and veined with gold like lapis-lazuli, with
pictured sails upon it as in a church procession. At other times, it
took on a dull metallic lustre as polished silver mingled with the
greenish-yellow tint of ripe lemons, indefinable, strange and delicate,
and the sails would come crowding like the wings of the cherubim in the
background of a Giotto picture.
Forgotten sensations of early youth came back to him, that impression of
freshness which the salt breath of the sea infuses into young blood, the
indescribable effects produced by the changing lights and shadows, the
tints, the smell of the salt water upon the unsullied soul. The sea was
not only a delight to his eyes, but also an inexhaustible wellspring of
peace, a magic fount of youth wherein his body regained health, and his
spirit nobility. The ocean had for him the mysterious attraction of a
mother country, and he abandoned himself to it with filial confidence,
as a feeble child might sink into the arms of an omnipotent mother. And
he received comfort and encouragement; for who ever confided his pain,
his yearnings or his dreams to her in vain?
For him the sea had ever a profound word, some sudden revelation, some
unlocked for enlightenment, some unexpected significance.
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