I drank of this spring, and found myself wonderfully refreshed.

A kind of love to the cheerful little stream arose in my heart.

It was born in a desert; but it seemed to say to itself, "I will flow, and sing, and lave my banks, till I make my desert a paradise." I thought I could not do better than follow it, and see what it made of it.

So down with the stream I went, over rocky lands, burning with sunbeams.

But the rivulet flowed not far, before a few blades of grass appeared on its banks, and then, here and there, a stunted bush.
Sometimes it disappeared altogether under ground; and after I had wandered some distance, as near as I could guess, in the direction it seemed to take, I would suddenly hear it again, singing, sometimes far away to my right or left, amongst new rocks, over which it made new cataracts of watery melodies.