But a broad shimmer came from far over the heath, mingled with a ghostly murmuring music, as if the moon were raining a light that plashed as it fell.

I ran stumbling across the moor, and found a lovely lake, margined with reeds and rushes: the moon behind the cloud was gazing upon the monsters' den, full of clearest, brightest water, and very still .-- But the musical murmur went on, filling the quiet air, and drawing me after it.
I walked round the border of the little mere, and climbed the range of hills.

What a sight rose to my eyes! The whole expanse where, with hot, aching feet, I had crossed and recrossed the deep-scored channels and ravines of the dry river-bed, was alive with streams, with torrents, with still pools--"a river deep and wide"! How the moon flashed on the water! how the water answered the moon with flashes of its own--white flashes breaking everywhere from its rock-encountered flow! And a great jubilant song arose from its bosom, the song of new-born liberty.

I stood a moment gazing, and my heart also began to exult: my life was not all a failure! I had helped to set this river free!--My dead were not lost! I had but to go after and find them! I would follow and follow until I came whither they had gone! Our meeting might be thousands of years away, but at last--AT LAST I should hold them! Wherefore else did the floods clap their hands?
I hurried down the hill: my pilgrimage was begun! In what direction to turn my steps I knew not, but I must go and go till I found my living dead! A torrent ran swift and wide at the foot of the range: I rushed in, it laid no hold upon me; I waded through it.

The next I sprang across; the third I swam; the next I waded again.
I stopped to gaze on the wondrous loveliness of the ceaseless flash and flow, and to hearken to the multitudinous broken music.