Cape Cod and the Old colony . ntinents unfolding, often madeup of scraps, pirated by other rivers, mutilatedby engineers, fouled with mans refuse, perse-cuting one with mosquitoes, tearing the fleshwith briers, and bruising the feet with might say that God too is great, andinscrutable, for one would not like to call Himuncertain. Would the distinguished clergy-man think God too great to be loved? Thesoul if capacious enough may love what isgreat. And it hinges on what one means byloving. The Pilgrim lived, and his offspringlive, by the sea. If they love it, does it meanto be drawn t
Cape Cod and the Old colony . ntinents unfolding, often madeup of scraps, pirated by other rivers, mutilatedby engineers, fouled with mans refuse, perse-cuting one with mosquitoes, tearing the fleshwith briers, and bruising the feet with might say that God too is great, andinscrutable, for one would not like to call Himuncertain. Would the distinguished clergy-man think God too great to be loved? Thesoul if capacious enough may love what isgreat. And it hinges on what one means byloving. The Pilgrim lived, and his offspringlive, by the sea. If they love it, does it meanto be drawn toward it, inspired by it, to beawed by its mystery, thrilled by its vastness,to have imagination roused by its depths, itsspaces, its plenitude of life, mother of all life?Does it signify reveling in its infinitude ofchanging colors, to join with every breakingroller on its shore in our short sojourn by it—the waves that have not rested in eons, yettidal to the predictable moment of rise andfall and least of all uncertain ?. The Environment of the Sea 269 We watch it destroying lands, rebuildingcontinents, engulfing the works of man, andman himself—terrible, is it, rather than allur-ing—well, on the whole reckoning, the ocean,remorseless as it seems to be, has been friendlyto humankind. It depends on the size of yotirloving, whether you want the distant view,and not a foreground, a trout instead of a cod,a swordfish rather than a leviathan. So leaving all to love their river, their moun-tain, their lake, their forest, or their ocean, asthey will, the Cape man seems to line up withthat elder New England prophet, who, broadbeyond his time, wrote, It is of the greatestconsequence, too, that such a being as Godshould have images prepared to express him,and set him before the mind of he has provided in the heavens and thesea, which are the two great images of his vast-ness and his power. Dark-heaving, boundless, endless, and gaze—and am changed at the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectpilgrimsnewplymouthc
