inexpressible desire of physical life, of soul-life, equal to
and beyond the highest imagining of my heart.

These memories cannot be placed in exact chronological order.
There was a time when a weary restlessness came upon me, perhaps from
too-long-continued labour. It was like a drought--a moral drought--as if I
had been absent for many years from the sources of life and hope. The inner
nature was faint, all was dry and tasteless; I was weary for the pure, fresh
springs of thought. Some instinctive feeling uncontrollable drove me to the
sea; I was so under its influence that I could not arrange the journey so as
to get the longest day. I merely started, and of course had to wait and
endure much inconvenience. To get to the sea at some quiet spot was my one
thought; to do so I had to travel farther, and from want of prearrangement
it was between two and three in the afternoon before I reached the end of my
journey. Even then, being too much preoccupied to inquire the way, I missed
the road and had to walk a long distance before coming to the shore. But I
found the sea at last; I walked beside it in a trance away from the houses
out into the wheat. he ripe corn stood up to the beach, the waves on one
side of the shingle, and the yellow wheat on the other.

There, alone, I went down to the sea. I stood where the foam
came to my feet, and looked out over the sunlit waters. The
great earth bearing the richness of the harvest, and its hills
golden with corn, was at my back; its strength and firmness
under me. The great sun shone above, the wide sea was before
me, the wind came sweet and strong from the waves. The life of
the earth and the sea, the glow of the sun filled me; I touched
the surge with my hand, I lifted my face to the sun, I opened my
lips to the wind. I prayed aloud in the roar of the waves--my
soul was strong as the sea and prayed with the sea's might. Give me fulness