The whole world danced. The Universe was rhythmical as well as metrical.
For this amazing splendor showed itself in a flash-like revelation to the freed portion of his consciousness, and he knew it irresistibly because he himself shared it. Here was an infinite joy, naked and unashamed, born of the mighty Mother's heart and life, a joy which, in its feebler, lesser manifestations, trickles down into human conditions, though still spontaneously even then, so pure its primal urgency, as--dancing.
The entire experience, the entire revelation, he thinks, can have occupied but a fraction of a second, but it seemed to smite the whole of his being at once with the conviction of a supreme authority. And close behind it came, too, that other sister expression of a spontaneous and natural expression, equally rhythmical--the impulse to sing. He could have sung aloud. For this puissant and mysterious rhythm to which all moved was greater than any little measure of their own. Surging through them, it came from outside and beyond, infinitely greater than themselves, springing from something of which they were, nevertheless, a living portion. From the body of the Earth it came direct--it was in fact a manifestation of her own vibrating life. The currents of the Earth pulsed through them.
"And then," he says, "I caught this flaming thought of wonder, though so much of it faded instantly upon my full awakening that I can only give you the merest suggestion of what it was."
He stood up beside me as he said it, spreading his arms, as so often when he was excited, to the sky. I caught the glow of his eyes, and in his voice was passion. He spoke unquestionably of something he had intimately known, not as men speak of even the vividest dreams, but of realities that have burned the heart and left their trails of glory.
"Science has guessed some inkling of the truth," he cried, "when it declares that the ultimate molecules of matter are in constant vibratory movement one about another, even upon the point of a needle. But I saw--_knew_, rather, as if I had always known it, sweet as summer rain, and close in me as love--that the whole Earth with all her myriad expressions of life moved to this primal rhythm as of some divine dancing."