MUSIC OF NATURE. 



227 



Insects may be the last in the scale of animated beings capa- 

 ble of making music to their Maker's praise, and the strains of 

 some of them may be the lowest in the scale of sounds percep- 

 tible to us. But if, with all true poets, we can hear sounds of 

 worship in the murmuring sea and running waters, and in every 

 tree played on by the breath of heaven if we have an ear for 

 these, and the like harmonies, for "the harp of universal na- 

 ture, which is touched by the rays of the sun, and whose song is 

 the morning, the evening, and the seasons/' if for these, the 

 voices of things inanimate, we are gifted with a perceptive ear 

 and receptive heart, can we refuse to reckon as music the softest 

 vibration of the tiniest insect's wing, because it is an audible 

 token of happy existence, and, as such, a hymn of gratitude to 

 the Giver of the boon of life ? 



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