Mistress Cuckoo 
more unmelodious and rasping than the chick- 
adee’s note; yet it stirs the heart as quickly as 
a thrush or finch. Something worth more than 
music has made it musical. Nature’s audible 
effects, thus slightly tinged or deeply saturated 
with sentiment, are so innumerable, by day and 
night, in every season of the year, that we may 
well ask whether the attentive listener will not, 
in the aggregate, derive more of music’s very 
essence from Nature than from Art. With an 
ambition for nothing short of omniscience, yet, 
in thoughts upon these things, I would far rather 
be the poet than the philosopher, since beauty 
is more than truth to my soul—nay, rather, we 
should say, beauty zs very truth, fashioned in 
fairest form, instinct with spirit’s force, robed 
in soft color, and flushed with keen vitality. For 
surely it cannot be called vague transcendental- 
ism nor odious pantheism to say that the Divine 
Soul lives in the insect, flower, and crystal, in 
wave and cloud, in storm and sunshine, as He 
does not in algebraic equation or in geometric 
theorern. 
) 
The universal familiarity with the cuckoo’s 
notes finds its reason, not in their greater beauty, 
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