EARTH AND SKY. 29 



invisible moisture to a fellowship with the birds that 

 have passed on swift wing above their currents ; 

 the great outlying seas, that sound the notes of 

 their vast and passionate unrest upon the shores of 

 every continent, are continually drawn upward to 

 swell the invisible upper ocean which, out of its 

 mighty life, feeds every green and fruitful thing 

 upon the bosom of the earth. This movement of 

 the oceans upon the continents through the illimit 

 able channels of the sky is, in some ways, the most 

 mysterious and the most sublime of those miracles 

 which each day testify to the presence and majesty 

 of that Spirit behind Nature of whom the greatest 

 of modern poets thought when he wrote : 



Thus at the roaring loom of time I ply 



And weave for God the robe thou seest Him by. 



The vast inland grain fields, that stretch in un 

 broken procession from horizon to horizon, have 

 the seas at their roots not less truly than the fertile 

 soil out of which they spring ; the verdure upon 

 the mountain ranges, that keep unbroken solitude 

 at the heart of the continents, speaks forever of the 

 distant oceans which nourish it, and spread it like 

 a vesture over the barren heights. No traveler, 

 deep in the recesses of the remotest inland, ever 

 passes beyond the voice of that encircling ocean 

 which never died out of the ears of the ancient 

 Ulysses in the first Odyssey of wandering. 



Two months ago the apple trees were white with 



