BLOOD-ROOT. 13 



similitudes mere fanciful semblances, or are they indications that 

 our clearer consciousness is but the sign of a universal life, which, 

 after its kind, is conscious in every thing ? Are the mental and 

 material worlds after all but separate rooms in the one house of 

 Life, divided by a thin, flexible partition, so that a moving breath 

 in the one palpitates through the other in correlations of conscious 

 thought? Who shall say? Still it remains true that we like 

 to see our own thoughts and feelings mirrored in the larger 

 doings and happenings of the Kosmos. We love that poet best 

 who best humanizes nature, and finds a present counterpart of 

 himself in the dumb life around him ; who, without seeming to 

 exceed probability, or distort natural functions, discovers emotions 

 in things which we have known in ourselves. We love his mes- 

 sage most who puts his ear to the natural universe as to 



" The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell," 

 and then tells us of 



"Authentic tidings of invisible things, 

 The central peace subsisting at the heart 

 Of endless agitation." 



which it murmurs to his listening soul. 



So I am sure quaint George Herbert speaks to wide acceptance 

 when he finds in the coming forth of the flowers in early spring 

 from their abode "quite underground," where they have gone "to 

 see their mother-root ; " and 



" Dead to the world, keep house unknown 

 All the hard weather," 



a deep illuminating correspondence with that most precious 



