MINSTREL WEATHER 



guarded from common sight, they were 

 afflicted with our own vexations, our loves 

 and hates. Nymph and naiad, faun and 

 satyr, were always plotting and gossiping, 

 and little better were the subsequent 

 gnomes and fairies more personal and 

 cantankerous than persons; resorting upon 

 occasion to divorce; tangling skeins, and 

 teasing kind old horses. These were not 

 the earth deities. 



Earth deities wear no human shape. 

 No one has looked upon the sky fire's face, 

 the pinions of the gale. Enormously they 

 have wrought, without regard for man and 

 sharing no passion, yet yielding some- 

 times their limitless force to the mind 

 that soared with them. In the age of 

 winged serpents, in the days when Assyria 

 was mistress, they were the same, holding 

 an equal welcome for the boy and sage, 

 unchanging and unresting, free from mortal 

 attributes of good and evil, mighty and 

 healing as no half-human god could be. 

 Therefore that lavish scattering of beauty 

 without regard to man. Therefore the 

 wonder given to all who dare call to them 

 when far from other men. 



The disrepute of the pathetic fallacy has 



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