NATURE AND HER HARMONIES. 5 



was handed down from a thousand Sinais, and strewed in 

 green and golden shadowy lines through all the plains. It 

 yet lives, and is, from under his own hand, above, around, 

 beneath thee ; and by it too ye may understand that holy mys- 

 tery how God is Love, and Love is God-like. 



These are not all the mysteries symbolized by Birds. 



How carne old Genius to give wings to its embodied 

 visions of the Spirit-Land ? but that it had looked upon some 

 plumed and beamy singers of the clouds, 



" With wings that might have had a soul within thorn, 

 They bore their owners by such sweet enchantment." 



Can you not know that never again to it, from out the 

 umbrage, could " ministers of grace" or glad ideals come 

 other than "by such sweet enchantment?" 



" The wings ! the wings !" Ah ! ever they must grow 

 upon The Beautiful, ere it can rise to Heaven ! 



To us on wings The Beautiful must come down from 

 thence ! It is with longing for these wings, this " Immortality" 

 doth struggle in us ! To the music of their mellow whirr 

 we feel exultmgs, and our bare arms beat vainly, reaching 

 toward the stars. Ah ! " whence this longing ?" we poor 

 unfledged earth-prone things ! 



Is it not a memory dimly recalled of some mysterious whi- 

 lome when our free vans made sudden melody, cleaving past 

 the worlds, through space, where now our thoughts go 

 haunting ghost-like? or is it that "the shadow of the 

 coming time" falls over us in wings ? 



"The wings I 1 ' no fair Ideal can come to us but with 

 their light aerial movement no dream of Love but with the 

 low murmur of their softest beat no gleam of Joy but as 

 they glance the sunlight off in gambolling no Hope but as 

 they climb the dark craigs of the piled-up storm and reach 

 the serene sky above no Ambition 



" But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on!" 



