152 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIEDS. 



" Kouse ! and the weak and wanton Oupid 

 Shall from your neck unloose its amorous folds, 

 And like a dew-drop from the lion's mane, 

 Be shook to air !" 



Even the striped Tiger, in its Hyrcanian lair, stretched, 

 gorged with blood, and harmless as a sleeping child, might 

 teach a Eobespierre to tire of slaughter and sheath for once 

 his gore-stained claws. 



"We are forever drawn away from onr Earth-Mother by 

 that counter force in us. May it not be that all Evil is the 

 result of this unceasing antagonism of the Organic and Spir- 

 itual lives that in a struggle which should elevate the lower, 

 the symmetry of both is most frequently destroyed. Earth 

 calls us back to her in this symbolical language, while 

 the stars draw us by affinities. We will not see that our 

 true Heaven lies between the two ; but in the blindness of 

 our perverse strivings make that happy half-way place a 

 Hell! 



Our Mother discourseth with us through these her living 

 words through these her constant Anti-types of the heroic 

 virtues in us she illustrates the changeless laws by which 

 they are sustained. 



She warns us when we have disgraced our lion or even 

 our dog or donkey natures how we may get back again to 

 truth by copying their simple lives. She speaketh sternly 

 to us, for she cannot lie. Ay 



" Call the creatures 



"Whose naked natures live in all the spite 

 Of wreakful heaven ; whose bare unhoused trunks 

 To the conflicting elements exposed 

 Answer mere nature bid them flatter thee." 



Ah I then, too, as well, would birds be the Anti-types of 

 the Poetical in us. As we have said, they are to our Eld- 

 Mother her " winged words" of poetry. The similitude is 



