156 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 



we confessed it. Ah ! how different that mellow rhythm, 

 from the harsh, hungry clarion, sounded in its scream? 



Have we not gone aside into those secret places where our 

 Primal Mother 



" Plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings, 

 That in the various bustle of resort 

 "Were all too rumpled and sometime impaired." 



Here an awed silent witness have we not listened when her 

 solemn moods of worship came upon her ? Think you she 

 does not know the Mighty One, who thought her Daughter 

 of the Sun into being ? 



Yes ! and she serves an altar to him, in a " house not made 

 with hands ;" and thus, for that service away from the hum 

 and dust of bruising cities from the rock-rude chaos of her 

 sterner moods, where Eaglets nestle with her Storms doth 

 she draw apart ; and, gathering about her there her delicate 

 thoughts of love and gentlest peace, she lifts them on her 

 green bosom to her old Sire to kiss, and resting tranquil in 

 his warm light sings ! First, she sings an under prelude 

 with the breeze and stream then, soft and clear, a louder 

 diapason swelling rings in sweet articulations, warbled out 

 or trilling from a thousand living throats ! Must not this 

 be her choral incense hymn of praise the holier strain she 

 carries in the anthem of the stars? Every note, too, is 

 plumed with wings, and is the living movement of her heart 

 towards God. 



Have we not thus seen that she, too comparatively with 

 man has a Poetry, and discourseth " sweet living numbers," 

 after the same manner with his rapt inspirations? 



This, her " tuneful choir," is the eldest ; and, as it expresses 

 in her the highest yearnings of her purer life, so it stands 

 the Anti-type of the spiritual and truest Poetry in Man 

 Man 1 her wayward child, half tyrant and half stranger on 

 her bosom. 



What recks he, the hard self- worshipper, that the Linnet 



