178 THE LIGHT. 
every day, by unveiling the world, creates it anew and preserves it. 
We revive, we breathe again, we traverse our dwelling-places, we 
regain our families, we count over our herds. Nothing has perished, 
and life is complete. No tiger has surprised us. No horde of beasts 
of prey have invaded us. The black serpent has not profited by our 
slumbers. Blessed be thou, O sun, who givest us yet another day! 
All animals, says the Hindu, and especially the wisest, the 
elephant, the Brahmin of creation, salute the sun, and praise it grate- 
fully at dawn; they sing to it from their own hearts a hymn of 
thankfulness. 
But a single creature utters it, pronounces it for all of us, sings it. 
Who? One of the weak—which fears most keenly the night, and 
hails with eagerest joy the morning—which lives in and by the light 
—whose tender, infinitely sensitive, extended, penetrating vision, 
discerns all its accidents—and which is most intimately associated 
with the decline, the eclipses, and the resurrection of light. 
The bird for all nature chants the morning hymn and the bene- 
diction of the day. He is her priest and her augur, her divine and 
innocent voice. 
