NATUEE AND HER HARMONIES. 
43 
material imagery does it not body forth creations of its own, 
whicli had no being else, and with the reflex glories of this 
atom orb, people a universe ? Does not the spread of thought 
in inappreciable time traverse all space like omnipresence ? 
Has it not whilome cleft the dark-lined horizon of Kow, and 
felt the Future shiver in cold prophetic beamings on its 
plumes ? 
Says not the sage Poet — 
" Imagination Avhich from earth to sky, 
And from the depths of human pliantasy, 
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors fill 
The universe with golden beams!" 
The universe ! Aye, there is its peculiar home ! Eeason 
may deal with things of earth, cope with her physical laws, 
and teach the arm of flesh to wrest from their hard grasp 
shelter and food : but the rarer empyrean will not sustain its 
heavy plumes ; when the 
" Spirit, the Promethean spark, 
has passed beneath them — then, possessed of an immortal 
vigor, the self-same drooping vans bathing in silver-exhala- 
tions at far starry fonts, take on the youth and splendor of 
eternity, and in long, weariless flights traverse infinity, ques- 
tioning the seraphim, front to front, of God and mysteries . 
Here is the mission of Imagination! "We are of earth, 
earthy ; and all its grosser essences thrice winnowed through 
Ufe, through death, and through decay, meet once again in The 
lAm^ without extension, weight, or form,' — 'The ultimation of 
material being — ^buoyant and strong as angels are, aod meet 
to bow with them before God's throne, and bide the awful 
Future. 
And as Imagination here has wrought His will, — has 
faithfully tasked the poor wings of Eeason lent it but for 
