NATUEE AND HER HARMONIES. 
5 
■ — was lianded 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 came 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, 
" AVith wings that might have had a soul within them, 
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 exultings, and our bare arms beat vainly, reaching 
toward the stars. Ah ! " whence this longing ?" — we poor 
unfledged earth-prone things 1 
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!" — 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!" — 
