162 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIEDS. 
" Rouse ! and the weak and wanton Cupid 
Shall from your neck unloose its amorous folds, 
x\nd 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 our 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 ! 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 
