BIRDS AND POETS. 
149 
For thou wert not ; but power from worst producing worst — 
The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, 
And of the birds and of the watery forms." 
That thou " was Adam, and, in reverence, it seems to us 
that the only way left of righting that apparently shadow- 
peopled island" to the apprehension of those Higher Intel- 
ligences was through the interpenetration of the idiosyn- 
cratic life of some one of the " Principalities and Powers" 
into its lower essence — ^in a word, by the marriage of the 
Angelic, or Spiritual, and Sensuous life. 
That such a marriage was symboled by the breathing into 
the nostrils of Adam the hreath of life^ we have no question. 
Into his organization — the most subtle and perfect express- 
ion of the creative energy of earth — a higher energy had 
passed, and in this sublimest marriage was the act and pur- 
pose of creation consummate. 
To the universe^ when he awoke in birth " the great globe 
itself," with all "the pomp and circumstance" of its peculiar 
being, stood first revealed beneath the pillared firmament as 
now it stands — 
" Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied 
His generations under the Pavilion • 
Of the sun's throne." 
His organization became to this vast new entity the law of 
beauty — of perfect form — harmonizing it with the Universe ; 
his point of vision in common with the Seraphim, disclosing 
not the only but — near to them — ^in the linked Spiritual gra- 
dation — the highest reality. 
He first saw beauty here, and heard the choir of morning 
birds, but he as well, first looked upward into heaven to hear 
the singing of the morning stars. 
He, alone, could look beyond mere consciousness, and see 
things, not as they appear to animal sense, but nearly as they 
exist, absolutely, to all intelligences. 
