THE SOUL OE SONG. 
137 
gotten the words. We may sit unmoved during the 
recital of the finest verses; but the moment the harper's 
fingers sweep the strings, the melody rouses us to a fine 
fanaticism. The song w r as body before,—it is soul now; 
its harmonies are complete; and to every march of the 
melody the heart-strings throb responsive. Nature is 
double all through;—body and soul, matter and spirit, 
as if the universe were a repeated marriage of the two 
elements. To the fertility of the fields is added beauty 
of tint, and form, and colour: the brown soil has a soul, 
and that soul is the flower, which would exist in vain 
were there no other souls to make common cause with 
its life and history. To man—the prose of the world— 
is added woman, its poetry. 
These many spirits of the w^orld seem made for man. 
The rainbow may span the heavens; but unless seen by 
man, its arches have been built in vain. When it 
bridges over the unpopulated desert, it is but a thousand 
drops of rain, which the green leaves drink in without 
knowing of their prismatic beauty; but when it embraces 
the corn ridge and the village, a thousand loving eyes 
look up, and angels are seen treading it as a pathway 
between the heaven and the earth. Hence, knowing its 
mission, the rainbow only visits spots where human 
souls abide. It is for the soul of man that all these 
many souls are born, and the soul of song as truly so as 
any. Where is the music of nature so rich as on the 
skirts of cultivated districts, where flowery gardens feed 
innumerable humming bees, and thick bosses of thatch 
shelter the trusting robin! It is a fact, that in the deep 
forest the birds that sing are few; and the more lonely 
