How crammed are these lines with the purest Nature Mysticism as moderns understand it! The sense of living process reigns supreme. They are the offspring, not of fancy, nor even of imagination as ordinarily conceived—but of insight, of vision, of living communion with a living world.
It is tempting, while dealing with the airy realms of cloud-land, to dwell at length on the mystic influence of the queen of aerial phenomena—the rainbow. That influence in the past has been immense; it still is, and ever will be, a power to be reckoned with. Science cannot rob it of its glories. The gold-winged Iris of Homer, swifter-footed than the wind, has passed. The Genesis story of "the bow in the cloud" may dissolve in the alembic of criticism—but the rainbow itself remains, still a sevenfold bridge of souls from this solid-seeming earth to a rarer land beyond. Who is there who cannot sympathise with Wordsworth?
"My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when I was a child;
So it is now I am a man;
So let it be when I am old—
Or let me die."
Tempting is it also to treat of the birds—the denizens of the air—to comment on the exquisite trio of bird-poems, Wordsworth's "Cuckoo," Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark," and Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale." For assuredly it is the medium in which these delicate creatures pass their lives that gives them the chiefest share of their magic and their mystery. But this gem from Victor Hugo must suffice for all the tuneful choir:
"Like a songbird be thou on life's bough,
Lifting thy lay of love.
So sing to its shaking,
So spring at its breaking,
Into the heaven above."
The dome of air thus expands into the dome of heaven with its eternal fires, and bids us turn to the third of the ancient sages whose speculations are aiding our steps in this tentative study.
CHAPTER XXVII
HERACLEITUS AND THE COSMIC FIRE
Heracleitus is a philosopher whose speculations are of surpassing interest for the student of Nature Mysticism. He was born about 540 B.C., at Ephesus, and lived some sixty years. He was one of the most remarkable thinkers of antiquity, and the main substance of his teaching remains as a living and stimulating element in the most advanced scientific and metaphysical doctrines of the present day. But taking the point of view of the nature-mystic, he derives his special significance from the manner of his early training, and from the source of his early inspirations.