With the grinding, and the filing, and the whetting, and the shock of blade on blade; while the clatter of the smithy ringing, cries, it is mine to civilize.
SECTION VIII.
The brothers hastened from the mount, and descending, bore homeward the new-found metal with dances, and with shouts, which called Erix and Zella to meet them, and to listen, with growing eyes and a faith equal to their own, to the marvelous tale of the light which fell from heaven, and their blindness and the voice within them, and the altar burned, and the molten pool, and the strange wild music which they heard, until a knowledge entered into them of the gift they had received.
“Father, my prayer is answered,” said Tubal, and quick, to make his knowledge sure, the four built up the first rude forge, and piled it high with wood, and put fire to it, and, as it burned, cast in the metal, which they watched until it reddened and flashed, coruscating. Then Tubal drew the metal forth, and beat it between two stones, and flattened it, and, twisting, gave it ever new forms, while Erix, with Ariel and his mother, stood admiring, and reasoned of its uses. And thus did Tubal work with cunning and with strength, from day to day, until he had won the skill to fashion the metal to his will; to arm his arrows and his spear, and devise new weapons for the chase. He soon found out the way of beating iron upon itself, nor lacked the wit of many inventions to aid his labor; and the ponderous sledge wielded by his arms, black with soot, from morn to eve resounded along the heaving sea, which knew no heavier din when, long after, Vulcan forged beneath Ætna. His tribe stood around him thick, and wondered at his work, and learned of him; and when, as time rolled on, the elders told his story to their sons, they called him the father of all who worked in metal.
SECTION IX
Ariel went dreaming on his way; nor sought to rival his brother at the forge, nor questioned the right which he assumed to rule among his fellow-men. He acknowledged his brother’s worth, and knew him to be the completest man to meet the stern necessities of life—to lay deeply in that new age a strong foundation upon which others were to build, for good or ill, through many a revolving year, the politics of the earth. To himself it was given to see the future in its action; and it passed before him so distinct and bright, that Zella, sitting at his side, oft turned away with fear, as his tongue grew eloquent over a tale of greatness and of sorrow still hidden within the womb of time. Thrice blessed is he who knows his work and does it; who learns in early youth that the practical is the only good, nor chases phantoms, till, the harvest past, he turns a poor gleaner upon another’s steps, and begs from bounty what should be his of right. But Ariel had other hopes, not willed, but given for a purpose, to which he was bound as the winged chorister is bound to the melody which springs unbidden from its throat. He lived in the ideal, and strove to grasp the mysterious laws by which the world within acts upon the world without. The soul’s own greatness to all of God’s labor a greatness gives, which lesser spirits never know; and the soul’s beauty is poured upon all matter, as the setting sun, in ripe October, pours a purple flood of departing light upon the gorgeous landscapes of my native North. This Ariel knew; and when he listened to the voices of the sea, of the wood, and of the lesser herbage, growing; to the sighing of the air, and the creaking, and the grating of bough on bough, rocked by the wind; he believed that all were parts of one great hymn, whose interpreter was within, and, combined, would a language give more perfect to express the soul’s griefs and joys, the loveliness and magnitude of God’s labors, than that which Adam, articulate, invented.
SECTION X.
Thus Ariel mused, and in his walks under the silent moon, watched close, to catch the notes which rose from every point of earth; and sitting with his mother, to whom he opened his whole heart, talked of this wisdom. And thus, one quiet eve, when the star which ushers in and leads off day’s hours, then called God’s love, now changed to the queen in Paphos worshiped, was just dipping beneath the western hills, and the wind slow rising set outward to the sea, these two, the mother and the son, went forth to drink new draughts of the knowledge he had found, and kept hidden from all else save her whose soul was like unto his own. She leaned upon his shoulder as a loved support, and they passed, mingling in sweet converse, along the wooded paths to the stream which flowed noiseless, and now dark beneath the forest shades, close by the bank upon which she had rested from the chase, and with Erix recounted the endless good with which heaven had blessed the earth.
“This water, so silent, yet speaks.”
“In sadness,” said Zella.