“For the day and for the night it has a several voice.”
“And does the sorrow which comes to us, a heritage of Eden, fall also here?”
“Mother, the star now hidden behind the western hills, its sister orbs, this earth, this wood, and water running, all speak to the soul according to its wisdom. Has sadness no beauty; grief no love? As darkness follows light, so joy and sorrow interchange, to make life perfect. This marvel of our God, in which strength and weakness strive to one end, were incomplete, did not thy tears, like fallen rain glittering in the sun, give brightness to the smile that hastens to drive thy tears away. In matter is to be found the sure interpreter of God’s will, and the purpose for which he made such excellence of earth and sky, with man, the chiefest excellence of all; and I watch to catch the secret which unlocks this knowledge, and will give to me, and to thee, my mother, the fullness of that glory which in the beginning was breathed into Adam, a living soul!”
SECTION XI.
As he spoke the wind sighed deeply along the silent stream, and the reeds there growing upon its sedgy bank gave forth sounds multitudinous, separate and commingled.
“List, mother!”
The symphony, at first low, scarce audible, dying, sprang to life again, and rose in notes æolic, flooding the air.
“It is this, mother, this that I would win; the common language of every created thing.”
We are the wind, whistling, piping, sounds melodious in the ear of night.
And there was a rustling as of forest leaves; and a murmuring, as of water running; while from the reedy grass came other voices,