ever present to the mind that each is, so
to speak, always polarized with its positive end of activity, creation
or birth, and its negative of cessation, decay and death. It is by the
constant _realization_ of this solemn and beautiful truth in all things
that Nature eventually appears so strengthening and cheerful. The flower
and the fruit, the delight of anticipation and the luxury of
realization, are the delightful culmination of every natural existence;
and it is to perfect these that all action tends. Decay, disease, pain,
and death, are only kindly agencies acting more effectually and rapidly,
to sweep away that which is fading, and hasten it into new forms of
beauty and pleasure.

'Nature within her placid breast receives
All her creation; and the body pays
Itself the due of nature, and its end
Is self-consummated.'[A]

[Footnote A: LUCAN, _Pharsalia_.]

Birth is thus an essential part of death, and death of birth--both
forming, by their inseparable action, the highest and first intelligible
stage of the inscrutable mystery of the active power of Nature. 'This,'
the reader may say, 'is, however, only the old theme, worn threadbare by
poet and moralist.' Let him look more earnestly into it--let him
_master_ it, and he will find it the germ of a deeper, a bolder, and a
more genial Art than the world has known for ages. It is no slander on
the intellect or sensibility of this day to say that its admiration for
Nature is really at a low ebb, and that, with thousands even of the
educated, nothing gives so little solid satisfaction as lovely
scenery or other inartificially beautiful phenomena. The reason
is that Poetry--the hymn which _should_ elevate the soul in
Nature-worship--instead of reflecting in every simile, every image,
directly or indirectly, the deep mystery of life which intuitively
associates with itself that of love and all loveliness, is satisfied
with mere _comparisons_ based on casual and petty resemblance. The
reader or critic of modern times, when the poet speaks of 'rosy-fingered
dawn,' or of 'cheeks like damask roses,' is quite satisfied with the
accuracy of the simile as to delicate color, and with the refined, vague
association of perfume and of individual memories attached to the
flower. But if we could realize by even the dimmest hint that the mind
of the poet was penetrated and filled by the knowledge that the rose was
a flower-favorite of man in all lands in primeval ages, and,