a thousand groves, the roofs of the town bask,
noiseless, in the calm glow of the sky. Not a sound from those abodes
floats in discord to thine ear; only from the church-tower, soaring high
above the rest, perhaps faintly heard through the stillness, swells the
note of the holy bell. Along the mead low skims the swallow,--on the
wave the silver circlet, breaking into spray, shows the sport of the
fish. See the Earth, how serene, though all eloquent of activity and
life! See the Heavens, how benign, though dark clouds, by yon mountain,
blend the purple with the gold! Gaze contented, for Good is around
thee,--not joyous, for Evil is the shadow of Good! Let thy soul pierce
through the veil of the senses, and thy sight plunge deeper than the
surface which gives delight to thine eye. Below the glass of that river,
the pike darts on his prey; the circle in the wave, the soft plash
amongst the reeds, are but signs of Destroyer and Victim. In the ivy
round the oak by the margin, the owl hungers for the night, which shall
give its beak and its talons living food for its young; and the spray
of the willow trembles with the wing of the redbreast, whose bright eye
sees the worm on the sod. Canst thou count too, O Man! all the cares,
all the sins, that those noiseless rooftops conceal? With every curl of
that smoke to the sky, a human thought soars as dark, a human hope melts
as briefly. And the bell from the church-tower, that to thy ear gives
but music, perhaps knolls for the dead. The swallow but chases the
moth, and the cloud, that deepens the glory of the heaven and the sweet
shadows on the earth, nurses but the thunder that shall rend the grove,
and the storm that shall devastate the harvests. Not with fear, not with
doubt, recognize, O Mortal, the presence of Evil in the world. [Not,
indeed, that the evil here narrated is the ordinary evil of the
world,--the lesson it inculcates would be lost if so construed,--but
that the mystery of evil, whatever its degree, only increases the
necessity of faith in the vindication of the contrivance which requires
infinity for its range, and eternity for its consummation. It is in the
existence of evil that man finds his duties, and his soul its progress.]
Hush thy heart in the humbleness of awe, that its mirror may reflect as
serenely the shadow as the light. Vainly, for its moral, dost thou gaze
on the landscape, if thy soul puts no check on the dull delight of the
senses. Two wings only r