ts, and to guess
at the order of this periodicity. Both souls were in close touch with
the spirits of their several worlds, and no deliberate human rules, no
infractions of the liberty and law of the universal movement, kept from
them the knowledge of recurrences. _Eppur si muove_. They knew that
presence does not exist without absence; they knew that what is just upon
its flight of farewell is already on its long path of return. They knew
that what is approaching to the very touch is hastening towards
departure. "O wind," cried Shelley, in autumn,

O wind,
If winter comes can spring be far behind?

They knew that the flux is equal to the reflux; that to interrupt with
unlawful recurrences, out of time, is to weaken the impulse of onset and
retreat; the sweep and impetus of movement. To live in constant efforts
after an equal life, whether the equality be sought in mental production,
or in spiritual sweetness, or in the joy of the senses, is to live
without either rest or full activity. The souls of certain of the
saints, being singularly simple and single, have been in the most
complete subjection to the law of periodicity. Ecstasy and desolation
visited them by seasons. They endured, during spaces of vacant time, the
interior loss of all for which they had sacrificed the world. They
rejoiced in the uncovenanted beatitude of sweetness alighting in their
hearts. Like them are the poets whom, three times or ten times in the
course of a long life, the Muse has approached, touched, and forsaken.
And yet hardly like them; not always so docile, nor so wholly prepared
for the departure, the brevity, of the golden and irrevocable hour. Few
poets have fully recognized the metrical absence of their muse. For full
recognition is expressed in one only way--silence.

It has been found that several tribes in Africa and in America worship
the moon, and not the sun; a great number worship both; but no tribes are
known to adore the sun, and not the moon. On her depend the tides; and
she is Selene, mother of Herse, bringer of the dews that recurrently
irrigate lands where rain is rare. More than any other companion of
earth is she the Measurer. Early Indo-Germanic languages knew her by
that name. Her metrical phases are the symbol of the order of
recurrence. Constancy in approach and in departure is the reason of her
inconstancies. Juliet will not receive a vow spoken in invocation of the
moon; but Juliet did