usion. The organist's fingers wander listlessly over the keys
at first; then come forms and figures from out of dreamland over the
bridge of his careless melody, and gradually the vision takes
consistent and expressive shape. So the poet comes upon his central
subject, or theme, shaped from his wandering thought and imagination.

7. Auroral flushes: Like the first faint glimmerings of light in the
East that point out the pathway of the rising sun, the uncertain,
wavering outlines of the poet's vision precede the perfected theme
that is drawing near.

9. Not only around our infancy, etc.: The allusion is to
Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_, especially these
lines:

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."

As Lowell's central theme is so intimately associated with that of
Wordsworth's poem, if not directly suggested by it, the two poems
should be read together and compared. Lowell maintains that "heaven
lies about us" not only in our infancy, but at all times, if only we
have the soul to comprehend it.

12. We Sinais climb, etc.: Mount Sinai was the mountain in Arabia on
which Moses talked with God (_Exodus_ xix, xx). God's miracles are
taking place about us all the time, if only we can emancipate our
souls sufficiently to see them. From out of our materialized daily
lives we may rise at any moment, if we will, to ideal and spiritual
things. In a letter to his nephew Lowell says: "This same name of God
is written all over the world in little phenomena that occur under our
eyes every moment, and I confess that I feel very much inclined to
hang my head with Pizarro when I cannot translate those hieroglyphics
into my own vernacular." (_Letters_, I, 164).

Compare the following passage in the poem _Bibliolatres_:

"If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness
And find'st not Sinai, 't is thy soul is poor;
There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less,
Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends,
Intent on manna still and mortal ends,
Sees it not, neither hears its t