98. The deep of air that surrounds the earth enters into union with the
earth at its surface, and with its waters, so as to be the apparent cause
of their ascending into life. First, it warms them, and shades, at once,
staying the heat of the sun's rays in its own body, but warding their
force with its clouds. It warms and cools at once, with traffic of balm
and frost; so that the white wreaths are withdrawn from the field of the
Swiss peasant by the glow of Libyan rock. It gives its own strength to
the sea; forms and fills every cell of its foam; sustains the precipices,
and designs the valleys of its waves; gives the gleam to their moving
under the night, and the white fire to their plains under sunrise; lifts
their voices along the rocks, bears above them the spray of birds,
pencils through them the dimpling of unfooted sands. It gathers out of
them a portion in the hollow of its hand: dyes, with that, the hills into
dark blue, and their glaciers with dying rose; inlays with that, for
sapphire, the dome in which it has to set the cloud; shapes out of that
the heavenly flocks: divides them, numbers, cherishes, bears them on its
bosom, calls them to their journeys, waits by their rest; feeds from them
the brooks that cease not, and strews with them the dews that cease. It
spins and weaves their fleece into wild tapestry, rends it, and renews;
and flits and flames, and whispers, among the golden threads, thrilling
them with a plectrum of strange fire that traverses them to and fro, and
is enclosed in them like life.

It enters into the surface of the earth, subdues it, and falls together
with it into fruitful dust, from which can be moulded flesh; it joins
itself, in dew, to the substance of adamant, and becomes the green leaf
out of the dry ground; it enters into the separated shapes of the earth
it has tempered, commands the ebb and flow of the current of their life,
fills their limbs with its own lightness, measures their existence by its
indwelling pulse, moulds upon their lips the words by which one soul can