and the march of time, for its mystic rhythm beats in tune with every
feeling that sweeps over the heart, forever singing its primeval chant
at the very core of our existence! The law of Rhythm is the law of
mortal life: the constant recurrence of new effort sinking but to
recover itself in accurately proportioned rest, rising ever again in new
exertion, to sink again in ever new repose:

'And our hearts, though true and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.'

This low music of the heart never ceases until stilled by the touch of
death, when the spirit, led by God, enters upon the waveless ocean of an
immeasurable eternity, where past and future meet in the eternal
present. Time with its rhythmic measures is then no more. The necessity
of 'effort and rest,' 'exertion and repose,' will exist no longer. What
the fuller music of that higher life is to be, 'it has not yet entered
into the heart of man to conceive.' But if the very _imperfection_ of
our being has been rendered so full of charm to us in the order and
proportion with which it records its law, 'effort and repose,' 'life and
death'--what may we not expect when this mortal shall have put on
immortality? We should think of this when that saddest of human sounds,
'it beats no more; it measures time no longer'--knells upon our ear the
silence of the throbbing, passionate heart.

Nor is inanimate nature without the quickening breath of Rhythm. It
cadences the dash of the wave, chimes in the flash of the oar, patters
in the drops of rain, whispers in the murmurings of the forest leaves,
leaps in the dash of the torrent, wails through the sighing of the
restless winds, and booms in the claps and crashes of heaven's thunders.