to which the individual is exposed. So when the
soul of the poet has come to ripeness of thought,
she detaches and sends away from it its poems or
songs,--a fearless, sleepless, deathless progeny,
which is not exposed to the accidents of the weary
kingdom of time; a fearless, vivacious offspring,
clad with wings (such was the virtue of the soul out
of which they came) which carry them fast and far,
and infix them irrecoverably into the hearts of men.
These wings are the beauty of the poet's soul. The
songs, thus flying immortal from their mortal parent,
are pursued by clamorous flights of censures, which
swarm in far greater numbers and threaten to devour
them; but these last are not winged. At the end of a
very short leap they fall plump down and rot, having
received from the souls out of which they came no
beautiful wings. But the melodies of the poet ascend
and leap and pierce into the deeps of infinite time.

So far the bard taught me, using his freer speech.
But nature has a higher end, in the production of
New individuals, than security, namely ascension,
or the passage of the soul into higher forms. I knew
in my younger days the sculptor who made the statue
of the youth which stands in the public garden. He
was, as I remember, unable to tell directly, what
made him happy or unhappy, but by wonderful
indirections he could tell. He rose one day, according
to his habit, before the dawn, and saw the morning
break, grand as the eternity out of which it came,