loins of eternal Nature no less. Was Orpheus the grandson of Zeus and
Mnemosyne,--of sovereign Unity and immortal Memory? Equally is
Shakspeare and every genuine bard. Could the heroes of old Greece
trace their derivation from the gods?

Little of a hero is he, even in these times of ours, who is not of the
like lineage. And indeed, one and all, we have a father and mother
whose marriage-morn is of more ancient date than our calendars, and of
whose spousal solemnities this universe is the memorial. All life,
indeed, whatsoever be its form and rank, has, along with connections of
pedigree and lateral association, one tap-root that strikes straight
down into the eternal.

Because Life is of this unsounded depth, it may well afford to repeat
the same forms forever, nor incurs thereby any danger of exhausting its
significance and becoming stale. Vital repetition, accordingly, goes
on in Nature in a way not doubtful and diffident, but frank, open,
sure, as if the game were one that could not be played out. It is now a
very long while that buds have burst and grass grown; yet Spring comes
forward still without bashfulness, fearing no charge of having
plagiarized from her predecessors. The field blushes not for its
blades, though they are such as for immemorial times have spired from
the sod; the boughs publish their annual book of many a verdant scroll
without apprehension of having become commonplace at last; the
bobolink pours his warble in cheery sureness of acceptance, unmindful
that it is the same warble with which the throats of other bobolinks
were throbbing before there was a man to listen and smile; and night
after night forever the stars, and age after age the eyes of women and
men, shine on without apology, or the least promise that this shall be
positively their last appearance. Life knows itself original always,