You pause, and a
low, sweet strain sighs softly through the room, as if a zephyr had
swept the string, dying gently away like the faintest breathing of the
evening breeze. Repeat the note, and louder than at first, and again its
counterpart replies, swelling higher than before, as if in gentle
remonstrance that you should deem it necessary to call again to that
which has already replied.
Even so it is with these hidden faculties or susceptibilities of which I
have been speaking. In the notes of witching music, in the numbers of
poesy, in the sight of beauty, either of nature or of art, either
aesthetic or moral, these silent powers recognize a faint approximation
to that beauty with which they will have to do in that world where they
shall be called into action: they too recognize the kindred spirit, and,
springing forward to meet it, vibrate in unison with the chord. But yet,
restrained by their prison of clay, bound down by the immutable law
which bids them wait their time, their great deep is but troubled, and
while, from their swaying and surging, a delicious emotion spreads over
the soul, filling the whole being with indescribable joy, it is an
emotion which we cannot fathom, vague and undefined, at which we wonder
even while we enjoy. To each and all of us the doors of heaven are
closed for the present; we never have heard the songs of the celestial
spheres, and how should we recognize their echo here on earth, even
though that echo is swelling through our own hearts? And the sadness and
yearning which such emotions invariably produce, may they not be the
yearning for heaven's supernal beauty, and sadness for the chains which
bar us from its full realization? Or is it the reflex of the struggles
and the disappointment of that portion of the spirit which I have
assigned as the mover of the emotion itself?
Carry still further the parallel of the vibrating string, and we shall
illustrate the different _degrees_ of emotion.
Pages:
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248