Page:Pebbles and Shells (Hawkes collection).djvu/15

indeed, and all the brighter, apparently, for being physiologically developed in the dark! He says himself:

"'Tis not for wealth I sing my simple lays,
Or e'en for fame, or for the critic's praise,
But for the joy of feeling and of living
All that I say, and for the joy of giving."

The outburst is spontaneous and continuous. Perhaps it is because he is so young? And so we find his treble keyed to the notes of the bluebird. He twines his lute with the flowers that bloom in the spring and the clematis which climbs up over the porch. In the sunny corner he weaves his webs of fancy, while he inhales the sweet aroma which lures the insect tribes. In his mind's eye he watches them, as they flit from anther to corolla, and following after, gathers poesy from each bloom. Forsooth, it is a blessed thing to have no eyes, and so shut out the hideous things of earth!

Na'theless, the mind will not permit the material senses to dwell always in Elysium. Whenever the imagination strays into the Valley of the Dark Shadow, as it must sometimes, it conjures up all sorts of sombre themes; and on such occasions the vagrant muse emits an undertone like the rumble of water in a deep cavern. It is then the poet writes dramatically of battle fields and carnage in which he has had no part, and of chimeras which he has never seen. Ah! this discerning with the spiritual eye! who shall fathom it? Biologists are puzzled. But are not these mysterious lucubrations which so much surprise us, really the outcome of the divine nature which is in man? scintillations of omniscience, as it were, which we are told is an attribute of the immortal world? Does Drummond