ofusion. As it budded and opened into full flower in
the garden, how complete it seemed in itself, and how isolated from all
other visible things! But in reality how dependent it was, how
entirely the creation of forces as far apart as earth and sky! The
great tide from the Unseen cast it for a moment into my possession; for
an hour it has filled a human home with its far-brought sweetness;
to-morrow it will fall apart and return whence it came. As I look into
its heart of passionate colour, the whole visible universe, that seems
so fixed and stable, becomes immaterial, evanescent, vanishing; it is
no longer a permanent order of seas and continents and rounded skies;
it is a vision painted by an unseen hand against a background of
mystery. Dead, cold, unchangeable as I see it in the glimpses of a
single hour, it becomes warm, vital, forever changing as I gaze upon it
from the outlook of the centuries. It is the momentary creation of
forces that stream through it in endless ebb and flow, that are to-day
touching the sky with elusive splendour, and to-morrow springing in
changeful loveliness from the depths of earth. The continents are
transformed into the seas that encircle them; the seas rise into the
skies that overarch them; the skies mingle with the earth, and send
back from the uplifted faces of flowers greetings to the stars they
have deserted. Mountains rise and sink in the sublime rhythm to which
the movement of the universe is set; that song without words still
audible in the sacred hour when the morning stars announce the day, and
the birds match their tiny melodies with the universal harmony.

In the unbroken vision of the centuries all things are plastic and in
motion; a divine energy surges through all; substantial for a moment
here as a rock, fragile and vanishing there as a flower; but everywhere
the same, and always sweeping onward through its illimitable channel to
its appointed end. It is this vital tide on which the universe gleams
and floats like a mirage of immutability; never the same for a single
moment to the soul that contemplates it: a new creation each hour and
to every eye that rests upon it. No dead mechanism moves the stars, or
lifts the tides, or calls the flowers from their sleep; truly this is
the garment of Deity, and here is the awful splendour of the Perpetual
Presence. It is the old story of the Greek Proteus translated into
universal speech. It is the song of the Persian p