on many a mead and lawn;
And strayed to distant uplands in the dawn.
And she has had some dark experience
Of graceless man's ingratitude; and hence
Her ways have not been ways of pleasantness,
Nor all her paths of peace. But her distress
And grief she has lived past; your giddy round
Disturbs her not, for she is learned profound
In deep brahminical philosophy.
She chews the cud of sweetest revery
Above your worldly prattle, brooklet merry,
Oblivious of all things sublunary.

The cow figures in Grecian mythology, and in the Oriental literature is
treated as a sacred animal. "The clouds are cows and the rain milk." I
remember what Herodotus says of the Egyptians' worship of heifers and
steers; and in the traditions of the Celtic nations the cow is regarded
as a divinity. In Norse mythology the milk of the cow Andhumbla afforded
nourishment to the Frost giants, and it was she that licked into being
and into shape a god, the father of Odin. If anything could lick a god
into shape, certainly the cow could do it. You may see her perform this
office for young Taurus any spring. She licks him out of the fogs and
bewilderments and uncertainties in which he finds himself on first
landing upon these shores, and up on to his feet in an incredibly short
time. Indeed, that potent tongue of hers can almost make the dead alive
any day, and the creative lick of the old Scandinavian mother cow is
only a large-lettered rendering of the commonest facts.

The horse belongs to the fiery god Mars. He favors war, and is one of
its oldest, most available, and most formidable engines. The steed is
clothed with thunder, and smells the battle from afar; but the cattle
upon a thousand hills denote that peace and plenty bear sway in the
land. The neighing of the horse is a call to battle; but the lowing of
old Brockleface in the valley brings the golden age again. The savage
tribes are never without the horse; the Scythians are all mounted; but
the cow would tame and humanize them. When the Indians will cultivate
the cow, I shall think their civilization fairly begun. Recently, when
the horses were sick with the epizooetic, and the oxen came to the city
and helped to do their work, what an Arcadian air again filled the
streets. But the dear old oxen--how awkward and distressed they looked!
Juno wept in the face of every one of them. The horse is a true citizen,
and is entirely at home in the paved streets; but t