d-seeming earth to a
rarer land beyond. Who is there who cannot sympathise with
Wordsworth?

"My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when I was a child;
So it is now I am a man;
So let it be when I am old--
Or let me die."

Tempting is it also to treat of the birds--the denizens of the air--
to comment on the exquisite trio of bird-poems, Wordsworth's
"Cuckoo," Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark," and Keats' "Ode to a
Nightingale." For assuredly it is the medium in which these
delicate creatures pass their lives that gives them the chiefest
share of their magic and their mystery. But this gem from
Victor Hugo must suffice for all the tuneful choir:

"Like a songbird be thou on life's bough,
Lifting thy lay of love.
So sing to its shaking,
So spring at its breaking,
Into the heaven above."

The dome of air thus expands into the dome of heaven with its
eternal fires, and bids us turn to the third of the ancient sages
whose speculations are aiding our steps in this tentative study.

CHAPTER XXVII

HERACLEITUS AND THE COSMIC FIRE

Heracleitus is a philosopher whose speculations are of
surpassing interest for the student of Nature Mysticism. He was
born about 540 B.C., at Ephesus, and lived some sixty years. He
was one of the most remarkable thinkers of antiquity, and the
main substance of his teaching remains as a living and
stimulating element in the most advanced scientific and
metaphysical doctrines of the present day. But taking the point
of view of the nature-mystic, he derives his special significance
from the manner of his early training, and from the source of his
early inspirations.

While still a youth, he forsook the bustle of the city for the
solitude and charm of the lovely country which surrounded his
home, and he definitely set himself to feed his imagination on
the concrete and sensuous imagery of the poets. He laid
himself open to the impressions and intuitions which such an
environment so richly provided, and thus laid the foundation for
those speculations on the nature of the universe and of life
which have rendered his influence so lasting and his fame so
great.

He is undoubtedly difficult to understand, and his cryptic
utterances earned for him the doubtful title of the Dark. But his
champions have pointed out that his obscurity of diction was
not the outcome of pride or intentional assumption of m