orant of this
wonderful and infinite earth, which is firmly and instantly given you
in possession? Although your days are numbered, and the following
darkness sure, is it necessary that you should share the degradation
of the brute, because you are condemned to its mortality; or live the
life of the moth, and of the worm, because you are to companion them
in the dust? Not so; we may have but a few thousands of days to
spend, perhaps hundreds only--perhaps tens; nay, the longest of our
time and best, looked back on, will be but as a moment, as the
twinkling of an eye; still, we are men, not insects; we are living
spirits, not passing clouds. "He maketh the winds His messengers; the
momentary fire, His minister;" and shall we do less than _these_? Let
us do the work of men while we bear the form of them; and, as we
snatch our narrow portion of time out of Eternity, snatch also our
narrow inheritance of passion out of Immortality--even though our
lives _be_ as a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then
vanisheth away.

But there are some of you who believe not this--who think this cloud of
life has no such close--that it is to float, revealed and illumined,
upon the floor of heaven, in the day when He cometh with clouds, and
every eye shall see Him. Some day, you believe, within these five, or
ten, or twenty years, for every one of us the judgment will be set, and
the books opened. If that be true, far more than that must be true. Is
there but one day of judgment? Why, for us every day is a day of
judgment--every day is a Dies Irae, and writes its irrevocable verdict in
the flame of its West. Think you that judgment waits till the doors of
the grave are opened? It waits at the doors of your houses--it waits at
the corners of your streets; we are in the midst of judgment--the
insects that we crush are our judges--the moments we fret away are our
judges--the elements that feed us, judge, as they minister--and the
pleasures that deceive us, judge as they indulge. Let us, for our lives,
do the work of Men while we bear the Form of them, if indeed those lives
are _Not_ as a vapor, and do _Not_ vanish away.

LXXXVIII. THE ROBIN.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.--1819-

_From_ MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE.

The return of the robin is commonly announced by the newspapers, like
that of eminent or notorious people to a watering-place, as the first
authentic notification of spring. And such his appearance in the orchard
and g