"No," replied Atma, "better reject the image than accept it as the end of our desire. The faith of my fathers, which grasped after Truth, teaches me that if the outward semblance of divine verities lead captive not only my senses, to which its appeal is made, but my heart's allegiance, I am guilty of idolatry." "How fair," said Bertram, "must be the thing imaged by earth's loveliest pageantry! What must be the song of whose melody broken snatches and stray notes reach us in the golden speech of those endowed with hearing to catch its echoes! What harmony of beatitude is taught by the mystery of heavenly colour! How dull must be our faculties, or how distant the bliss for which our souls yearn as from behind a lattice, seeing only as in a mirror of burnished silver, which, though it be never so bright, reflects but dimly! How unutterable are our transitory glimpses of eternal possibilities!" "Therein," said Atma, "may lie the reason why evanescent beauty stirs us most. It may be more heavenly in meaning or affinity than things that remain. This has sometimes perplexed me. "For, ever most our love is given To glories whose decadence fleet Has more of changeful earth than heaven; The heart's astir, And sympathies leap forth to greet The mingling fair Of heavenly hues limned in empyreal bow Aloft in dewy air, but ere we know Their place and method true they fade away, And fancy follows still, though things as beauteous stay. What joyous note, Warbled in bliss of upper air, May with the one death-song compare That floats among the reeds, and blends With wild wind's plaint, till silence ends In haunt remote Sweet life and song; They float away the reeds among. "I beware me of types," he continued, "though I know nothing real. I am surrounded by images, my present state of being is a shadow, but I crave reality. The symbol is fair, but Truth is fairer. To that verity all types must yield, how beautiful soever they be, or meet to express their burden." * * * * *