The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms Like chrysalids impatient for the air, The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run Along the furrows, ants make their ado; Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls Flit where the sand is purple with its tribe Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek Their loves in wood and plain--and God renews His ancient rapture. Thus he dwells in all, From life's minute beginnings, up at last To man--the consummation of this scheme Of being, the completion of this sphere Of life: whose attributes had here and there Been scattered o'er the visible world before, Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant To be united in some wondrous whole, Imperfect qualities throughout creation, Suggesting some one creature yet to make, Some point where all those scattered rays should meet Convergent in the faculties of man. So writes Cleon: If, in the morning of philosophy, Ere aught had been recorded, nay perceived, Thou, with the light now in thee, could'st have looked On all earth's tenantry, from worm to bird, Ere man, her last, appeared upon the stage-- Thou would'st have seen them perfect, and deduced The perfectness of others yet unseen. Conceding which,--had Zeus then questioned thee "Shall I go on a step, improve on this, Do more for visible creatures than is done?" Thou would'st have answered, "Ay, by making each Grow conscious in himself--by that alone. All's perfect else: the shell sucks fast the rock, The fish strikes through the sea, the snake both swims And slides, forth range the beasts, the birds take flight, Till life's mechanics can no further go-- And all this joy in natural life is put Like fire from off thy finger into each, So exquisitely perfect is the same." (ll. 187-205.) But the Teuton of the Renascence passes beyond the Greek in his history of the evolution of man--as the outcome, the union, the consummation of all that has gone before. In his description of human nature so evolved, he continues by enumerating power controlled by will, knowledge and love as characteristics, hints and previsions of which Strewn confusedly about The inferior natures--all lead up higher, All shape out dimly the superior race, The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false, And man appears at last.[26] To Cleon such hopes, but vaguely suggested, leading upwards and onwards towards a recognition of the soul's immortality, are too fair for _truth_, their very beauty leads him to question their reality.