Birth is thus an essential part of death, and death of birth--both forming, by their inseparable action, the highest and first intelligible stage of the inscrutable mystery of the active power of Nature. 'This,' the reader may say, 'is, however, only the old theme, worn threadbare by poet and moralist.' Let him look more earnestly into it--let him _master_ it, and he will find it the germ of a deeper, a bolder, and a more genial Art than the world has known for ages. It is no slander on the intellect or sensibility of this day to say that its admiration for Nature is really at a low ebb, and that, with thousands even of the educated, nothing gives so little solid satisfaction as lovely scenery or other inartificially beautiful phenomena. The reason is that Poetry--the hymn which _should_ elevate the soul in Nature-worship--instead of reflecting in every simile, every image, directly or indirectly, the deep mystery of life which intuitively associates with itself that of love and all loveliness, is satisfied with mere _comparisons_ based on casual and petty resemblance. The reader or critic of modern times, when the poet speaks of 'rosy-fingered dawn,' or of 'cheeks like damask roses,' is quite satisfied with the accuracy of the simile as to delicate color, and with the refined, vague association of perfume and of individual memories attached to the flower. But if we could realize by even the dimmest hint that the mind of the poet was penetrated and filled by the knowledge that the rose was a flower-favorite of man in all lands in primeval ages, and, as Geology asserts, literally coeval with him; that its points of resemblance to woman properly gave it place in the oldest mythology as the floral type of the female godhead; that it was the earth-born reflection of the morning star, and rose from the foam with it when the Aphrodite-Astarte-Venus-Anadyomeno came to life; that, as the nearest symbol of beautiful virginity expanding into womanhood and maternity, it was appropriately allied to dawning life and light, and consequently to the rosy Aurora and to blushing youth; and that finally, in withered age, set around by sharp thorns, it is a striking likeness of wounding death, yet from which new roses may spring--we should find that in a knowledge of all these interchangable symbolisms lies a music and a color, a perfume and a feeling, as of a perfectly satisfactory Thought. Let it be observed that each of these rose-correspondences is directly based on Nature, and that, to a mind familiar with the antithetic identity of life and death, all are promptly soluble and mutually convertible, as by mental-magic alchemy. There is a truth and earnestness in them which, while stimulating the joyous sentiment, gives to every allusion to the rose the value of genius, and not of accident or the _chic_ of a 'happy idea.'