and hedges through heat of day, like little winds that only make the
cowslip bells shake, and ruffle the petals of the wild rose.

66. Also, upon the plumes of the bird are put the colors of the air; on
these the gold of the cloud, that cannot be gathered by any covetousness;
the rubies of the clouds, that are not the price of Athena, but are
Athena; the vermillion of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the
cloud-crest, and the snow of the cloud, and its shadow, and the melted
blue of the deep wells of the sky,--all these, seized by the creating
spirit, and woven by Athena herself into films and threads of plume; with
wave on wave following and fading along breast, and throat, and opened
wings, infinite as the dividing of the foam and the sifting of the
sea-sand; even the white down of the cloud seeming to flutter up between
the stronger plumes,--seen, but too soft for touch.

And so the Spirit of the Air is put into, and upon, this created form;
and it becomes, through twenty centuries, the symbol of divine help,
descending, as the Fire, to speak but as the Dove, to bless.

67. Next, in the serpent we approach the source of a group of myths,
world-wide, founded on great and common human instincts, respecting which
I must note one or two points which bear intimately on all our subject.
For it seems to me that the scholars who are at present occupied in
interpretation of human myths have most of them forgotten that there are
any such thing as natural myths, and that the dark sayings of men may be
both difficult to read, and not always worth reading. And, indeed, all
guidance to the right sense of the human and variable myths will probably
depend on our first getting at the sense of the natural and invariable
ones. The dead hieroglyph may have meant this or that; the living
hieroglyph means always the same; but remember, it is just as much a