fresh bright heaven, they will race with us toward our home, to
gain new heat, new life, new power, and set forth about their work
once more. Men call them the south-west wind, those air-mothers;
and their ghosts the north-east trade; and value them, and
rightly, because they bear the traders out and home across the
sea. But wise men, and little children, should look on them with
more seeing eyes; and say, "May not these winds be living
creatures? They, too, are thoughts of God, to whom all live."

For is not our life like their life? Do we not come and go as
they? Out of God's boundless bosom, the fount of life, we came;
through selfish, stormy youth and contrite tears--just not too
late; through manhood not altogether useless; through slow and
chill old age, we return from Whence we came; to the Bosom of God
once more--to go forth again, it may be, with fresh knowledge, and
fresh powers, to nobler work. Amen.

Such was the prophecy which I learnt, or seemed to learn, from the
south-western wind off the Atlantic, on a certain delectable
evening. And it was fulfilled at night, as far as the gentle air-
mothers could fulfil it, for foolish man.


There was a roaring in the woods all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright,
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods,
The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters,
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.