Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/63

A BELT OF ASTEROIDS songsters are exempted from a common law. If, once in a while, some brown domestic bird varies his wonted piping, and breaks out in passionate and melodious notes; or, when a brilliant-plumed creature, kept rather for ornament than song, seems to have borrowed the throstle's minstrelsy—if these venture again, the one must have lighter trills and quavers, and the other a purer and more assured sweetness, or it will be said of each that

Many a second performance has thus been stifled within the hearing of us all.

He who has discerned and made available the one fortunate moment of his life, has not lived entirely in vain. Multitudes pass through the sacred garden unawares, with their eyes fixed upon illusions far away. Yet there comes to most persons a time when they are lifted above the hard level of common life to the region of spiritual emotion and discovery. The dullest eye will catch glimpses to make one less forlorn; the ear will be suddenly unsealed, and hear the bells of heaven ring; the mouth will be touched with fire, and utter imaginative speech. Were there not something divine in each of us, a poet would find no listeners. Thus the crises of passion, joy and pain, which are inevitable for all, often raise the most plodding to a comprehension of the rapture of the poet, the devotion of the martyr, the assurance of the leader [49]