Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/516

484 its ultimate desideratum is more life, keener and larger life; and to this increase of the contents of the spirit, tears both testify and minister. Their appearance proves that the fountains of consciousness are full; and their reaction in return nourishes the feelings which feed those fountains, as the deciduous leaves of a tree enrich the soil and invigorate the roots on which their own production originally depended.

Of all the portions of life, however, it is in the two twilights, childhood and age, that tears fall with the most frequency; like the dew at dawn and eve. In the meridian of manhood they are more rare and laborious, rushing, when they come at all, in a hot flood through the cloven fissures of woe, or streaming from the thunder clouds of calamity, like a shower wrung from the sultry agony of noon. But early and later dews and summer rain-gust are wholesome and benign; thereafter the birds and the grass rejoice, more blithe and fresh. The sky and weather of humanity, too, are cleared, and the songs and foliage of our life ring and sparkle more beautifully when the scenery of experience has been drenched with the tender moisture of grief.