An American naturalist tells us that the human brain is full of
birds. The song-birds might all have been hatched in the human
heart, so well do they express the whole gamut of human passion
and emotion in their varied songs. The plaintive singers, the
soaring ecstatic singers, the gushing singers, the inarticulate
singers--robin, dove, lark, mocking-bird, nightingale--all are
expressive of human emotion, desire, love, sadness, aspiration,
glee. Christ gives a sadder view of our heart, showing it to be
“the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and
hateful bird.” Fierce hawk, croaking raven, ravenous vulture,
obscene birds, birds of discord, birds of darkness, birds of
tempest, birds of blood and death--these are all typical of the
heart’s base passions; these all brood and nestle within, and
fly forth to darken, pollute, and destroy. And the Master is not
here speaking of some hearts, but of the human heart generally.
In the woods we find occasionally a bird with a false note, in
the fields a misshapen flower, yet beauty and music are the
prevailing characteristics of the landscape; but stepping into
society, the universal discord and misery declare the common
radical defect of our nature.--W. L. WATKINSON, “The
Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(1370)