We Sinais climb, etc.: Mount Sinai was the mountain in Arabia on
James Russell Lowell
which Moses talked with God (_Exodus_ xix, xx). God's miracles are
taking place about us all the time, if only we can emancipate our
souls sufficiently to see them. From out of our materialized daily
lives we may rise at any moment, if we will, to ideal and spiritual
things. In a letter to his nephew Lowell says: "This same name of God
is written all over the world in little phenomena that occur under our
eyes every moment, and I confess that I feel very much inclined to
hang my head with Pizarro when I cannot translate those hieroglyphics
into my own vernacular." (_Letters_, I, 164).
Compare the following passage in the poem _Bibliolatres_:
"If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness
And find'st not Sinai, 't is thy soul is poor;
There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less,
Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends,
Intent on manna still and mortal ends,
Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore."