Self.

Another aspect of the same idea, caught in a more lyrical mood, will be found in the poem called "The Trance." The poet is standing upon a hill-side alone at night, watching the "continual stars" and overawed by the vastness and "fixt law" of the universe. Then, in a sudden revelation of perhaps a fraction of a minute:

That, however, is the triumphant ecstasy of a moment. More often he is preoccupied with the duality in human nature, and in "An Escape" there is a fine simile of the struggle:

The incidence of finite and infinite is felt with equal force: sense is as powerful as spirit, and therein of course lives the keenness of the strife. In "Soul and Body" there is a passage—only one of many, however—in which the rapture of sensuous beauty is expressed. The spirit is imagined to be just ready to put off sense, to be for ever caught out of "that corner, consciousness." And the body reminds it:

We may take our last illustration of this subject from a passage at the end of the volume called Emblems of Love. It is from a poem so rich in beauty and so closely wrought, that to quote from it is almost inevitably to do the author an injustice. But the same may be said about the whole book: while single poems from it will disclose high individual value, both as art and philosophy, their whole effect and meaning can only be completely seized by reading them as a sequence, and in the light of the conception to which they all contribute.

The book is designed to show, in three great movements representing birth, growth, and perfection, the evolution of the human spirit in the world. The spirit, which is here synonymous with love, is traced from the instant which is chosen to mark its birth (the awakening sense of beauty in primitive man), through its manifold states of excess and defect, up to a transcendent union which draws the dual powers into a single ecstasy. The greatness of the central theme is matched by the dignity of its presentment, while the dramatic form in which it is embodied saves it from mere abstraction. We see the dawn of the soul in the wolf-hunter, suddenly perceiving beauty in nature and in women: the vindication of the soul by Vashti, magnificently daring to prove that it is no mere vassal to beauty: and the perfecting of the soul in the terrible paradox of Judith's virginity. But it is in one of the closing pieces, called fittingly "The Eternal Wedding," that the poet attains the summit of his thought along these lines; prefiguring the ultimate union of the conflicting powers of life in one perfect rapture.

That is the topmost peak that his philosophy has gained—for just so long as to give assurance that it exists. But no one supposes that he will dwell there: it is altogether too high: the atmosphere is too rare. It was reached only by the concentration of certain poetical powers, chiefly speculative imagination, which carried him safely over the chasms of a lower altitude. But when other powers are in the ascendant, as for instance in The End of the World: when he is recalled to actuality by that keen eye for fact which is so rare a gift to genius of this type, the terror of those lower chasms is revealed. Here is one of the characters reflecting on the thought of the end of the world, which he believes to be imminent from an approaching comet:

That passage will serve to point the single comment on technique with which this study must close. It has not been selected for the purpose, and therefore is not the finest example that could be chosen. It is, however, typical of the