ow much time and earnest labour were lavished on that poem,
I regret having yielded to the hasty impulse to destroy it.

I have never since ventured to undertake anything on so grand a scale. I
could repeat only a few lines of the verses it contained; but the plan of
the whole work, as I rounded it in Gottingen and Hosterwitz, I remember
perfectly, and I think, if only for the sake of its peculiarity and as
the mirror of a portion of my intellectual life at that time, its main
outlines deserve reproduction here.

I made Power and Matter, which I imagined as a formless element; the
basis of all existence. These two had been cast forth by the divine Ruler
of a world incomprehensible to human intelligence, in which the present
is a moment, space a bubble, as out of harmony with the mighty conditions
and purposes of his realm. But this supreme Ruler offered to create for
them a world suited to their lower plane of existence. Power I imagined a
man, Matter a woman. They were hostile to each other, for he despised his
quiet, inert companion, she feared her restless, unyielding partner; yet
the power of the ruler of the higher world forced them to wed.

From their loveless union sprang the earth, the stars-in short, all
inorganic life.

When the latter showed its relation to the father, Power, by the
impetuous rush of the stars through space, by terrible eruptions, etc.,
the mother, Matter, was alarmed, and as, to soothe them, she drew into
her embrace the flaming spheres, which dashed each other to pieces in
their mad career, and restrained the fiercest, her chill heart was warmed
by her children's fire.

Thus, as it were, raised to a higher condition, she longed for less
unruly children, and her husband, Power, who, though he would have gladly
cast her off, was bound to her by a thousand ties, took pity upon her,
because her listlessness and coldness were transformed to warmth and
motion, and another child sprang from their union, love.

But she seemed to have been born to misery, and wandered mournfully
about, weeping and lamenting because she lacked an object for which to
labour. True, she drew from the flaming, smoking bodies which she kissed
a soft, beneficent light, she induced some to give up their former
impetuosity and respect the course of others, and plants and trees sprang
from the earth where her lips touched it, yet her longing to receive
something which would be in harmony with her own nature remained
uns