it.
Paracelsus would have the whole sum of knowledge, Aprile nothing less
than the whole of love, and, in this world. It is impossible; yet, were
it possible, could they have attained the sum of knowledge and of love
on earth and been satisfied therewith, they would have shut out the
infinite of knowledge and love beyond them in the divine land, and been,
in their satisfaction, more hopelessly lost than they are in their
present wretchedness. Failure that leaves an unreached ideal before the
soul is in reality a greater boon than success which thinks perfect
satisfaction has been reached. Their aim at perfection is right: what is
wrong is their view that failure is ruin, and not a prophecy of a
greater glory to come. Could they have thought perfection were attained
on earth--were they satisfied with anything this world can give, no
longer stung with hunger for the infinite--all Paradise, with the
illimitable glories, were closed to them!

Few passages are more beautiful in English poetry than that in which
Aprile narrates his youthful aspiration: how, loving all things
infinitely, he wished to throw them into absolute beauty of form by
means of all the arts, for the love of men, and receive from men love
for having revealed beauty, and merge at last in God, the Eternal Love.
This was his huge aim, his full desire.

Few passages are more pathetic than that in which he tells his failure
and its cause. "Time is short; the means of life are limited; we have
no means answering to our desires. Now I am wrecked; for the
multitudinous images of beauty which filled my mind forbade my seizing
upon one which I could have shaped. I often wished to give one to the
world, but the others came round and baffled me; and, moreover, I could
not leave the multitude of beauty for the sake of one beauty. Unless I
could embody all I would embody none.

"And, afterwards, when a cry came from man, 'Give one ray even of your
hoarded light to us,' and I tried for man's sake to select one, why,
then, mists came--old memories of a thousand sweetnesses, a storm of
images--till it was impossible to choose; and so I failed, and life is
ended.

"But could I live I would do otherwise. I would give a trifle out of
beauty, as an example by which men could guess the rest and love it all;
one strain from an angel's song; one flower from the distant land, that
men might know that such things were. Then, too, I would put common life
into loveliness, so t