hat the lowest hind would find me beside him to put
his weakest hope and fear into noble language. And as I thus lived with
men, and for them, I should win from them thoughts fitted for their
progress, the very commonest of which would come forth in beauty, for
they would have been born in a soul filled full of love. This should now
be my aim: no longer that desire to embrace the whole of beauty which
isolates a man from his fellows; but to realise enough of loveliness to
give pleasure to men who desire to love. Therefore, I should live, still
aspiring to the whole, still uncontent, but waiting for another life to
gain the whole; but at the same time content, for man's sake, to work
within the limitations of life; not grieving either for failure, because
love given and received makes failure pleasure. In truth, the failure to
grasp all on earth makes, if we love, the certainty of a success beyond
the earth."

And Paracelsus listening and applying what Aprile says to his old desire
to grasp, apart from men, the whole of knowledge as Aprile had desired
to grasp the whole of love, learns the truth at last, and confesses it:

Love me henceforth, Aprile, while I learn
To love; and, merciful God, forgive us both!
We wake at length from weary dreams; but both
Have slept in fairy-land: though dark and drear
Appears the world before us, we no less
Wake with our wrists and ankles jewelled still.
I too have sought to KNOW as thou to LOVE--
Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge.

We are halves of a dissevered world, and we must never part till the
Knower love, and thou, the Lover, know, and both are saved.

"No, no; that is not all," Aprile answers, and dies. "Our perfection is
not in ourselves but in God. Not our strength, but our weakness is our
glory. Not in union with me, with earthly love alone, will you find the
perfect life. I am not that you seek. It is God the King of Love, his
world beyond, and the infinite creations Love makes in it."

But Paracelsus does not grasp that last conclusion. He only understands
that he has left out love in his aim, and therefore failed. He does not
give up the notion of attainment upon earth. He cannot lose the first
imprint of his idea of himself--his lonely grasp of the whole of
Knowledge.

The next two parts of the poem do not strengthen much the main
thoughts. Paracelsus tries to work out the lesson learnt from Aprile--to
add love to knowledge,