an give, this is the keynote of the poem.
It is composed of two parts, each of which is divided into five
dialogues: the first part, which may be called psychological, shows, by
means of various figures and symbols drawn from Nature, how the divine
light is always present to us, is inherent in man; it presents itself to
the senses and to the comprehension: man constantly rejects and ignores
it; sometimes the soul strives to rise up to it, and the poet describes
the struggle with the opposing affections which are involved in this
effort, and shows how at last the man of intelligence overcomes these
contending powers and fatal impulses which conflict within us, and by
virtue of harmony and the fusion of the opposites the intellect becomes
one with the affections, and man realizes the good and rises to the
knowledge of the true. All conflicting desires being at last united,
they become fixed upon one object, one great intent--the love of the
Divine, which is the highest truth and the highest good. In "Gli Eroici
Furori" we see Bruno as a man, as a philosopher, and as a believer: here
he reveals himself as the hero of thought. Even as Christ was the hero
of faith, and sacrificed himself for it, so Bruno declares himself ready
to sacrifice himself for science. It is also a literary, a
philosophical, and a religious work; form, however, is sacrificed to the
idea--so absorbed is the author in the idea that he often ignores form
altogether. An exile wandering from place to place, he wrote hurriedly
and seldom or ever had he the opportunity of revising what he had
written down. His mind in the impulsiveness of its improvisation was
like the volcano of his native soil, which, rent by subterranean
flames, sends forth from its vortices of fire, at the same time smoke,
ashes, turbid floods, stones, and lava. He contemplates the soul, and
seeks to understand its language; he is a physiologist and a naturalist,
merged in the mystic and the enlightened devotee.

Bruno might have made a fixed home for himself in England, as so many of
his compatriots had done, and have continued to enjoy the society of
such men as Sir Philip Sydney, Fulke Greville, and, perchance, also of
Shakespeare himself, who was in London about that time; but his
self-imposed mission allowed him no rest; he must go forth, and carry
his doctrines to the world, and forget the pleasures of friendship and
the ties of comfort in the larger love of humanity; his work was