ugh life. A warm poetic joy in everything beautiful, whether it be
a moral sentiment, like the friendship of Roland and Leoline, or only
the flakes of falling light from the water-snakes--this joy, visiting
him, now and again, after sickly dreams, in sleep or waking, as a
relief not to be forgotten, [102] and with such a power of felicitous
expression that the infection of it passes irresistibly to the
reader--such is the predominant element in the matter of his poetry, as
cadence is the predominant quality of its form. "We bless thee for our
creation!" he might have said, in his later period of definite
religious assent, "because the world is so beautiful: the world of
ideas--living spirits, detached from the divine nature itself, to
inform and lift the heavy mass of material things; the world of man,
above all in his melodious and intelligible speech; the world of living
creatures and natural scenery; the world of dreams." What he really
did say, by way of A Tombless Epitaph, is true enough of himself--

Sickness, 'tis true,
Whole years of weary days, besieged him close,
Even to the gates and inlets of his life!
But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm,
And with a natural gladness, he maintained
The citadel unconquered, and in joy
Was strong to follow the delightful Muse.
For not a hidden path, that to the shades
Of the beloved Parnassian forest leads,
Lurked undiscovered by him; not a rill
There issues from the fount of Hippocrene,
But he had traced it upward to its source,
Through open glade, dark glen, and secret dell,
Knew the gay wild flowers on its banks, and culled
Its med'cinable herbs. Yea, oft alone,
Piercing the long-neglected holy cave,
The haunt obscure of old Philosophy,
He bade with lifted torch its starry walls
Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame

[103]

Of odorous lamps tended by saint and sage.
O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts!
O studious Poet, eloquent for truth!
Philosopher! contemning wealth and death,
Yet docile, childlike, full of Life and Love.

The student of empirical science asks, Are absolute principles
attainable? What are the limits of knowledge? The answer he receives
from science itself is not ambiguous. What the moralist asks is, Shall
we gain or lose by surrendering human life to the relative spirit?
Experience answers that the dominant tendency of life is to turn
ascertained truth into a dead l