ose is the ever-present
energy; the last is always first.

Nor does the poet shrink from calling this highest, this last which is
also first, by its highest name,--God.

"He dwells in all,
From, life's minute beginnings, up at last
To man--the consummation of this scheme
Of being, the completion of this sphere
Of life."[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]

"All tended to mankind," he said, after reviewing the whole process of
nature in _Paracelsus_,

"And, man produced, all has its end thus far:
But in completed man begins anew
A tendency to God."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

There is nowhere a break in the continuity. God is at the beginning, His
rapturous presence is seen in all the processes of nature, His power and
knowledge and love work in the mind of man, and all history is His
revelation of Himself.

The gap which yawns for ordinary thought between animate and inanimate,
between nature and spirit, between man and God, does not baffle the
poet. At the stage of human life, which is "the grand result" of
nature's blind process,

"A supplementary reflux of light,
Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains
Each back step in the circle."[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

Nature is retracted into thought, built again in mind.

"Man, once descried, imprints for ever
His presence on all lifeless things."[D]

[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]

The self-consciousness of man is the point where "all the scattered rays
meet"; and "the dim fragments," the otherwise meaningless manifold, the
dispersed activities of nature, are lifted into a kosmos by the activity
of intelligence. In its light, the forces of nature are found to be, not
blind nor purposeless, but "hints and previsions"

"Strewn confusedly everywhere about
The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,
All shape out dimly the superior race,
The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,
And man appears at last."[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]

In this way, and in strict accordance with the principle of evolution,
the poet turns back at each higher stage to re-illumine in a broader
light what went before,--just as we know the seedling after it is grown;
just as, with every advance in life, we interpret the past anew, and
turn the mixed ore of action into pure metal by the reflection which
draws the false from the true.

"Youth ended, I shall try
My gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what surviv