light,
Blinding the eyes and lumining the sprite.

Then shalt thy ravished soul inspired be
With heavenly thoughts far above human skill, _reason._
And thy bright radiant eyes shall plainly see
The Idea of his pure glory present still
Before thy face, that all thy spirits shall fill
With sweet enragement of celestial love,
Kindled through sight of those fair things above.

There is a companion to the poem of which these verses are a portion,
called _An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie_, filled like this, and like two
others on Beauty and Love, with Platonic forms both of thought and
expression; but I have preferred quoting a longer part of the former to
giving portions of both. My reader will recognize in the extract a fuller
force of intellect brought to bear on duty; although it would be unwise
to take a mind like Spenser's for a type of more than the highest class
of the age. Doubtless the division in the country with regard to many of
the Church's doctrines had its part in bringing out and strengthening
this tendency to reasoning which is so essential to progress. Where
religion itself is not the most important thing with the individual, all
reasoning upon it must indeed degenerate into strifes of words,
_vermiculate_ questions, as Lord Bacon calls them--such, namely, as like
the hoarded manna reveal the character of the owner by breeding of
worms--yet on no questions may the light of the candle of the Lord, that
is, the human understanding, be cast with greater hope of discovery than
on those of religion, those, namely, that bear upon man's relation to God
and to his fellow. The most partial illumination of this region, the very
cause of whose mystery is the height and depth of its _truth_, is of more
awful value to the human being than perfect knowledge, if such were
possible, concerning everything else in the universe; while, in fact, in
this very region, discovery may bring with it a higher kind of conviction
than can accompany the results of investigation in any other direction.
In these grandest of all thinkings, the great men of this time showed a
grandeur of thought worthy of their surpassing excellence in other
noblest fields of human labour. They thought greatly because they aspired
greatly.

Sir Walter Raleigh was a personal friend of Edmund Spenser. They were
almost of the same age, the former born in 1552, the latter in the
following year. A writer of magnificent pros