to the poet's gaze,
incorporating it in deed and being, and to make it prevail, so far as
our lives have power, in the world of our life, is the task set for us.
To disengage reason from the confusion of things, and behold the eternal
forms of the mind; to unveil beauty in the transitory sights of our
eyes, and behold the eternal forms of sense; so to act that the will
within us shall take on this form of reason and our manifest life wear
this form of beauty; and, more closely, to live in the primary
affections, the noble passions, the sweet emotions,--

"Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities
Of father, son, and brother,--"

and also in the general sorrows of mankind, thereby, in joy and grief,
entering sympathetically into the hearts of common men; to keep in the
highway of life, not turning aside to the eccentric, the sensational,
the abnormal, the brutal, the base, but seeing them, if they must come
within our vision, in their place only by the edges of true life; and,
if, being men, we are caught in the tragic coil, to seek the restoration
of broken order, learning also in such bitterness better to understand
the dark conflict forever waging in the general heart, the terror of the
heavy clouds hanging on the slopes of our battle, the pathos that looks
down even from blue skies that have kept watch o'er man's
mortality,--so, even through failure, to draw nearer to our race; this,
as I conceive it, is to lead the ideal life. It is a message blended of
many voices of the poets whom Shelley called, whatever might be their
calamity on earth, the most fortunate of men; it rises from all lands,
all ages, all religions; it is the battle-cry of that one great idea
whose slow and hesitating growth is the unfolding of our long
civilization, seeking to realize in democracy the earthly, and in
Christianity the heavenly, hope of man,--the idea of the community of
the soul, the sameness of it in all men. To lead this life is to be one
with man through love, one with the universe through knowledge, one with
God through the will; that is its goal, toward that we strive, in that
we believe.

And Thou, O Youth, for whom these lines are written, fear not; idealize
your friend, for it is better to love and be deceived than not to love
at all; idealize your masters, and take Shelley and Sidney to your
bosom, so shall they serve you more nobly and you love them more sweetly
than if