That we should join with God, and give the world
The go-bye: but the world meanwhile turns round,
And peeps us in the face-the wanton world!
We feel it gently pressing down our arm,

The arm we had raised to do for truth such wonders;
We feel it softly bearing on our side;

We feel it touch and thrill us through the body:
And we are fools, and there's an end of us.

We are originally but a wreck ;

There is nothing sound about us. End us, God!
It is a fine thought that sometime end we must.
There sets the sun of suns! dies in all fire,
Like Asher's death-great monarch. God of might!
We love and live on power. It is Spirit's end.
Mind must subdue. To conquer is its life.
Why madest thou not one spirit, like the sun,
To king the world? And O might I have been

That sun-mind, how I would have warmed the world
To love, and worship, and bright life!

If Coleridge, Wordsworth, Göthe, and Shelley had not existed, we should esteem such writing as this a miracle. What though the whole poem be a pile of nonsense, reducible to no form of logic? What! Is not the highest reason, nonsense? Nay, is not the beggarly understanding itself nonsense, though but one remove from sense? To these two faculties, namely, the understanding and reason, all that is sensible is subject; but they themselves transcend sense. Sense is their negation. They But we must correct ourselves. The higher faculties are all affirmative of the lower. Understanding and reason then are sense, though sense be neither. Let us therefore be cautious in our modes of speech; and being so, the result is, that no poem should be nonsense, and that poetry, however high, has a logic of its own; and that all apparent nonsense is the highest sense!

So too with the poem before us. It is an idealism; but let this be acknowledged, that the conception is strange, and that the sensuous form to which it is reduced is not common sense, but uncommon.

We meant to give specimens of the style of this poem, and we have wandered into digressions. Take some then-not digressions, but specimens.

How can the beauty of material things

So win the heart, and work upon the mind,
Unless like-natured with them? Are great things
And thoughts of the same blood? They have like effect.
The world must have great minds, even as great spheres
Or suns, to govern lesser restless minds,

While they stand still and burn with life; to keep
Them in their places, and to light and heat them.

-As we do not see the sun himself,

It is but the light about him, like a ring
Of glory round the forehead of a saint, so
God thou wilt never see. His naked love
Is terrible; so great, that saints dread more
To be forgiven than sinners do to die.

Faith's eye can look through hell,
And through the solid world, We must all think

On God. Yon water must reflect the sky.
Midnight! Day hath too much light for us
To see things spiritually. Mind and night
Will meet, though in silence, like forbidden lovers,
With whom, to see each other's sacred form
Must satisfy.

Spirit is like the thread whereon are strung
The beads or worlds of life.

The following lines give the poet's idea of Lucifer :

It is not for me to know, nor thee, the end
Of evil. I inflict, and thou must hear.
The arrow knoweth not its end and aim.
And I keep rushing, ruining along,

Like a great river, rich with dead men's souls.
For if I knew, I might rejoice; and that
To me by nature is forbidden. I know
Nor joy, nor sorrow; but a changeless tone
Of sadness, like the nightwind's is the strain
Of what I have of feeling. I am not
As other spirits, but a solitude

Even to myself; I the sole spirit, sole.
Mortality is mine: the green

Unripened universe. But as the fruit

Matures, and world by world drops mellowed off
The wrinkling stalk of time, as thine own race
Hath seen of stars now vanished; all is hid

From me.

Take some more fancies-feelings-figures.

Night brings out stars, as sorrow shews us truths;
Though many, yet they help not; bright, they light not.
They are too late to serve us and sad things
Are aye too true. We never see the stars,

Till we can see nought but them. So with truth, &c.
Stringing the stars at random round her head

Like a pearl network; there she sits; bright Night!
I love Night more than Day: she is so lovely.
Night hath made many bards: she is so lovely:
For it is beauty maketh poesie,

And from the dancing eye come tears of light.
The beautiful are never desolate;

But some one always loves them; God or man.

O she was fair! her nature once all spring,
And deadly beauty like a maiden sword;
Startlingly beautiful!

Ye waters! I have loved ye well. In youth
And childhood it hath been my life to drift
Across ye lightly as a leaf; or skim

Your waves in yon skiff swallow-like; or lie
Like a loved locket on your sunny bosom.
Could I, like you, by looking in myself,
Find mine own heaven-farewell!

All this must end; must pass; drop down
Oblivion like a pebble in a pit :

For God shall lay his hand upon the earth,
And crush it up like a red leaf.

N. S.-VOL. II.

L L

The author, we perceive, gives in to the fictions of the geologists. He makes Lucifer assert

I can remember well when earth was all

A creeping mass alive with shapeless things:

And when there were but three things in the world-
Monsters, mountains, and water: before age
Had thickened the eyes of stars; and while the sea,
Rejoicing like a ring of saints round God,

Or heaven on heaven about some new born sun,
In its sublime same-soundedness, laughed out,
And cried not I! I never rest like God!

Angela is Festus' first love, but she is in heaven, whither Lucifer promises, at some time or other, to transport Festus. Meanwhile, the latter amuses himself with Clara, with whom we find him in company in an Alcove or Garden. The lady seems to have no objection to religion -but much to its forms.

What to the faith are forms? They are but like
A passing speck; a crow upon the sky.

She likewise loves Festus' soul, and would save it. that he loves Death.

But Immortality, with finger spired,

Points to a distant, giant world; and says,
There, there is my home; live along with me!

Clara. Canst see that world?

Festus. Just a huge shadowy shape;

It looks a disembodied orb: the ghost

Festus answers

Of some great sphere which God hath stricken dead:
Or like a world which God hath thought, not made.

Clara is much astonished at the magical power of her lover, but hopes that it comes from good hands. In the next scene, Festus wishes to part company from Lucifer-and does. They meet, however, again in a market place in a country town, and speculate on the mean employ ments in which men engage immortal energies. A funeral passes-it is of a maiden whom Festus himself had deserted. Festus moralisesLucifer becomes sportive, and preaches a mock sermon to the crowd. Some images in this discourse are extraordinary; e. g.

Fold your souls up neatly, while ye may;
Direct to God in heaven; or some one else

May seize them, seal them, send them-you know where.
Belike ye think your lives will dribble out,

As brooks in summer dry up. Let us see!

Try dike them up: they stagnate—thicken—scum.

:

That would make life worse than death.

Leave off these airs:

Know your place; speak to God; and say, for once,
Go first, Lord! Take your finger off your eye!
It blocks the universe and God from sight.
Think ye your souls are nothing worth to God?
Are they so small? What can be great with God?
What will ye write against the Lord? Yourselves!
Bring out your balance, get in, man by man :
Add earth, heaven, hell, the universe; that is all.
God puts his finger in the other scale,
And up we bounce, a bubble.

Well might He say He cometh as a thief;

For he will break your bars, and burst your doors
Which slammed against him once, and turn ye out
Roofless and shivering beneath the doom-storm, heaven
Shall crack above ye like a bell in fire,

And bury all beneath its shining shards.

All are devils to themselves;

And every man his own great foe. Hell gets
Only the gleanings: Earth hath the full wain;
And hell is merry at its harvest home.
But ye are generous to sin, and grudge
The gleaners nothing: ask them, push them in.
Let not an ear, a grain of sin be lost;

Gather it, grind it up; it is our bread.

We should be ashamed to waste the gifts of God.

Thus proceeds his eccentric oration, until, at length, in his ranting vein, he is afraid that he may have frightened his listeners to their good. He therefore resolves to "rub them backwards like a cat," adding to Festus

ONE says,

I think you are;

You look as if you lived on buttered thunder.

In the next speech, he so insults the crowd, that they rise into strife, which he calms by giving out a hymn concerning earth cheating earth -hell cursing hell-and heaven blessing heaven. The multitude disperse-Festus speculates on town and country, preferring the latter. Lucifer replies ramblingly

It is time that something should be done for the poor.
The sole equality on earth is death;

Now rich and poor are both dissatisfied.

I am for judgment that will settle both.
Nothing is to be done without destruction.
Death is the universal salt of states;

Blood is the base of all things; law and war.

I could tame this lion age to follow me.

I should like to macadamise the world;

The road to hell wants mending.

The next scene is called an Hour's Ride. We give the beginning.

Lucifer. Wilt ride?

Festus. I will have an hour's ride.

Lucifer. Be mine the steeds! be me the guide!

Come hither, come hither,

My brave black steed!

And thou, too, his fellow,
Hither with speed!
Though not so fleet
As the steeds of death,
Your feet are as sure,
Ye have longer breath.

Ye have drawn the world,
Without wind or bait,
Six thousand years,
And it waxeth late:
So take us this once,
And then ye shall home,
And rest ye, and feast ye.
They come! they come!
Festus. Tossing their manes like
Pitchy surge; and lashing
Their tails into a

Tempest; their eyes flashing,

Like shooting thunder-bolts.

Lucifer. Come, know your masters, colts!

Up, and away!

And away they speed-to France-to Spain-to Italy-to Greeceto Switzerland-to Germany-to Austria-to Poland-to Russia-to Tartary to China-to Hindostan-to Africa-to America-and back to England. Such is their hour's ride; after which we find the tempter and the tempted at a village feast together-time, evening. Festus meets with a blind old man whom he had known, but who now knows him not. Certain loving couples advance, the last of whom are notice

Woman. Yes, him there. You fell your man!

And now I am revenged. I love you now.
The wincing jade! It is her I hate; not him.
She feels it most.

Constable. I want you. Off with him!

Woman. O let him be! Take me! I made him do it!

Whereupon Lucifer sarcastically remarks, "Behold the happiness of which thou spakest." For Festus at first had remarked on the scene as follows::

We will rest upon this bridge. I am tired.

Yon tall, slim tree! does it not seem as made
For its place there? A kind of natural May-pole,
Beyond, the lighted stalls stored with the good
Things of our childhood's world; and behind them,
The shouting showman, and the clashing cymbal ;
The open-doored cottages and blazing hearths;

The little ones running up with naked feet,

And cake in either hand, to their mothers' laps.

Old and young laughing; schoolboys with their playthings;
Clowns cracking jokes; and lasses with sly eyes,

And the smile settling in their sun-flecked cheeks,

Like noon upon the mellow apricot,

Make up a scene I can, for once, give in to.
It must please all, the social and the selfish;

The island-hearted, and the continent,

Are they not happy?

But now the same Festus exclaims-" This is a snakelike world, and