_Who knows but the world may end to-night?_"[285:1]

Now the moment comes in which he lifts her to the saddle. It is as if he
had drawn down upon his breast the fairest, most celestial cloud in
evening-skies . . . a cloud touched gloriously at once by setting sun
and rising moon and evening-star.

"Down on you, near and yet more near,
Till flesh must fade for heaven was here--
Thus leant she and lingered--joy and fear!
Thus lay she a moment on my breast."

And then they begin to ride. His soul smooths itself out--there shall be
no repining, no questioning: he will take the whole of his hour.

"Had I said that, had I done this,
So might I gain, so might I miss.
Might she have loved me? just as well
She might have hated, who can tell!

* * * * *

And here we are riding, she and I."

_He_ is not the only man who has failed. All men strive--who succeeds?
His enfranchised spirit seems to range the universe--everywhere the
_done_ is petty, the undone vast; everywhere men dream beyond their
powers:

"I hoped she would love me; here we ride!"

No one gains all. Hand and brain are never equal; hearts, when they can
greatly conceive, fail in the greatest courage; nothing we do is just
what we dreamed it might be. We are hedged in everywhere by the fleshly
screen. But _they_ two ride, and he sees her bosom lift and fall. . . .
To the rest, then, their crowns! To the statesman, ten lines, perhaps,
which contain the fruit of all his life; to a soldier, a flag stuck on a
heap of bones--and as guerdon for each, a name scratched on the Abbey
stones.

"My riding is better, by their leave!"

Even our artists! The poet says the thing, but we feel it. Not one of us
can express it like him; but has he _had_ it? When he dies, will he have
been a whit nearer his own sublimities than the lesser spirits who have
never turned a line?

"Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride."

(Note the fine irony here. The poet shall sing the joy of riding; this
man _rides_.)

The great sculptor, too, with his twenty years' slavery to Art:

"And that's your Venus, whence we turn
To yonder girl that fords the burn!"

But the sculptor, with his insight, acquiesces, so this man need not
pity him. The musician fares even worse. After _his_ life's labours,
they say (even his friends say) that the opera is great in intention,
but fa