claimed eternity, and death was the entrance into its enchanted realm.
When he did bring romantic feeling into human life, it was for the most
part in the hunger and thirst, which, as in _Abt Vogler_, urged men
beyond the visible into the invisible. But now and again he touched the
Romantic of Earth. _Childe Roland_, _The Flight of the Duchess_, and
some others, are alive with the romantic spirit.

But before I write of these, there are a few lyrical poems, written in
the freshness of his youth, which are steeped in the light of the
story-telling world; and might be made by one who, in the morning of
imagination, sat on the dewy hills of the childish world. They are full
of unusual melody, and are simple and wise enough to be sung by girls
knitting in the sunshine while their lovers bend above them. One of
these, a beautiful thing, with that touch of dark fate at its close
which is so common in folk-stories, is hidden away in _Paracelsus_.
"Over the sea," it begins:

Over the sea our galleys went,
With cleaving prows in order brave
To a speeding wind and a bounding wave,
A gallant armament:
Each bark built out of a forest-tree
Left leafy and rough as first it grew,
And nailed all over the gaping sides,
Within and without, with black bull-hides,
Seethed in fat, and suppled with flame,
To bear the playful billows' game.

It is made in a happy melody, and the curious mingling in the tale, as
it continues, of the rudest ships, as described above, with purple
hangings, cedar tents, and noble statues,

A hundred shapes of lucid stone,

and with gentle islanders from Graecian seas, is characteristic of
certain folk-tales, especially those of Gascony. That it is spoken by
Paracelsus as a parable of the state of mind he has reached, in which he
clings to his first fault with haughty and foolish resolution, scarcely
lessens the romantic element in it. That is so strong that we forget
that it is meant as a parable.

There is another song which touches the edge of romance, in which
Paracelsus describes how he will bury in sweetness the ideal aims he had
in youth, building a pyre for them of all perfumed things; and the last
lines of the verse I quote leave us in a castle of old romance--

And strew faint sweetness from some old
Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud
Which breaks to dust when once unrolled;
Or shredded perfume, like a cloud
From close