n's gloomy night;
Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze,--
The glad deep sparkled wide and bright--
White as the sun, far, far more fair
Than its divided sources were!

And even for that spirit, seer,
I've watched and sought my lifetime long;
Sought him in heaven, hell, earth and air,
An endless search and always wrong.
Had I but seen his glorious eye
_Once_ light the clouds that 'wilder me,
I ne'er had raised this coward cry
To cease to think, and cease to be;
I ne'er had called oblivion blest,
Nor, stretching eager hands to death,
Implored to change for senseless rest
This sentient soul, this living breath--
Oh, let me die--that power and will
Their cruel strife may close,
And conquered good and conquering ill
Be lost in one repose!

That vision of the transcendent spirit, with the mingled triple flood of
life about his feet, is one that Blake might have seen and sung and
painted.

The fourth poem, "The Prisoner", is a fragment, and an obscure fragment,
which may belong to a very different cycle. But whatever its place, it
has the same visionary quality. The vision is of the woman captive,
"confined in triple walls", the "guest darkly lodged", the "chainless
soul", that defies its conqueror, its gaoler, and the spectator of its
agony. It has, this prisoner, its own unspeakable consolation, the
"Messenger":

He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars.
Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,
And visions rise and change that kill me with desire.

* * * * *

But, first, a hush of peace--a soundless calm descends;
The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends;
Mute music soothes my breast--unuttered harmony,
That I could never dream, till earth was lost to me.

Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;
My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels:
Its wings are almost free--its home, its harbour found,
Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound.

That is the language of a mystic, of a mystic who has passed beyond
contemplation; who has known or imagined ecstasy. The joy is
unmistakable; unmistakable, too, is the horror of the return:

Oh! dreadful is the check--intense the agony--
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begin