ent which is mine to give, had grown up to the full vigour of a
manly spirit? And yet I had bestowed such armour on thee as would have
proved an invincible defence, hadst thou not first cast it away. Dost
thou know me? Why art thou silent? Is it shame or amazement that hath
struck thee dumb? Would it were shame; but, as I see, a stupor hath
seized upon thee.' Then, when she saw me not only answering nothing, but
mute and utterly incapable of speech, she gently touched my breast with
her hand, and said: 'There is no danger; these are the symptoms of
lethargy, the usual sickness of deluded minds. For awhile he has
forgotten himself; he will easily recover his memory, if only he first
recognises me. And that he may do so, let me now wipe his eyes that are
clouded with a mist of mortal things.' Thereat, with a fold of her robe,
she dried my eyes all swimming with tears.

SONG III.

THE MISTS DISPELLED.

Then the gloom of night was scattered,
Sight returned unto mine eyes.
So, when haply rainy Caurus
Rolls the storm-clouds through the skies,
Hidden is the sun; all heaven
Is obscured in starless night.
But if, in wild onset sweeping,
Boreas frees day's prisoned light,
All suddenly the radiant god outstreams,
And strikes our dazzled eyesight with his beams.

III.

Even so the clouds of my melancholy were broken up. I saw the clear sky,
and regained the power to recognise the face of my physician.
Accordingly, when I had lifted my eyes and fixed my gaze upon her, I
beheld my nurse, Philosophy, whose halls I had frequented from my youth
up.

'Ah! why,' I cried, 'mistress of all excellence, hast thou come down
from on high, and entered the solitude of this my exile? Is it that
thou, too, even as I, mayst be persecuted with false accusations?'

'Could I desert thee, child,' said she, 'and not lighten the burden
which thou hast taken upon thee through the hatred of my name, by
sharing this trouble? Even forgetting that it were not lawful for
Philosophy to leave companionless the way of the innocent, should I,
thinkest thou, fear to incur reproach, or shrink from it, as though
some strange new thing had befallen? Thinkest thou that now, for the
first time in an evil age, Wisdom hath been assailed by peril? Did I not
often in days of old, before my servant Plato lived, wage stern warfare
with the rashness of folly? In his lifetime, too, Socrates, his master,
won