obscure;--
"it is a specimen," says the critic we have just quoted, "of those
poems which were the immediate results of Schiller's metaphysical
studies. Here the subject is purely supersensual, and does not
descend to the earth at all. The very tendency of the poem is to
recommend a life not in the actual world, but in the world of
appearances [5]--that is, in the aesthetical world."

It requires considerable concentration of mind to follow its
meaning through the cloud of its dark and gigantic images. Schiller
desired his friend Humboldt to read it in perfect stillness, 'and
put away from him all that was profane.' Humboldt, of course,
admired it prodigiously; and it is unquestionably full of thought
expressed with the power of the highest genius. But, on the other
hand, its philosophy, even for a Poet or Idealist, is more than
disputable, and it incurs the very worst fault which a Poet can
commit, viz. obscurity of idea as well as expression. When the Poet
sets himself up for the teacher, he must not forget that the
teacher's duty is to be clear; and the higher the mystery he would
expound, the more pains he should bestow on the simplicity of the
elucidation. For the true Poet does not address philosophical
coteries, but an eternal and universal public. Happily this fault is
rare in Schiller, and more happily still, his great mind did not
long remain a groper amidst the 'Realm of Shadow.' The true Ideal is
quite as liable to be lost amidst the maze of metaphysics, as in the
actual thoroughfares of work-day life. A plunge into Kant may do
more harm to a Poet than a walk through Fleet Street. Goethe, than
whom no man had ever more studied the elements of the diviner art,
was right as an artist in his dislike to the over-cultivation of the
aesthetical. The domain of the Ideal is the heart, and through the
heart it operates on the soul. It grows feebler and dimmer in
proportion as it seeks to rise above human emotion.... Longinus does
not err, when he asserts that Passion (often erroneously translated
Pathos) is the best part of the Sublime.)

[Footnote 5: Rather, according to Aesthetical Philosophy, is the
_actual_ world to be called the _world of appearances_, and the
Ideal the world of substance.]

TO THE IDEAL.

Then wilt thou, with thy fancies holy--
Wilt thou, faithless, fly from me?
With thy joy, thy melancholy,
Wilt thou thus relentless flee?
O Golden Time, O Human May,
Can nothin