pale, and all thy soul be true
To Man's great Sympathy.

13

But in the Ideal realm, aloof and far,
Where the calm Art's pure dwellers are,
Lo, the Laocoon writhes, but does not groan.
Here, no sharp grief the high emotion knows--
Here, suffering's self is made divine, and shows
The brave resolve of the firm soul alone:
Here, lovely as the rainbow on the dew
Of the spent thunder-cloud, to Art is given,
Gleaming through Grief's dark veil, the peaceful blue
Of the sweet Moral Heaven.

[Footnote 9: The Law, i.e. the Kantian ideal of Truth and Virtue.
This stanza and the next embody, perhaps with some exaggeration, the
Kantian doctrine of morality.]

14

So, in the glorious parable, behold
How, bow'd to mortal bonds, of old
Life's dreary path divine Alcides trode:
The hydra and the lion were his prey,
And to restore the friend he loved to day,
He went undaunted to the black-brow'd God;
And all the torments and the labours sore
Wroth Juno sent--meek majestic One,
With patient spirit and unquailing, bore,
Until the course was run--

15

Until the God cast down his garb of clay,
And rent in hallowing flame away
The mortal part from the divine--to soar
To the empyreal air! Behold him spring
Blithe in the pride of the unwonted wing,
And the dull matter that confined before
Sinks downward, downward, downward as a dream!
Olympian hymns receive the escaping soul,
And smiling Hebe, from the ambrosial stream,
Fills for a God the bowl!

* * * * *

THE FAVOUR OF THE MOMENT.

And so we find ourselves once more
A ring, though varying yet serene,
The wreaths of song we wove of yore
Again we'll weave as fresh and green.
But who the God to whom we bring
The earliest tribute song can treasure?
Him, first of all the Gods, we sing
Whose blessing to ourselves is--pleasure!
For boots it on the votive shrine
That Ceres life itself bestows
Or liberal Bacchus gives the wine
That through the glass in purple glows--
If still there come not from the heaven
The spark that sets the hearth on flame;
If to the soul no fire is given,
And the sad heart remain the same?
Sudden as from the clouds must fall,
As from the lap of God, our bliss--
And still the mightiest lord of all,
Monarch of Time, the MOMENT is!
Since endless Nature first b