"Then like a hunted deer he turned upon his
thoughts and stood at bay," until
"The cold day
Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain,
When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again
Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed
As like the glorious shape that I had dreamed
As is the Moon, whose changes ever run
Into themselves, to the eternal Sun."
"The cold chaste moon" fails to satisfy the longing of his soul.
"At her silver voice came death and life"; hope and despondency,
expectation from her noble qualities, disappointment at the failure
of response, were feelings that sprang from the exaggerations of his
ideal longings.
"What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,
Blotting that Moon whose pale and waning lips
Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse!"
The whole passage is worth perusing; and again wrong interpretation
has been given to this portion of his writing. I am still more firmly
convinced that in the other case, when he says, "The planet of that
hour was quenched," he alludes to nothing more than the partial
failure of his own ideal requirements. At length into the obscure
forest came
"The vision I had sought through grief and shame.
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