Since 'tis not to be had at home, She'l travel to a martyrdome. No home for her confesses she, But where she may a martyr be. She'l to the Moores, and trade with them For this invalued diadem, She offers them her dearest breath With Christ's name in't, in change for death. She'l bargain with them, and will give Them God, and teach them how to live In Him, or if they this deny, For Him she'l teach them how to die. So shall she leave amongst them sown, The Lord's blood, or, at least, her own. Farewell then, all the world--adieu, Teresa is no more for you: Farewell all pleasures, sports and joys, Never till now esteemed toys-- Farewell whatever dear'st may be, Mother's arms or father's knee; Farewell house, and farewell home, She's for the Moores and martyrdom. These verses were ever present to my mind whilst writing the second part of _Christabel_; if, indeed, by some subtle process of the mind they did not suggest the first thought of the whole poem.--Poetry, as regards small poets, may be said to be, in a certain sense, conventional in its accidents and in its illustrations; thus Crashaw uses an image:-- As sugar melts in tea away, which, although _proper then_, and _true now_, was in bad taste at that time equally with the present. In Shakspeare, in Chaucer there was nothing of this. The wonderful faculty which Shakspeare above all other men possessed, or rather the power which possessed him in the highest degree, of anticipating everything, evidently is the result--at least partakes--of meditation, or that mental process which consists in the submitting to the operation of thought every object of feeling, or impulse, or passion observed _out_ of it. I would be willing to live only as long as Shakspeare were the mirror to nature. * * * * * What can be finer in any poet than that beautiful passage in Milton-- ----Onward he moved And thousands of his saints around. This is grandeur, but it is grandeur without completeness: but he adds-- Far off their coming shone; which is the highest sublime. There is _total_ completeness. So I would say that the Saviour praying on the Mountain, the Desert on one hand, the Sea on the other, the city at an immense distance below, was sublime. But I should say of the Saviour looking towards the City, his countenance full of pity, that he was majestic, and of the situation that it was grand.