The horizon being bounded by the grave, progress cut short by the approach of death, failure may become failure absolute, irremediable. What wonder, then, that the horror should "quicken still from year to year"; until the very terror itself demands relief in the imaginative creation of a future state. But for this there is no warrant; for the Greek all attainable satisfaction must be sought through the present phase of existence alone. IV. Cleon's answer to the question of Protus with regard to Death's aspect to the man of thought, whose works outlast his personal existence (ll. 274-335), is but an utterance of the cry of human nature in all times and in all places. Individuality must be preserved! In a moment of artistic fervour the poet may acquiesce in the fate by which his friend has become "a portion of the loveliness which once he made more lovely,"[41] but such acquiescence can only hold good where poetic imagination has overborne human affection. The soul of the man first, the poet afterwards, demands that Eternal form shall still divide Eternal soul from all beside, and that I shall _know_ him when we meet.[42] And what he claims for his friend, man requires also for himself. The individual soul, as at present constituted, cannot conceive of divesting itself of its own individuality, of becoming "merged in the general whole." As easy almost is it to conceive of annihilation. In hours of abstract thought such theories may be evolved, and in accordance with the mental constitution of the thinker, be rejected or honestly accepted; but when brought face to face with the issues of Life and Death, the heart, freeing itself from the trammels of intellectual sophistries, cries out, "I have felt"; and yearns for a creed which shall allow acceptance of a tenet involving future recognition and reunion, hence, by implication, preservation of individuality, and identity. Whatever his nominal creed, experience teaches us that man at supreme moments of life craves for some such satisfaction as this. It is, indeed, the Greek, materialist here rather than artist, who points out to Protus that, in his estimate of the joy of leaving "living works behind," he confounds "the accurate view of what joy is with feeling joy." Confounds The knowing how And showing how to live (my faculty) With actually living. Otherwise Where is the artist's vantage o'er the king? Because in my great epos I display How divers men young, strong, fair, wise, can act-- Is this as though I acted? If I paint, Carve the young Phoebus, am I therefore young? Methinks I'm older that I bowed myself The many years of pain that taught me art! * * * * * * * * * * I know the joy of kingship: well, thou art king! (ll. 281-300.)