Coming down to the present, we ask if these mystic influences of light and of darkness still retain their power. Can we doubt it? We have Milton's Melancholy, "of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born"--"where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings." All this no mere refurbishing of classical lore, but the outcome of deep sympathy with the poets of the prime. And the same is true of his buoyant lines that describe the breaking of the day, when morn "Waked by the circling hours, with rosy hand Unbarr'd the gates of light." In sympathy, too, with the old belief in Ahura's final victory is Emerson's declaration that "the night is for the day, but the day is not for the night." Browning finely discriminates the grades of darkness in Sordello, where he addresses Dante as "pacer of the shore Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom, Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume; Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope Into a darkness quieted by hope; Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye In gracious twilights where His chosen lie." Homer and Job are at one in associating darkness with the grave, and all that the grave implies. "Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death." Homer and Ecclesiastes are one in love of the sunlit sky: "Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun." And Shakespeare in fullest sympathy cries: "See how the sun Walks o'er the top of yonder eastern hill." And sunrises and sunsets wake in Wordsworth's soul the thought of "The light that never was on sea or land." And it is the world-old feeling of life and joy that breathes in Blake's lines "To Morning": "O holy virgin! clad in purest white, Unlock heaven's golden gates and issue forth; Awake the dawn that sleeps in heaven; let light Rise from the chambers of the east, and bring The honey'd dew that cometh on waking day. O radiant morning, salute the sun, Roused like a huntsman to the chase, and with Thy buskin'd feet appear upon our hills."