He may blame the prodigal expense of language, and the long spaces which the poet takes up to produce his effect. He may often dislike or distrust the moral aspect of the poet's impartial sensitiveness to all outward beauty,--the impartiality which makes him throw all his strength into his pictures of Acrasia's Bower of Bliss, the Garden of Adonis, and Busirane's Masque of Cupid. But there is no gainsaying the beauty which never fails and disappoints, open the poem where you will. There is no gainsaying its variety, often so unexpected and novel. Face to face with the Epicurean idea of beauty and pleasure is the counter-charm of purity, truth, and duty. Many poets have done justice to each one separately. Few have shown, with such equal power, why it is that both have their roots in man's divided nature, and struggle, as it were, for the mastery. Which can be said to be the most exquisite in all beauty of imagination, of refined language, of faultless and matchless melody, of these two passages, in which the same image is used for the most opposite purposes;--first, in that song of temptation, the sweetest note in that description of Acrasia's Bower of Bliss, which, as a picture of the spells of pleasure, has never been surpassed; and next, to represent that stainless and glorious purity which is the professed object of his admiration and homage. In both the beauty of the rose furnishes the theme of the poet's treatment. In the first, it is the "lovely lay" which meets the knight of Temperance amid the voluptuousness which he is come to assail and punish. The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay: Ah! see, whoso fayre thing doest faine to see, In springing flowre the image of thy day. Ah! see the Virgin Rose, how sweetly shee Doth first peepe foorth with bashfull modestee, That fairer seemes the lesse ye see her may. Lo! see soone after how more bold and free Her bared bosome she doth broad display; Lo! see soone after how she fades and falls away. So passeth, in the passing of a day, Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre; Ne more doth florish after first decay, That earst was sought to deck both bed and bowre Of many a lady, and many a Paramowre. Gather therefore the Rose whilest yet is prime, For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre; Gather the Rose of love whilest yet is time, Whilest loving thou mayst loved be with equall crime. In the other, it images the power of the will--that power over circumstance and the storms of passion, to command obedience to reason and the moral law, which Milton sung so magnificently in _Comus_:--