But, above all, there is the character of the fiddler. At first glance, the phenomenon looks common enough and all its meaning obvious. "A wastrel" one would say, glibly defining the phenomenon; and add "a _drunken_ wastrel," believing that we had explained it. But the poet sees further, apprehends more and understands better. Drunken indeed, but an intoxication older and more divine than that of brandy began the business; and much brandy had not quenched the elder fire. It flamed in him still, mostly a sinister glow, fed from his bad and sorrowful past, but leaping on occasion to fair radiance, as in the talk with his unknown son, when some magnetic influence drew the two blind men together and made them friends before they had any knowledge of relationship. Of the many finer touches in this poem, none is more delicate and none more moving than the suggestion of unconscious affinity between these two: the idiot, with his half-awake mind, groping amidst shadows of ideas which to the older man are quick with inspiration. SON. What are words? TRAMP. God's love! Here's a man after my own heart; We must be brothers, lad. But besides his dramatic and psychological interest, the fiddler is important because he seems to represent the poet's philosophy in its brief iconoclastic phase. For we find placed in his lips a destructive satire of the old theological doctrine of Good and Evil. The passage is too long to quote, and it would be unfair to mutilate it. Incidentally we may note, however, the keen salt humour of it, and how that quality establishes the breadth and sanity of the poet's outlook. The point of peculiar interest at the moment is that this phase passes with the particular poem--an early one; and thenceforward it is replaced by more constructive thought. We come to "The Fool's Adventure," for instance, and find the "Seeker" travelling through all the regions of mind and spirit to find God, and the nature and cause of sin. His quest brings him first to the Self of the World, and he believes that this is God. But the Sage corrects him: ... Poor fool, And didst thou think this present sensible world Was God?... ..... It is a name, ... The name Lord God chooses to go by, made In languages of stars and heavens and life. And when, finally, he has won through to a certain palace at the "verge of things," he cries his question to the unseen king within. SEEKER. Then thou art God? WITHIN. Ay, many call me so. And yet, though words were never large enough To take me made, I have a better name. SEEKER. Then truly, who art thou? WITHIN. I am Thy Self.