This phoenix set on fire by the bright sun, Which slowly, slowly to extinction goes, The while she, girt with splendour burning lies; Yields to her star antagonistic fief Through that which towards the sky to Heaven ascends. Black smoke, and sombre fog of murky hue Concealing thus his radiance from our eyes, And veiling that which makes her burn and shine. And so my soul, illumined and inflamed By radiance divine, would fain display The brightness of her own effulgent thought; The lofty concept of her song sends forth. In words which do but hide the glorious light, [C]While I dissolve and melt and am destroyed. Ah me! this lowering cloud, this smoky fire of words Abases that which it would elevate. [C] But not till the whole personality of the man is dissolved and melted--not until it is held by the divine fragment which has created it, as a mere subject for the grave experiment and experience--not until the whole nature has yielded and become subject unto its higher self, can the bloom open.--("Light on the Path.") CES. This fellow then says that as this phoenix set on fire by the sun and accustomed to light and flame comes to send upwards that smoke which obscures him who has rendered her so luminous, so he, the inflamed and illuminated enthusiast, through that which he does in praise of such an illustrious subject which has warmed his heart and which shines in his thought, comes rather to conceal it than to render it light for light, sending forth that smoke the effect of the flame, in which the substance of himself is resolved. MAR. I, without weighing and comparing the studies of that fellow, repeat what I said to you the other day, that praise is one of the greatest oblations that human affection can offer to an object. And leaving on one side the proposition of the Divine, tell me, who would have known of Achilles, Ulysses, and all the other Greek and Trojan chiefs? Who would have heard of all those great soldiers, the wise and the heroes of the earth, if they had not been placed amongst the stars and deified by the oblation of praise which has lighted the fire on the altar of the heart of illustrious poets and other singers, so that usually, the sacrificant, the victim and the sanctified deity, all mounted to the skies, through the hand and the vow of a worthy and lawful priest?