‘The Fiend that man harries Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon Lit by rays from the Blest; The Lethe of nature Can’t trance him again, Whose soul sees the Perfect, Which his eyes seek in vain. ‘Profounder, profounder Man’s spirit must dive; To his aye-rolling orbit No goal will arrive; The heavens that now draw him, With sweetness untold, Once found,—for new heavens He spurneth the old. ‘Pride ruined the angels, Their shame then restores; And the joy that is sweetest Lurks in the stings of remorse. Have I a lover Who is noble and free? I would he were nobler Than to love me. ‘Eterne alternation, Now follows, now flies, Under pain, pleasure, Under pleasure, pain lies. Love works at the centre, Heart-heaving alway, Forth speed the strong pulses To the borders of day.’ “The ‘love of the Best’ is our innate and deathless desire of happiness, our being’s end and aim. Happiness is ever the coy maiden, that still woos us onward, and flies ever as pursued, ‘Man never is, but always to be blest.’ In this deep ever-recurring want of the soul for happiness, the source of all our pain and sorrow, is the spring and motive of all our activity, and in activity is all our life and joy. Hence, ‘under pain pleasure, under pleasure pain lies.’ All our life and joy have their root in pain and sorrow, in this eternal craving of the soul to be what we are not, and to have what we have not. The pain and sorrow spur us on, and lead us to acquire and possess. But no possession satisfies us. The most coveted is no sooner obtained than it is loathed and cast away. ‘The heavens that now draw him, With sweetness untold, Once found,—for new heavens He spurneth the old.’ “Love dies in the wooing. The acquiring is more than the possessing. All possessing leaves the heart empty,—an aching void within, which nothing fills or can fill. This aching void will not let us rest, will not leave us in repose, which is only another name for inaction, death, but compels us to exert ourselves, to struggle with all our strength and energy to make new acquisitions. In this struggle, in these efforts, humanity is developed, and the progress of the race carried on.” “Carried on, my dear Priscilla, towards what? Sings not your poet,