The Masque contains a litany spoken by King Evelac, and responded to by the choristers at the Chapel of Graal, which is one of its achievements, in point of beauty, though too long to quote, and lyrics of great delicacy are scattered throughout the work; but in the more spiritual passages, spoken chiefly by Taliesin, one gets the finer quality of the verse, as in this noble query addressed to Uriel, the angel who holds the flaming sword before the Graal: Thou who beholdest God continually, Doth not his light shine even on the blind Who feel the flood they lack the sense to see? The lark that seeks him in the summer sky Finds there the great blue mirror of his soul; Winged with the dumb need of he knows not what, He finds the mute speech of he knows not whom. Is not the wide air, after the cocoon, As much God as the moth-soul can receive? Doth not God give the child within the womb Some guess to set him groping for the world, Some blurred reflection answering his desire? We, shut in this blue womb of doming sky, Guess and grope dimly for the vast of God, And, eyeless, through some vague, less perfect sense, Strive for a sign of what it is to see. Had one space to follow Mr. Hovey’s philosophy in the more metaphysical passages, though fashioned less artistically, the individuality of his thought in its subtler and more speculative phases would be revealed, but to trace it adequately one must needs have the volume before him, rather than such extracts as may be given in a brief study. I must therefore, in taking leave of his work, content myself with citing the exultant lines with which the volume closes, the splendid death-song lifting one on the wave of its ecstatic feeling: Unaware as the air of the light that fills full all its girth, Yet crowds not an atom of air from its place to make way; Growing from splendor to splendor, from birth to birth, As day to the rose of dawn from the earlier gray; As day from the sunrise gold to the luminous mirth Of morning, and brighter and brighter, till noon shall be; Intense as the cling of the sun to the lips of the earth, And cool as the call of a wind on the still of the sea, Joy, joy, joy in the height and the deep; Joy like the joy of a leaf that unfolds to the sun; Joy like the joy of a child in the borders of sleep; Joy like the joy of a multitude thrilled into one. * * * * * Stir in the dark of the stars unborn that desire Only the thrill of a wild, dumb force set free, Yearn of the burning heart of the world on fire For life and birth and battle and wind and sea, Groping of life after love till the spirit aspire, Into Divinity ever transmuting the clod, Higher and higher and higher and higher and higher Out of the Nothingness world without end into God.