The second phase of the poem opens with the Warrior’s tragic discovery that his innate sense of divinity is only comparative; that although he is Man in relation to the Ape, in his relation to the universe he is no more than Man-Ape gibbering upon the branches of the Eternal Forest; and that the sense of his own divinity is founded upon his superiority to the beasts of the field. In this tragic phase, the Warrior, overcome by disillusionment, alternately hacks himself with his sword, and at other times seeks to cast it away from him. Overcome by horror he faints in his weakness by the wayside, yet awakens from his hideous nightmare to find his body weltering in blood, and the sword, all hacked and jagged, still in his hand. The third phase is that in which the Warrior returns again to Earth, his rude mother, whom an overweening exaltation in his prowess has led him to forsake. Having returned to her as a babe, and lain at suck at the brown breasts of the sweet savage, she caresses him and croons her strange songs in his ears; and to give him pleasure and sustenance--because the Warrior whom she has long mourned as lost has ever been the favourite among all her children--she whispers to him as he lies again in her bosom that he is indeed divine. Girt by this forgiveness, and clad in the valour of his divinity once again, a new and ampler strength is given to the Warrior’s right hand. He learns for the first time in what manner to use his Sword. Yet no sooner does he learn so to do than he understands how Earth, his mother, has deceived him, in order that she may give pleasure to the favourite among all her children, who has returned to lie at her brown breasts. And the Warrior blesses her for the deception, as otherwise he could never have received the strength in his right hand; and without that strength he could not have learned to use the sword of his reason. The poem closes in the exaltation of an infinite pity and tenderness, for the Warrior, blind and spent and weak, with the Sword all broken and jagged upon his knees, has had his inquiries answered, and ceasing to struggle and to resent, in his concern for all his brothers who have not yet learned to use their swords, he defends their amazing formulas and shibboleths and extraordinary self-deceptions, whereby they seek to acquire the strength so to do. And in a passage of tender irony that has no parallel he entreats his poor brothers to continue to deceive themselves; and the Warrior concludes with an invocation to Earth, his mother, for her loving and wise deception, whereby the proudest of her sons has come to lie at peace.