In this passage may be found the solution to the whole question of the asceticism advocated. When the love thus expressed had been realized, the step was not a difficult one to the acceptance of the fuller revelation of Love in the Incarnation. And in this realization the highest aspect of life temporal would have been reached. Love, not abrogating the law would have served as its fulfilment. As the statements of Bishop Blougram are personal in relation to the treatment of doubt, so the speaker in Easter Day would make out a case for personal asceticism. Not advocating it as the ideal universal course, he would yet claim for it highest value as safeguarding his individual life. To him who is incapable of moderation, renunciation may become a necessity; yet, through renunciation, may be attained that higher life consisting in a grateful enjoyment and generous communication of all gifts of the Divine Love.
Of the other poems dealing with this subject indirectly or directly, Paracelsus, 1835, Rabbi Ben Ezra, 1864, Ferishtah’s Fancies, 1884, are sufficiently representative of the different periods of the poet’s literary life to render them valuable as illustrations of his mode of treatment. In the last, at least, we may be fairly confident that the decision given is his own.
In one aspect Paracelsus may be regarded as the history of a man of genius who marked out for himself a career of complete asceticism; of work apart from human sympathy, love, and friendship, as well as from all gratifications of the flesh. And the scheme was pursued unflinchingly—for a time—until the inevitable reaction set in, spirit and flesh alike avenging themselves for their temporary suppression. Not only are love and friendship found claiming their own, but
A host of petty wild delights, undreamed of
Or spurned before, (Par., iii, ll. 537-538.)
offer themselves to supply the place of what the earlier ascetic, in a moment of despairing self-contempt, terms his “dead aims.” The declaration at Colmar is made whilst the influence of reaction still prevails.
I will accept all helps; all I despised
So rashly at the outset, equally
With early impulses, late years have quenched.
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All helps! no one sort shall exclude the rest. (Par., iv, ll. 235-239.)
Only when he has learned from experience that human nature is not to be developed through suppression, that “its sign and note and character” are “Love, hope, fear, faith”—that “these make humanity,” only then can he fearlessly, as in youth, “press God’s lamp to [his] breast,” assured of the divine guidance and protection.
Sordello, so closely allied to Paracelsus in time of composition (pub. 1840, begun before Strafford, 1836), demands a brief reference since it has been especially singled out for notice in this connection as constituting “an indirect vindication of the conceptions of human life which Christmas Eve and Easter Day condemns.”[84] In the Sixth Book of Sordello the question of renunciation has become imminent and practical. It is the moment for decision. The imperial badge which he tells his soul “would suffer you improve your Now!” must be accepted or rejected: and with it the attendant temporal advantages. But the reflections occupying the poet’s mind, at this crisis of his fate, are akin to those following the Vision of the Judgment in Easter Day. Why not enjoy life to the full? Why treat it as a mere ante-room to the palace at the door of which stands the Usher, Death? Even accepting the simile
I, for one,
Will praise the world, you style mere ante-room
To palace.
········
Oh, ’twere too absurd to slight
For the hereafter the to-day’s delight.[85]
Yet the thought recurs, how often has the cup of life been set aside by “sage, champion, martyr,” to whom had been revealed the secret of that which “masters life.” To what causes is attributable the failure which he recognizes in reviewing his own Past? The soul, true inhabitant of the Infinite, has been unable to adapt itself to its lodgment in the body fitted, by its constitution, for Time only. Sorrow has been the inevitable result of the soul’s attempts at subjecting the body to its use. Sorrow to be avoided only when the employer shall