I shall be one
Of all the misty, fresh and healing powers.
Dew I shall be, and fragrance of the morn,
And quietly shall lie dreaming all the noon,
Or oft shall sparkle underneath the moon,
A million times shall die and be reborn,
Because the sun again and yet again
Shall snatch me softly from the earth away:
I shall be rain;
I shall be spray;
At night shall oft among the misty shades
Pass dreamily across the open lea;
And I shall live in the loud cascades,
Pouring their waters into the sea.
... Nought can die:
All belongs to the living Soul,
Makes, and partakes, and is the whole,
All—and therefore, I.

So much then for the poet's cosmic theory, presented more or less directly. This explicit treatment may, as we see, give individual passages where thought and feeling are completely fused, and the idea gets itself born into a shape sufficiently concrete for the breath of poetry to live in it. But the final effect of such poems is apt to be dimmed by the shadow of controversy. A subtler method is used, however, justified in a finer type of art. In "Don Juan in Hell," for instance, there is a symbolical presentment of the theme: a conception of life which is a corollary from the poet's theory of the universe. Don Juan is here an incarnation of the vital forces of the world, of the positive value and power of life which is in eternal conflict with a religion of negation. And, a newcomer among the shades in Hell, he turns his scorn upon them for the lascivious passion which found it necessary to invent sin.

Light, light your fires,
That they may purify your own desires!
They will not injure me.
This fire of mine
Was kindled from the torch that will outshine
Eternity.

.....

Proud, you disclaim
That fair desire from which all came;
Unworthy of your lofty human birth,
Despise the earth.
O crowd funereal,
Lifting your anxious brows because of sin,
There is no Heaven such as you would win,
Nor any other Paradise at all,
Save in fulfilling some superb desire
With all the spirit's fire.

The same idea is woven into "Moon-worshippers," with delicate grace. It constitutes a precise charge, in the poem "To Tolstoi," that the great idealist has forsworn the 'holy way of life'; and, recurring in many forms more or less explicit, culminates in the charming allegory called "Children of Love." This is a later poem, mature in thought and masterly in form. The theme is by this time a familiar one to the poet: he has considered it deeply and often. And having gone through the crucible so many times, it is now of a fineness and plasticity to be handled with ease. It runs into the symbolism here so lightly as hardly to awaken an echo of afterthought, and shapes to an allegory much too winning to provoke controversy. The first two stanzas of the poem imagine the boy Jesus walking dreamily under the olives in the cool of the evening:

Suddenly came
Running along to him naked, with curly hair,
That rogue of the lovely world,
That other beautiful child whom the virgin Venus bare.

The holy boy
Gazed with those sad blue eyes that all men know.
Impudent Cupid stood
Panting, holding an arrow and pointing his bow.

(Will you not play?
Jesus, run to him, run to him, swift for our joy.
Is he not holy, like you?
Are you afraid of his arrows, O beautiful dreaming boy?)