Song I
1-3. Cassia is an unidentified fragrant plant; the wood of the sandal tree is also fragrant; labdanum or ladanum, is a resinous gum of dark color and pungent odor, exuding from various species of the cistus, a plant found around the Mediterranean; aloe-balls are made from a bitter resinous juice extracted from the leaves of aloe-plants; nard is an ointment made from an aromatic plant and used in the East Indies. These substances have long been traditionally associated in literature. In Psalms xlv, 8 we read: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad." Milton in Paradise Lost, v, 293, speaks of "flowering odors, cassia, nard, and balms."
4. Such balsam. The meaning of II. 4-8 is obscure. "Sea-side mountain pedestals" are presumably cliffs. In the tops of the trees on these cliffs the wind, weary of its rough work on the ocean, has gently dropped the fragrant things it has swept up from the island.
9-16. In this stanza the faint sweetness from the spices used in embalming, and the perfume still clinging to the tapestry in an ancient royal room carry suggestions of vanished power and beauty that add an appropriate pathos to the richly piled altar on which Paracelsus is to offer up the "lovely fancies" of his youth. "Shredded" is a transferred epithet, referring really to "arras," but transferred to the perfume of the arras.
Song II. (Book IV)
When Paracelsus confesses the failure of his pursuit of absolute knowledge, his friend Festus urges him to redeem the past by making new use of what he has gained; but Paracelsus has no courage to attempt a reorganization of his life in accordance with a new ideal. His answer to Festus is the second of the three songs. He afterwards calls it,
"The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung
To their first fault and withered in their pride."
The song is a beautiful and clear allegory, vivid in its pictures, rapid and musical.
Song III. (Book V)
In Book V Paracelsus is described as lying ill in the Hospital of St. Sebastian. Festus is endeavoring to divert the current of his dying friend's fierce, delirious thoughts into a gentler channel. He brings up one picture after another of the early happy life of Paracelsus, and dwells on the grandeur of his mind and achievements, and on the fame that shall be his. But the desired peace comes only when Festus sings the song of the river Mayne beside which their youth had been spent. At the end of the song Paracelsus exclaims,