Wild horrors ranged in full array,
Courage shall take the vantage ground,
Bright virtue turn dark night to day.”
Drawn westward by her art toward the scene of the great enterprise, he reaches the village on the border of the wilderness, and from the legend current among the rustics inferring more definitely the character of his mission, he accepts it in the true chivalric spirit of faith, love and hope. His squire, or man-at-arms, who has followed him heretofore with an unquestioning fidelity, consents to incur the risks, though he has a very imperfect apprehension of the heroic undertaking; but the devotion of a faithful follower answers instead of knowledge in his rank of service. He would rather encounter a dozen flesh and blood swordsmen than one ghostly foe; nevertheless, where his master leads he will follow, whatever the character of the fight. The knight comprehends the nature of the conflict fully; it is not with flesh and blood, but with “spiritual wickedness in high places” that he “has his warfare.” To him the great battle is not in the outward and actual, but is transferred to the inward and spiritual sphere—into the real life—whence the ultimate facts of existence derive all their currents and ends. So felt the hero who said, in the great faith, “we have our conversation in heaven”—“we sit in heavenly places;” and so felt and thought the reformer who deliberately threw his ink-stand at the devils’ head. The region of the ideal is the fields of the highest heroism, and every life given to the world in noble service and generous sacrifice is living in the spirit sphere in familiar sympathy with the good, and constant strife with evil angels. This faith is the main impulse in all chivalric action; even a heroic poem cannot be created without it. It cannot be false, for it differs nothing in the constancy and efficiency of its presence from the most palpable facts, and is proved true by the test of harmonizing with all other truth.
The knight personates the highest ideal of philanthropy; the squire stands for the lower, more palpable modes of practical benevolence and reform. They are distinguished as widely as general and special providence, as the thorough emancipation of the soul and the charity which relieves the body, or the whole difference between the apostleship of spiritual and that of civil liberty. They correspond respectively to the Prophet Elisha, who saw the mountain tops filled with horses and chariots of fire, outnumbering and overwhelming the hosts of the Syrian king; and his servant, who saw but two men, his master and himself, opposed to a numerous and well appointed army. Such is the difference between the seer and the servant in any labor or conflict of faith—in any enterprise which involves the spiritual forces that rule the movements of the world. Throughout the whole action of the drama the agency and deportment of the knight and his follower are marked by this distinction. But the scene shifts, and the sympathetic and corroborative movements in Fairy-land, are revealed. The Fairy of the Oak appears and summons the spirits of the Air, Earth, Water and Fire. The elements, disordered by the fall, and thenceforth at war with the poor fugitive from Paradise, must render their aid in his restoration, that when the last enemy is put under his feet the material creation, cursed for his sin, may be renewed with his recovery, and the harmonies of matter answer to the sanctities of spirit. The spirits of the material forces obey the invocation, and cordially promise sympathy and service:
“Throughout all space—above, below,
In earth or air, through fire or snow,
Where’er our mission calls we fly,
Our tasks performing merrily,
Our guerdon winning happily.”