

INTRODUCTION, XI 



try man's soul, and exalt it, are the search for truth 

 beneath the mysteries which surround creation, to 

 gather amaranths, shining with the hues of heaven, 

 from plains upon which hang, dark and heavy, the mists 

 of earth. The poet may pay the debt of nature, the 

 philosopher may return to the bosom of our common 

 mother, even their names fade in the passage of time, 

 like planets blotted out of heaven ; but the truths 

 they have revealed to man burn on for ever with un- 

 extinguishable brightness. Truth cannot die ; it passes 

 from mind to mind, imparting light in its progress, and 

 constantly renewing its own brightness during its dif- 

 fusion. The True is the Beautiful; and the truths 

 revealed to the mind render us capable of perceiving 

 new beauties on the earth. The gladness of truth is like 

 the ringing voice of a joyous child, and the most remote 

 recesses echo with the cheerful sound. To be for ever 

 true is the Science of Poetry, the revelation of truth 

 is the Poetry of Science. 



Man, a creation endued with mighty faculties, but a 

 mystery to himself, stands in the midst of a wonderful 

 world, and an infinite variety of phenomena arise around 

 him in strange form and magical disposition, like the 

 phantasma of a restless night. 



The solid rock obeys a power which brings its con- 

 geries of atoms into a thousand shapes, each one geo- 

 metrically perfect. Its vegetable covering, in obedience 

 to some external excitation, developes itself in a curious 

 diversity of forms, from the exquisitely graceful to the 

 singularly grotesque, and exhibits properties still more 

 varied and opposed. The animal organism quickened 

 by higher impulses, powers working within, and modi- 

 fying the influence of the external forces, presents, 

 from the Monad to the Mammoth, and through every 

 phase of being up to Man, a yet more wonderful series 

 of combinations, and features still more strangely con- 

 trasted. 



