HUMBOLDT AND MILTON. 43) 



seen, when Professor Lieber visited him in 1844 ; and 

 from that time until within a few months of his death, 

 he was engaged on this great undertaking. The idea of 

 a work like " Kosmos" had been in his mind for nearly 

 fifty years. It was, as it were, the sun of his life, and 

 though his lesser works might seem for a while to 

 obscure it, floating like clouds between it and the world 

 of men, it was still there as radiant as ever, shining 

 divinely in his limitless firmament of mind. One by 

 one the clouds were drifted aside, — the royal pavilions 

 of his genius, rich with purple and gold — and in the 

 calm sweet evening of his age the world was enlightened 

 as it never had been before. 



Glorious old man ! We love to think of thee and thy 

 immortal task ! We see thee in thy study, the floor 

 around thee piled with books, the table before thee 

 strewn with charts, the pen in thy fingers flying over the 

 sheets of white paper, as thou thinkest "the thoughts 

 of God," the Divine Conception that shaped the Kos- 

 mos, the universal World Poem, which thou art singing 

 anew in thy grand old German tongue ! Next to Milton, 

 blind, old, poor, sitting at the door of his cottage in the 

 sunshine, and dictating his long-delayed task, — " Para- 

 dise Lost," we know of no grander spectacle than the 

 white-haired Humboldt writing "Kosmos" at midnight! 

 The men were unlike in many things, one a dweller in 

 kingly places, the other " fallen on evil days and evil 

 tongues " but both had served the world through a long 



CD I DO 



life, and both on the threshold of death were serving it 

 still, each building a deathless poem. For " Kosmos" is 

 a poem, though it lacks the jingle of rhythm. 



The first volume of "Kosmos" was published in 1845, 



