God appears and God is light

To those poor souls who dwell in night
But doth a human form display

To those who dwell in realms of day.

THE MENTAL TRAVELLER.1

1.

TRAVELLED through a land of men,

A land of men and women too; And heard and saw such dreadful

things

As cold earth-wanderers never knew.

1 The following explanation of this remarkable poem was suggested by me in the second volume (where it was first published) of Mr. Gilchrist's book. Mr. Swinburne has proposed a somewhat different solution: but this one furnishes some sort of clue, and I repeat it here as better than

none:

"The Mental Traveller' indicates an explorer of mental phænomena. The mental phænomenon here symbolized seems to be the career of any great Idea or intellectual movement-as, for instance, Christianity, chivalry, art, &c. -represented as going through the stages of-1, birth; 2, adversity and persecution; 3, triumph and maturity; 4, de-` cadence through over-ripeness; 5, gradual transformation, under new conditions, into another renovated Idea, which again has to pass through all the same stages. words, the poem represents the action and re-action of Ideas In other upon society, and of society upon Ideas.

Argument of the stanzas. 2, The Idea, conceived with pain, is born amid enthusiasm. nature, it falls under the control and ban of the already ex3, If of masculine, enduring isting state of society (the woman old). 5, As the Idea

2.

For there the babe is born in joy
That was begotten in dire woe;
Just as we reap in joy the fruit

Which we in bitter tears did sow.

developes, the old society becomes moulded into a new society (the old woman grows young). 6, The Idea, now free and dominant, is united to society, as it were in wedlock. 8, It gradually grows old and effete, living now only upe the spiritual treasures laid up in the days of its early energy 10, These still subserve many purposes of practical good, and outwardly the Idea is in its most flourishing estate, even when sapped at its roots. 11, The halo of authority and tradition, or prestige, gathering round the Idea, is symbolized in the resplendent babe born on his hearth. 13, This prestige deserts the Idea itself, and attaches to some individual, who usurps the honour due only to the Idea (as we may see in the case of papacy, royalty, &c.); and the Idea is eclipsed by its own very prestige, and assumed living representative. 14, The Idea wanders homeless till it can find a new community to mould (" until he can a maiden win"). 15 to 17, Finding whom, the Idea finds itself also living under strangely different conditions. 18, The Idea is now "beguiled to infancy" becomes a new Idea, in working upon a fresh community, and under altered conditions. 20, Nor are they yet thoroughly at one; she flees away while he purses. 22, Here we return to the first state of the case. The Idea starts upon a new course—is a babe; the society it works upon has become an old society-no longer a fair virgin, but an aged woman. 24, The Idea seems so new and unwonted that, the nearer it is seen, the more consternation it excites. 26, None can deal with the Idea so as to develope it to the full, except the old society with which it comes into contact; and this can deal with it only by misusing it at first, whereby (as in the previous stage, at the opening of the poem) it is to be again disciplined into ultimate triumph.

3.

And, if the babe is born a boy,

He's given to a woman old,
Who nails him down upon a rock,
Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.

4.

She binds iron thorns around his head,
She pierces both his hands and feet,
She cuts his heart out at his side,

To make it feel both cold and heat.

5.

Her fingers number every nerve

Just as a miser counts his gold;

She lives upon his shrieks and cries,
And she grows young as he grows old.

6.

Till he becomes a bleeding youth,
And she becomes a virgin bright;

Then he rends up his manacles,
And binds her down for his delight.

7.

He plants himself in all her nerves
Just as a husbandman his mould,
And she becomes his dwelling-place
And garden fruitful seventyfold.

8.

An aged shadow soon he fades,

Wandering round an earthly cot, Full-filled all with gems and gold

Which he by industry had got.

9.

And these are the gems of the human soul,
The rubies and pearls of a lovesick eye,
The countless gold of the aching heart,
The martyr's groan and the lover's sigh.

10.

They are his meat, they are his drink;
He feeds the beggar and the poor;
To the wayfaring traveller

For ever open is his door.

11.

His grief is their eternal joy,

They make the roofs and walls to ring; Till from the fire upon the hearth A little female babe doth spring.

12.

And she is all of solid fire

And gems and gold, that none his hand Dares stretch to touch her baby form, Or wrap her in his swaddling-band.

13.

But she comes to the man she loves,
If young or old or rich or poor;
They soon drive out the aged host,
A beggar at another's door.

14.

He wanders weeping far away,

Until some other take him in ;

Oft blind and age-bent, sore distressed,
Until he can a maiden win.

15.

And, to allay his freezing age,

The poor man takes her in his arms;
The cottage fades before his sight,
The garden and its lovely charms.

16.

The guests are scattered through the land;
For the eye altering alters all;
The senses roll themselves in fear,
And the flat earth becomes a ball.

17.

The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away,
A desert vast without a bound,
And nothing left to eat or drink,
And a dark desert all around.

18.

The honey of her infant lips,

The bread and wine of her sweet smile,
The wild game of her roving eye,
Do him to infancy beguile.

19.

For as he eats and drinks he grows
Younger and younger every day,
And on the desert wild they both
Wander in terror and dismay.
20.

Like the wild stag she flees away;

Her fear plants many a thicket wild, While he pursues her night and day,

By various arts of love beguiled;

1

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