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112 human passions he found the one perfect and consistent symbol of the Divine Desire and the Divine Espousals.

And without this rare ability to translate spiritual truth into the terms of a vibrating humanity—this impassioned and mystic sensuousness (which some, doubtless, will label a "divine sensuality")—Patmore could scarcely have escaped the snares which yawn before every poet conscious of a message. In point of fact, he was never more supremely the poet than when he was most radically the seer. Never, save possibly in one or two political arraignments, does the personal note derogate from the permanence of his poetry; never once, for all his vehemence of belief, does he descend into didacticism. Nor does his symbolic analysis of human emotion even for a moment lessen the intense reality of pain and of love throughout his song. Here is one little "Farewell," scarcely surpassed in its quiet heartbreak:

With all my will, but much against my heart, We two now part. My Very Dear, Our solace is, the sad road lies so clear. It needs no art, With faint, averted feet And many a tear, In our opposéd paths to persevere. Go thou to East, I West. We will not say There's any hope, it is so far away. But, O, my Best, When the one darling of our widowhead, The nursling Grief, Is dead, And no dews blur our eyes To see the peach-bloom come in evening skies, Perchance we may, Where now this night is day,