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That is, the poet's body is separated from the higher spirit, and then, by losing or contracting itself, becomes one; but each of the inseparable parts, being two (or soul and body), grows thus to four; but as this would be impossible but for an original separation, division, or disunion of the one, the disunion itself, as a means to the secret joy, is called "blessed."

By seizing the poet's idea of the Lady, as the Beautiful in a divine sense, and hence called the Queen of Beauty, the reader is prepared to see the meaning of the little poem, or song, entitled

A BEAUTIFUL MISTRESS.

If when the sun at noon displays
His bright rays,

Thou but appear,

He then, all pale with shame and fear,

Quencheth his light,

Hides his dark brow, flies from thy sight,
And grows more dim

Compar'd to thee, than stars to him.
If thou but show thy face again,
When darkness doth at midnight reign,
The darkness flies, and light is hurl'd
Round about the silent world:

So as alike thou driv'st away

Both light and darkness, night and day.

The reader may be certain that this poem was not addressed to a lady of flesh and blood, however pretty and complimentary it may seem to be in that sense; but it was addressed to the poet's Muse-his genius or inspiration, or Nature, as Arcadia, or as seen in the Spirit of Beauty.

This same Arcadian Beauty is the object addressed in the 18th of the Shakespeare Sonnets:

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate," &c.

This Beauty, or Spirit of Beauty, is that to which Shakespeare refers in the 24th Sonnet, precisely in the sense of Carew in his poem addressed To the Painter:

"For through the painter must you see his skill,

To find where your true image pictur'd lies;

Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still," &c.

This is also the "jewel" of the 27th Sonnet of Shakespeare.

Let the reader so conceive it-as the Muse of Shakespeare-and observe the almost fearful sublimity of the 27th Sonnet:

"Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travail tir'd;
But then begins a journey in my head,

To work my mind, when body's work 's expir'd :
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)—

in absence, as Carew expresses it—

Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which like a jewel hung in ghastly night,

Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.'

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The student may see the Lady in many of Carew's poems not cited above. She is in the poem addressed "To his Mistress, confined." She is in the poem entitled "The Hue and Cry." She is the subject of the song, "Ask me no more," &c. She is in "The Spark," which refers to the Promethean Spark, or the poet's life-spirit. She is seen in the poem entitled "The Incommunicability of Love;" and in the poem, "To one who, when I praised my Mistress's Beauty, said I was blind." She is in the song beginning, "Would you know what's soft ?"

and in very many other poems where the unprepared general reader would not suspect it.

It is a point by no means to be overlooked, that while it is a primary object in the interpretation of mystical, or indeed of any writings whatever, to discover the thought of the writer, it is yet of indispensable necessity, for the security of one's own thinking, to bring the interpretation to the test of universal thought itself. We may perfectly recognize the thought of another without in any manner acquiescing in it, and self-protection requires the appeal to universal Truth to guard against being misled by the thought of another.

We reverse the order of Truth when we read with the assumption that a writing, or the thought of a writer, is true; yet, plainly, before we can ascertain the character of another man's thought we must discover the thought itself: and then, we repeat, it is altogether a separate inquiry to discover a true and reliable test for it; and here every student must appeal to God's Truth, for this is what books cannot teach. If, now, any one should ask, And what is God's Truth? the answer must be a re-affirmation, that it is God's Truth itself; for no

absurdity can parallel that of attempting to sustain Truth by anything short of Truth itself. To apply this to the writings of a poet or a philosopher, we must first discover the thought of the writer, and then, as a separate question, we must determine its value in reference to eternal Truth.

If the student cannot now be satisfied with this view, we must, for the present, refer him to a period later in life, when, perhaps, the mystic theory may seem less repugnant to the actualities of sense; or rather, when the sensuous nature itself may somewhat lose its tyrannical hold upon the life it imprisons.

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