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.

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. decadence through over-ripeness, 5. gradual transformation, under new conditions, into another renovated Idea, which again has to pass through all the same stages. In other words, the poem represents the action and re-action of Ideas upon society, and of society upon Ideas.

Argument of the stanzas: 2. The Idea, conceived with pain, is born amid enthusiasm. 3. If of masculine, enduring nature, it falls under the control and ban of the already existing state of society (the woman old). 5. As the Idea develops, 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 upon 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. II. 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 pursues. 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 develop 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.

I.

I 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.

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.

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.

VOL. II.

4.

She binds strong 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.

I

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.

IO.

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.

II.

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 distress'd,
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.