good, of good inextricable from evil, the rallying cry of hope seems for the moment, and only for the moment seems, to falter even on the lips which uttered that sovereign song of resurrection, great as the greatest old Hebrew psalm, which crowns and closes the awful roll of the "Châtiments." For that mighty hymn of a transcendant faith in the final conscience of the world called God, in the ultimate justice and universal vision of the eye and heart of things, we have but the grand unanswerable question:—
"Qui donc mesurera l'ombre d'un bout à l'autre,
Et la vie et la tombe, espaces inouïs
Où le monceau des jours meurt sous l'amas des nuits,
Où de vagues éclairs dans les ténèbres glissent,
Où les extrémités des lois s'évanouissent!"
In this tragic range of poems reaching from September to March there is an echo of all emotions in turn that the great spirit of a patriot and a poet could suffer and express by translation of suffering into song; the bitter cry of invective and satire, the clear trumpet-call to defence, the triumphal wail for those who fell for France, the passionate sob of a son on the stricken bosom of a mother, the deep note of thought that slowly opens into flower of speech, and through all and after all the sweet unspeakable music of natural and simple love. After the voice which reproaches the priestlike soldier we hear the voice which rebukes the militant priest: and a fire as the fire of Juvenal is outshone by a light as the light of Lucretius. In the verses addressed "to the Bishop who calls me Atheist," satire is dissolved in aspiration, and the keenest edge of scorn is molten in the highest ardour
