This is a higher strain, but the redemption was not yet fully attained. There were still hours of deep depression, following on noble vision. Men recover from illness of the soul with relapses. The tide ebbs before it foods the strand. Oscillation is half of our convalescence. And in the same book—New Poems—in which these second Stanzas to Obermann appear, are the Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, 1867. The high emotion and thought of a heart, worn more by sorrow for the world than by its own pain, fills these verses to the brim. The wisdom of joy is not in them, but the wisdom of pain is. Yet, they look forward; waiting for light with weary eyes, with a faint hope which has at least slain despair. Meanwhile, he cries, while we wait and hope, allow us our tears, our solitude, our absence from the from the gayer world. Let its bright procession pass. Leave us to our monastic peace.
Another poem, Dover Beach—one of the finest he ever wrote—is also a poem of relapse into depression, but so profoundly felt that, both in thought and expression, it rises into the higher regions of poetry. He hears the "grating roar of pebbles which the wave sucks back" with the ebb, and the return of the waves that bring
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery.
