He hears in it, as in the silence he lives over again the religious tempest he had suffered—the retreat of the ancient faith in unconquerable sadness, and in the sadness the whole world is dark. And so great is the darkness that while he lives in it he can do no good to the world, and none to himself.
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
This temper, now in 1867, was not a constant one. Hope for the world and for himself had grown almost into flower within him; and he attained through hopefulness a new strength, even some rest. And then, having found a haven where he could anchor, and looking out on the storm, but not of the storm, he used his quiet to give warning and counsel to the new and excited world.
The present, he thought, may be full of vigour and of a dancing life; but when its noise is loudest, retreat for a time; remember the past and its quiet beauty. Do not lose its power; and his Bachanalia, or the New Age, contrasts the dance of Manads, breaking in on the shepherd's still enjoyment of the hush of Nature, with the wild orgie of the New Age, scattering
