spell of Puck and Oberon, and beginning at once:—
The will of man is by his reason sway'd.
But the poetical mode of thought is not shown best in the poet's moralising sentences. The noblest poetic thought has often very little that can be debated. The poetic discourse of Obermann cannot hold its own, for poetic wisdom, against the conclusion of Sohrab and Rustum, and if we were to choose, in Mr Arnold's own way, a passage of deep seriousness from his books, it might well be Cadmus and Harmonia rather than the song of Empedocles.
And there they say two bright and aged snakes
Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia
Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore
In breathless quiet, after all their ills;
Nor do they see their country, nor the place
Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills,
Nor the unhappy palace of their race,
Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus any more.
Two of the most solemn passages in all poetry are the argument of true Fame in
