subject by rival poets. His object is truth. Faith in his ideal will compensate for lack of education or skill. He has not to ransack the universe for comparisons, but only to say simply what he seesnone can say more, "Than this rich praise, that you alone are you." Such creation is the highest art; its subject thereby lives individualised and unique (78–86). In the next nine sonnets the rivals seem to prevail, which the poet explains by the same reason as before-his own unworthiness. But while in Sonnet 49 he had admitted his own inferiority in comparison with his ideal, he does so now in comparison with his rivals. For the sake of his beloved he will consent to be effaced, and confess whatever faults may be laid to his charge. Like Ophelia in "Hamlet," he owns beforehand "Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill, As I'll myself disgrace" (89). But he begs that his dismissal, if determined on, may be at once, when all the world is against him, and not come as an after-blow to destroy his only hope. Whatever his fate, his love is always "the only fair." For a moment he seems to doubt -what if his love were really false ! Corruptio optimi pessima-the best, corrupted, is the worst. "For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds, The second stage of ideal love has the same conclusion as that which terminates (36) the second stage of imaginative love. For the same situations recur, but ever in a higher significance. In the third stage of ideal love, introduced in Sonnet 97, all previous errors or adverse judgments are rectified and the poet's scattered premises draw to one conclusion. Before the beauty of his spiritual ideal, fair nature pales. "Proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim," renewing youth in all things; summer's story told by lays of birds and flowers varying in scent and hue, all seemed winter compared to his beloved (98, 99). Then, after rebuking his muse for her silence (100, 101), he excuses it, because his theme is above its power. His verse would only mar what it cannot mend, and his love would be degraded by public praise (102, 103). In Sonnet 104 commences his solemn and final act of homage. He declares his love endowed with perpetual youth. His ideal has passed through three seasons-three being the image of completeness or eternity-and unites in itself the three great elements of love, beauty, goodness, truth. All the praise of beauty, chronicled in the past, but prophesy his " only fair." Yet neither prophecy of the past nor even his own reverential fear can set bounds to his love (105, 106). Day by day, then, he will repeat the "paternoster" of his love, which loses not, but grows in time (107, 108). After this act of homage begins his own Confiteor. In words borrowed almost literally from the Church's commendation of the soul, he declares that though through nature's frailty he has erred, he was never really false at heart. If he wandered, he returned again to the breast, his home of love, and was there cleansed anew. All his past wildness, his actor's life, his wounded conscience "goring his own thoughts," his apparent estrangement from truth, have all proved to him more fully what was the heaven he had lost. For the scandal he has caused, due much to his needy state and deteriorating surroundings, he begs pardon and will deem no penance harsh. With his love's approval he cares not who condemns. With sense and mind now purified, he can see all things in the light of the ideal and find goodness everywhere, save in his own deformity (109–114). He retracts all previous expressions of uncertainty, “the marriage of true minds admits of no impediments." His soul now steers straight for the star. "Strange love of other days but makes the true love stronger." He has drunk of siren tears, of alembics foul as hell, but omnia cooperantur in bonum-"better is by evil still made better." He sees the justice of past chastisements inflicted by his beloved, though he still repudiates the slanders of evil tongues. His mind is no longer a blank leaf (77), but a lasting record of gifts received. Subject no more to things of time, nor dependent like a heretic on the favour or frown of the passing hour, he stands FINAL OBLATION 235 alone, unchanging himself, having fixed his heart on what is unchangeable and eternal (124). One act alone can adequately express his love and worship -the sacrifice of all he is and all he has to its true object; a poor offering, indeed, but voluntary and complete. "No, let me be obsequious in thy heart, And take thou my oblation, poor but free, As the Paternoster was chosen to express his former petition (108), so here the language of a yet more solemn office is used. The outward sign of the Eucharistic oblation is but wastel bread, the inward effect the union of the creature with his God of the human love with the one ideal and perfect exemplar. Then, as if remembering that he had employed the words of a proscribed ritual, he concludes 66 Hence, thou suborned informer! a true soul, When most impeached, stands least in thy control." Sonnet 126 is merely an epilogue or appendix to the series we have considered. That series is complete in its unity, and exhibits the ascent of the soul by purifying love through the phases recognised both by mystical writers and sonneteers contemporary with Shakespeare. The leading idea is often hard to trace, hidden as it is under a wealth of imagery; but, when discovered, is ever found advancing in its appointed grades, with precision and certainty, to its only legitimate conclusion. In his second series of sonnets, the poet traces the descent of the soul in the "love of despair." Its object, instead of an angelic youth, aliquid jam non carnis in carne, is a gipsy-like woman, with black eyes and hair and complexion "coloured ill." He sees in her "beauty profaned," and, like Dante and the siren, is at first disgusted with the sight. But like Dante again, he lingers in the presence of the temptress. Sense attractions and his lower impulses stifle reason and conscience. No angel appears to save him as with his Tuscan prototype, and he surrenders himself to the painted charms. The delusion and disorder of the soul, a prey to temptation, the madness consequent on "the swallowed bait," and the repugnance and loathing resulting therefrom, when the heat of passion is passed, the close connection of sin with sin, the parentage of crime from crime-all these are then described in language alike psychologically and theologically accurate. No less profoundly true are the concluding lines, expressing the extraordinary power of temptation, even where experience has taught the misery of a fall. "All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell" (129). These last lines explain how it is, that though he knows the real deformity of the temptress, he is |