Dead; stand in the presence of Prospero as, laying aside his magic cloak, he turns to that whit est embodiment of innocence, his daughter, and asks,

"Canst thou remember

A time before we came unto this cell?"

behold in Paradise Lost the chariot "instinct with spirit," the wheels set with beryl, aflame with "careering fires,"-behold the chariot of the Most High rolling on, bearing him that stepped into it from the "right hand of glory";-let the mind fix itself for a moment on some one among the thousand thousand splendors of poetry new or old, then name another source from which the whole being can catch the exhilaration that it gives, can take the sudden strength that it imparts. There is little danger of exaggerating the resources of the poets for strength and joy. Those souls of the steadfast-looking habit, those souls that see so deep and wide, and tell what they have seen in heavenly melody,-what hallowing experience escapes them, what vision of healing beauty? The petrifaction of bodies in the grave is rare; but the petrifaction of spirits in life is common. The great preventive against this petrifaction is it not poetry? To the poets-with the poets are included always the musical composers -we must look first, not only for the highest support and encouragement, but for the gentle ministration that is our consolation and joy through all the vast region stretching between the highland of religion and the valley of toil.

The essential features of poetry, and the old

need of it, remain; poetry endures, however, and must more and more endure, under new conditions. Questions religious, social and political are not now what they have been. Poetry recognizes this, and will recognize it more and more; or perception, and pliancy to the demand of the hour, are of the fibre of its might. There should be no fear that science will destroy poetry; poetry, though opposed to science in method, is the faithful ally of science. The thoughts of God are not internecine. The master forces of mind and heart are never at war among themselves; step by step, they push peacefully forward together toward perfection. The old poetry was given to prophecy; it had to do the work of the powers of exact knowledge. The new poetry, while it will not cease, on occasion, to anticipate the findings of science, will occupy itself mainly, it is safe to say, in warming and coloring, in transfiguring, the findings of science for the sustenance and solace, for the stay and delight, of the world.

Wordsworth foresaw the change that has come, and the greater change in waiting:

"If the time should ever come when what is now called science becomes familiarized to men, then the remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, the mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it can be employed. He will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science; he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of science itself."

The charm of beauty will, of itself, preserve poetry, maintain it in the old position of suprem

acy. But it is in much more than the charm of beauty that poetry is supreme; it is in much more than the charm of beauty that we find assurance that, whatever changes come, it will hold the old place and power. Poetry deals with an order of truth in the pursuit of which art has no rival; it and the parent power, music, win access, by methods wholly their own, to high and secret places reached by no other ministrant. Besides sharing with science dominion over man's intel lect, poetry holds and must ever hold in sole supremacy his heart, his soul. Exact knowledge may not hope to suffice for the support and solace of the emotions, of the affections. Exact knowledge, multiplied a thousand times, may not hope to suffice for the future man; still will weigh the heavy

"iron time

Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears."

As science brings each noble task to a noble end, poetry must take up the work, and carry it on to the perfection that assures the satisfaction of the whole man, of the brain and the heart. The brain may be the man,

"And yet when all is thought and said,
The heart still overrules the head."

For the "real beauty," and for the real might as well, of the old poet singing before science was, we must take him in his own field, a field that vields a small harvest to toilers in cos

"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,

The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that thou visitest him?"

After the astronomer has spoken, there is a word left to say, a word in no wise conflicting, but additional and important. After science has spoken its words of analysis and explanation of the phenomena of nature, there is need of a word further, the transfiguring word of the poet concerning the Power behind the phenomena, the Power

"Which shaketh the world out of her place,

And the pillars thereof tremble.

"Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not; And sealeth up the stars.

"Which alone stretcheth out the heavens, And treadeth upon the waves of the sea.

"Which maketh the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, And the chambers of the south.

"Which doeth great things past finding out; Yea, marvellous things without number.

"Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not:
He passeth on also, but I perceive him not."

To inquire profitably into the beauty and might that the poet rears on a oundation of science, we must come this side of Dante--Dante, who mastered and bent to hise the knowledge of his time-down to our owr day, to Tennyson. Throughout Tennyson's mus are plainly to be heard the undertones of sence; the great facts

recently unearthed, the mold of ages clinging to them, are launched, and borne along the golden current side by side with the lightest fancies. The laureate had the advantage of his predeces sors, living, as he did, at a time when science could become a basis for the superstructure of imagination. We turn to him first, among his contemporaries, because he it was, in particular, that nature and training enabled to seize this momentous advantage and act upon it. The use he made of the new stock of knowledge bears out the belief that the poetry of the future will give no inconsiderable proportion of its force to the quickening, the warming, of fact, to the kindling of it into the mystic ignition the flame of which the soul loves, and moves in as in its own native element. Tennyson strengthens us in the conviction that

"When Science reaches forth her arms

To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon,"

the poet will give liberally of his strength toward the completion of the victory by setting the secret in transfiguring words. This will be done. It must be done, before the importance and meaning of the secret can burn into the mind and heart of the world and so set aglow the general life. Hope and lov, with the voice of music, must rehabilitate, yes, reshape and vitalize, ignite, the fact if we are not to stop with mere intellectual apprehension, if we are to pass on to assimilation, to perfect appropriation and practice.