Then shalt thy ravished soul inspired be
    With heavenly thoughts far above human skill, reason.
  And thy bright radiant eyes shall plainly see
    The Idea of his pure glory present still
    Before thy face, that all thy spirits shall fill
  With sweet enragement of celestial love,
  Kindled through sight of those fair things above.

There is a companion to the poem of which these verses are a portion, called An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, filled like this, and like two others on Beauty and Love, with Platonic forms both of thought and expression; but I have preferred quoting a longer part of the former to giving portions of both.  My reader will recognize in the extract a fuller force of intellect brought to bear on duty; although it would be unwise to take a mind like Spenser’s for a type of more than the highest class of the age.  Doubtless the division in the country with regard to many of the Church’s doctrines had its part in bringing out and strengthening this tendency to reasoning which is so essential to progress.  Where religion itself is not the most important thing with the individual, all reasoning upon it must indeed degenerate into strifes of words, vermiculate questions, as Lord Bacon calls them—­such, namely, as like the hoarded manna reveal the character of the owner by breeding of worms—­yet on no questions may the light of the candle of the Lord, that is, the human understanding, be cast with greater hope of discovery than on those of religion, those, namely, that bear upon man’s relation to God and to his fellow.  The most partial illumination of this region, the very cause of whose mystery is the height and depth of its truth, is of more awful value to the human being than perfect knowledge, if such were possible, concerning everything else in the universe; while, in fact, in this very region, discovery may bring with it a higher kind of conviction than can accompany the results of investigation in any other direction.  In these grandest of all thinkings, the great men of this time showed a grandeur of thought worthy of their surpassing excellence in other noblest fields of human labour.  They thought greatly because they aspired greatly.

Sir Walter Raleigh was a personal friend of Edmund Spenser.  They were almost of the same age, the former born in 1552, the latter in the following year.  A writer of magnificent prose, itself full of religion and poetry both in thought and expression, he has not distinguished himself greatly in verse.  There is, however, one remarkable poem fit for my purpose, which I can hardly doubt to be his.  It is called Sir Walter Raleigh’s Pilgrimage.  The probability is that it was written just after his condemnation in 1603—­although many years passed before his sentence was carried into execution.