“Are we not halves of one dissevered world,
  Whom this strange chance unites once more?  Part?  Never! 
  Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,
  Love—­until both are saved."[A]

[Footnote A:  Paracelsus.]

And, at the end of the poem, Paracelsus, coming to an understanding with himself as to the gain and loss of life, proclaims with his last strength the truth he had missed throughout his great career, namely, the supreme worth of love.

  “I saw Aprile—­my Aprile there! 
  And as the poor melodious wretch disburthened
  His heart, and moaned his weakness in my ear,
  I learned my own deep error; love’s undoing
  Taught me the worth of love in man’s estate,
  And what proportion love should hold with power
  In his right constitution; love preceding
  Power, and with much power, always much more love;
  Love still too straitened in his present means,
  And earnest for new power to set love free.”

As long as he hated men, or, in his passionate pursuit of truth, was indifferent to their concerns, it was not strange that he saw no good in men and failed to help them.  Knowledge without love is not true knowledge, but folly and weakness.

But, great as is the place given to love in Paracelsus, it is far less than that given to it in the poet’s later works.  In Ferishtah’s Fancies and La Saisiaz it is no longer rivalled by knowledge; nor even in Easter Day, where the voice beside the poet proclaiming that

“Life is done,
Time ends, Eternity’s begun,”

gives a final pronouncement upon the purposes of the life of man.  The world of sense—­of beauty and art, of knowledge and truth, are given to man, but none of them satisfy his spirit; they merely sting with hunger for something better.  “Deficiency gapes every side,” till love is known as the essence and worth of all things.

                  “Is this thy final choice? 
  Love is the best?  ’Tis somewhat late! 
  And all thou dost enumerate
  Of power and beauty in the world,
  The righteousness of love was curled
  Inextricably round about. 
  Love lay within it and without,
  To clasp thee,—­but in vain!  Thy soul
  Still shrunk from Him who made the whole,
  Still set deliberate aside
  His love!—­Now take love!  Well betide
  Thy tardy conscience!"[A]

[Footnote A:  Easter Day.]

In his later reflective poems, in which he deals with the problems of life in the spirit of a metaphysician, seeking a definite answer to the questions of the intelligence, he declares the reason for his preference of love to knowledge.  In La Saisiaz he states that man’s love is God’s too, a spark from His central fire; but man’s knowledge is man’s only.  Knowledge is finite, limited and tinged with sense.  The truth we reach at best is only truth for us, relative, distorted.