And Paracelsus listening and applying what Aprile says to his old desire to grasp, apart from men, the whole of knowledge as Aprile had desired to grasp the whole of love, learns the truth at last, and confesses it: 

    Love me henceforth, Aprile, while I learn
    To love; and, merciful God, forgive us both! 
    We wake at length from weary dreams; but both
    Have slept in fairy-land:  though dark and drear
    Appears the world before us, we no less
    Wake with our wrists and ankles jewelled still. 
    I too have sought to KNOW as thou to LOVE—­
    Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge.

We are halves of a dissevered world, and we must never part till the Knower love, and thou, the Lover, know, and both are saved.

“No, no; that is not all,” Aprile answers, and dies.  “Our perfection is not in ourselves but in God.  Not our strength, but our weakness is our glory.  Not in union with me, with earthly love alone, will you find the perfect life.  I am not that you seek.  It is God the King of Love, his world beyond, and the infinite creations Love makes in it.”

But Paracelsus does not grasp that last conclusion.  He only understands that he has left out love in his aim, and therefore failed.  He does not give up the notion of attainment upon earth.  He cannot lose the first imprint of his idea of himself—­his lonely grasp of the whole of Knowledge.

The next two parts of the poem do not strengthen much the main thoughts.  Paracelsus tries to work out the lesson learnt from Aprile—­to add love to knowledge, to aspire to that fulness in God.  But he does not love enough.  He despises those who follow him for the sake of his miracles, yet he desires their worship.  Moreover, the pride of knowledge still clings to him; he cannot help thinking it higher than love; and the two together drive him into the thought that this world must give him satisfaction.  So, he puts aside the ideal aim.  But here also he is baffled.  Those who follow him as the great teacher ask of him signs.  He gives these; and he finds at Basel that he has sunk into the desire of vulgar fame, and prostituted his knowledge; and, sick of this, beaten back from his noble ambitions, he determines to have something at least out of earth, and chooses at Colmar the life of sensual pleasure.  “I still aspire,” he cries.  “I will give the night to study, but I will keep the day for the enjoyment of the senses.  Thus, intellect and sense woven together, I shall at least have attained something.  If I do not gain knowledge I shall have gained sensual pleasure.  Man I despise and hate, and God has deceived me.  I take the world.”  But, even while he says this, his ancient aspiration lives so much in him that he scorns himself for his fall as much as he scorns the crowd.

Then comes the last scene, when, at Salzburg, he returns to find his friend Festus, and to die.  In the hour of his death he reviews his whole life, his aims, their failure and the reason of it, and yet dies triumphant for he has found the truth.