There are lines, again, which have a magic that cannot be defined.  If it be not felt, no sense of it can be conveyed through another’s words.

     “Whose memories were a solace to me oft,
      As mountain-baths to wild fowls in their flight.”

     “Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once
      Into the vast and unexplored abyss,
      What full-grown power informs her from the first,
      Why she not marvels, strenuously beating
      The silent boundless regions of the sky.”

There is one passage, beautiful in itself, which has a pathetic significance henceforth.  Gordon, our most revered hero, was wont to declare that nothing in all nonscriptural literature was so dear to him, nothing had so often inspired him in moments of gloom:—­

                             “I go to prove my soul! 
      I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
      I shall arrive!  What time, what circuit first,
      I ask not:  but unless God send His hail
      Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow,
      In some time, His good time, I shall arrive: 
      He guides me and the bird.  In his good time.”

As for the much misused ‘Shaksperian’ comparison, so often mistakenly applied to Browning, there is nothing in “Paracelsus” in the least way derivative.  Because Shakspere is the greatest genius evolved from our race, it does not follow that every lofty intellect, every great objective poet, should be labelled “Shaksperian.”  But there is a certain quality in poetic expression which we so specify, because the intense humanity throbbing in it finds highest utterance in the greatest of our poets:  and there is at least one instance of such poignant speech in “Paracelsus,” worthy almost to be ranked with the last despairing cry of Guido calling upon murdered Pompilia:—­

     “Festus, strange secrets are let out by death
      Who blabs so oft the follies of this world: 
      And I am death’s familiar, as you know. 
      I helped a man to die, some few weeks since,
      Warped even from his go-cart to one end—­
      The living on princes’ smiles, reflected from
      A mighty herd of favourites.  No mean trick
      He left untried, and truly well-nigh wormed
      All traces of God’s finger out of him: 
      Then died, grown old.  And just an hour before,
      Having lain long with blank and soulless eyes,
      He sat up suddenly, and with natural voice
      Said that in spite of thick air and closed doors
      God told him it was June; and he knew well
      Without such telling, harebells grew in June;
      And all that kings could ever give or take
      Would not be precious as those blooms to him.”