But while the doctrines of the philosopher had been forming, the
spirit of the poet had not been inactive. Loneliness, after all, the
best of Muses, had stimulated the creative faculty of his being.
Wandering amid his solitary woods and glades at all hours and seasons,
the wild and beautiful apparitions of nature had appealed to a
sympathetic soul. The stars and winds, the pensive sunset and the
sanguine break of morn, the sweet solemnity of night, the ancient
trees and the light and evanescent flowers, all signs and sights and
sounds of loveliness and power, fell on a ready eye and a responsive
ear. Gazing on the beautiful, he longed to create it. Then it was that
the two passions which seemed to share the being of Herbert appeared
simultaneously to assert their sway, and he resolved to call in his
Muse to the assistance of his Philosophy.
Herbert celebrated that fond world of his imagination, which he wished
to teach men to love. In stanzas glittering with refined images, and
resonant with subtle symphony, he called into creation that society of
immaculate purity and unbounded enjoyment which he believed was the
natural inheritance of unshackled man. In the hero he pictured a
philosopher, young and gifted as himself; in the heroine, his idea of
a perfect woman.
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