But if 'twere lawful up to send
My voice to heaven, this should it rend:
"Lord, thrust me deeper into dust,
That thou may'st raise me with the just."

There are strange things and worth pondering in all these. An occasional
classical allusion seems to us quite out of place, but such things we
must pass. The poems are quite different from any we have had before.
There has been only a few of such writers in our nation, but I suspect
those have had a good deal more influence upon the religious life of it
than many thinkers suppose. They are in closest sympathy with the deeper
forms of truth employed by St. Paul and St. John. This last poem,
concerning humility as the house in which charity dwells, is very truth.
A repentant sinner feels that he is making himself little when he prays
to be made humble: the Christian philosopher sees such a glory and
spiritual wealth in humility that it appears to him almost too much to
pray for.

The very essence of these mystical writers seems to me to be poetry. They
use the largest figures for the largest spiritual ideas--_light_ for
_good, darkness_ for _evil_. Such symbols are the true bodies of the true
ideas. For this service mainly what we term _nature_ was called into
being, namely, to furnish forms for truths, for without form truth cannot
be uttered. Having found their symbols, these writers next proceed to use
them logically; and here begins the peculiar danger. When the logic
leaves the poetry behind, it grows first presumptuous, then hard, then
narrow and untrue to the original breadth of the symbol; the glory of the
symbol vanishes; and the final result is a worship of the symbol, which
has withered into an apple of Sodom. Witness some of the writings of the
European master of the order--Swedenborg: the highest of them are rich in