teaching of Swedenborg. Now it is quite time that some well-defined principles were laid down on this question. I confess my disappointment at "Truth-seeker's" silence in reference to it; and I put it to him, and to the readers of the Repository, in all seriousness and Christian charity, whether, to adduce a single passage, severed from its connection, to invalidate his numerous and solemn utterances which enforce the opposite, is fair treatment to Swedenborg, or is calculated to promote just views on what he has inculcated. For myself, whatever others may think on the subject, as I scarcely need repeat, I feel it my duty reverently to defer to that authority. I believe him to be the instrument specially raised up by providence to propound the truths and doctrines of the New Church, both in regard to faith and practice. Earnestly recommending the same to the attention of your readers,-I am, very truly, yours, WOODVILLE WOODMAN.

STAGNELIUS.

II. MYSTIC POEMS OF THE BRIDE IN CAPTIVITY.

Sweetly prayer's incense-flames ascend

From ruined earth-the heart in night :
With Eden's fostering breeze they blend,
They rise till angels share their sight.
Heaven's brooding mercy, sacred door,
Wafts hallelujahs through the sky,
While clearer pulse the chords of love

Till thought dissolves in ecstasy.—(iii. 82.)

SWEDEN'S language, like its people, is pre-eminent for artless simplicity combined with vigorous philosophic power. In feeling womanly, in thought manly, the speech reflects the understanding in the perfection of complete truthfulness. Hence the happy union of ideal and real; the unique tenderness of its poetry, the direct strength of its prose; hence too its high prerogative in the evolution of humanity. For it is .precisely these qualities, each in its highest power, that we find translated and manifested in every page of the Christianized Latin of Swedenborg's theological writings ;-thoughts clear as crystal, and presenting the sun's image to your eye regard them however you may; single phrases awakening your mind to a full perception, not only of the result, but also of the whole course, of some profound investigation; sentences so short and pellucid that a child might make excellent sense

of them in copy-slips, yet so vast in their scope that as your reason follows out their prolific consequences you find your intellect widening out to hitherto unimagined capacities; and all this told in a prose majestic from its pure simplicity, bearing you pleasantly on, by unperceived transitions, from height to height, as in a journey to some village among the Cordilleras; your hostel gained, you pause in wonder at finding yourself so much nearer the sun, yet not less surely lies the ocean yonder afar, thousands of feet below your present level.

It was some such perception of character in language that led Goethe to make Aurelia's lover write his letters in French instead of native German, the moment insincerity and heartless politeness had to come into play.* Man modifies language, language modifies man. The musical Italian makes Italians musical; the philosophical German has a dictionary replete with abstractions; the speech of the proud Spaniard is continually bubbling up into bombast and hyperbole; the same tongue with the indolent Portuguese loses a syllable in every second word and displays a complete gamut of lazy nasals. These differences have their use; and, of course where Christianity holds sway, this elevates man above the evils otherwise consequent upon these nationalistic limitations; because it raises him into the new and cosmopolitan civilization-the Church; yet even there these differences exist, but being, then, only accompaniments (in all the varied forms of intonation) of that higher melody the full compass of whose diapason transcends yet contains the heights and depths of all dialectic utterance, they become "things of beauty, joys for ever."

Now the characteristic of the Swedish mind being idyllic frankness, if the thinker speak, he will try to tell you "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." We, the super-commercialized, look before and after; and next to an oracular curtness of reply, a flowery circumlocution comes with the best grace. When a Swedish lover sings the beauty of his maiden he uses language of the most unconventional simplicity: it glows with all the passion of the ardent south, yet might be sung in the plains of Paradise, so chaste and manly is it withal. So when a Swedish philosopher deals with the mysteries of 'spiritual life; his clearness and entireness of intellectual perception prove him peculiarly fitted for mental introspection; what he sees he will distinctly apprehend and as faithfully tell.

In the two books of allegorical and mystical poems called "Lilies in Sharon," published by Stagnelius when twenty-eight years of age, * Wilhelm Meisters "Lehrjahre," book v. chap. 16.

are many clearly perceived moral and spiritual truths if read in the light of Swedenborg's doctrines. They are parables of the soul in its relation to time and evil, eternity and good. Their so-called "Gnostic" appearance is the inevitable consequence of attempting to poetize upon such matters. No one could successfully bring into the compass of the Ottava Rima, an abstract philosophic statement of the Doctrine of Forms, or Degrees; and it is because our New Church poets have been content to close with the didactic until this higher ability should manifest itself, that they have remained in statu quo.

Stagnelius takes an exactly opposite course. Nature to him is only a symbol. We give its phenomena names: he names the symbolized by the same terms: thus the external becomes the exponent of the internal. This, however, being still insufficient for full poetical expression, he takes well-understood historical and mythological names as representatives of interior universals. The result is a collection of word-pictures of spiritual life.

"But," it may be said, "this is just what the Bible itself is, when unfolded by the science of correspondences." It is; but by a way so different, that the comparison is like that of the sun with a tide-reflected moonbeam. The unfolded Bible descends from within, and is seen in increasing refulgence as spiritual perception ascends the way of the Word; but poetry, like a jealous lover, will not relinquish the hand of Nature; its glance is fitful and alternating; aspiration is enfeebled by fear and doubt; and its general tendency, in spite of its appearance, is the way of the world. Imagine something intermediate between these two, and you have the parabolic poems and allegories of Stagnelius. Here is one on the "Anima in prison "

In the Harem of the world-prince
Rests the soul a lonely captive,
Over carpets verdant, lustrous,
Wends she melancholy, sighing;

And the shining candelabra
Beaming from the high, blue ceiling,
Pours adown bright trembling radiance
On the homeless soul below it.

By the doors seven furious demons

Each with blood-red sword, stand watching,
While around the gloomy fortress
Twelve huge guardian dragons lower.
Sits the soul without companions:

All disdain her save bright Luna.
Vestal watcher moved by pity,
She comes down in gentle beaming,
Smiling, pressing at the window,

Flinging in, to cheer the lone one
Tidings from the world of spirits:
While the Sun, he too a warden

Whom the soul's sad plaint has softened,
Follows, bright, and wafts in presents,—
Fragrant odours of the spring-tide
Borne upon soft southern breezes.
Cruelly Prince Demiurgus
Holds this soul in weary bondage.
See! he grasps the starlit necklace,
From her shining breast he tears it ;—
Now unclasps the glistening girdle
From the snow-white robe it circles,-
(Robe of innocence erst woven
By the angel nymphs celestial
Far away in sunny heaven),-
Now he rends the veil ethereal
And around her flings a garment
Sombre as a starless evening;
For the world-prince, Demiurgus,
Loves but garbs of vesper darkness.
Never could his evil vision

Brook the power and glow of brightness.

Now he leaves the hapless maiden
Who with fitful hand takes, trembling,

Meditation's silvery mirror,

Sees within that face once radiant,

Flings away the shining mirror,

Weeps and writhes, then heavenward looking,
Cries "How changed, how dark my features!

Where are now the blooming roses

Which once lit my cheeks with beauty?

Where the glad, fire-beaming glances
Which erst steeped my eyes in glory?
Where the diadem, sun-sparkling,
Which once decked my golden tresses?
Where the pure and snow-white vesture
From my quivering body riven?
Christ will scorn me thus bedarkened!"

Joy! O Soul! drive hence the sorrow
Clouding o'er thy pallid features,-

From Pleroma's boundless chamber

Christ beholds thee, hears thy weeping.

Learn that He, the King of glory,

Deems thee in thy deep repentance

Fairer than of old, love-vestured.—(iii. 73.)

The closing lines of this poem would no doubt have pleased Schiller, who "looked upon the fall of man as the happiest of events, because thereby men fell away from pure instinct into conscious freedom, with

"* It is

which sense of freedom came the possibility of morality." well to feel that there is joy in heaven when a prodigal returns; but no doubt the men of the most ancient Church were conscious of nobler human possibilities where backsliding and repentance were alike unknown, and where the shadow of Antichrist (Demiurgus) never stood between the intellect (Mary) and that divine spiritual sun (Pleroma) of which Stagnelius thus sings:—

From the heart of His Sun,

The Supreme One

Keeps watch o'er His host divine;
Beholds in the known,

His glories alone

As spirit and nature shine.

But the sun that speeds

With the golden steeds

O'er the track of the year's highway,

May reflect his beams

But on founts and streams,

And the sparkling pearls of day.--(ii. 11.)

The next one is the " Prayer of the Bride." It stands in happy agreement with the passage in Swedenborg's Ap. Rev. 224, where certain spirits having prayed for a higher degree of spiritual illumination, three angels in white linen garments straightway stood before them, saying that the Lord Jesus Christ having heard their prayers, had sent them ministrants:

With a prayer-leaf in its beak,

A dovelet pure soars high,

It flies from earth when midnight's hour
Rules darkling in the sky.

Like the moon the dovelet's wings,-
Like foam when the storm-winds toss,
And on the down of its beamy breast
Shines a mystic purple cross.

Swift as war's arrows fierce

From silver bow can fly,

The bird wings o'er the mountain-top
And through the midnight sky.

Sin's guardian demons twelve,

Alert on time's last space

And mailed for fight by evil's towers,

The dovelet check and chase.

But vainly clang their bows,

The bird soars sweetly on,

Lewes, "Life of Goethe," vol. ii.