It cannot surely be denied that art is full of indefinite and instinctive longing for the infinite.
Poetry is full of its pining voice. Chateaubriand says:
'When we are alone with nature, the feeling of the infinite forces itself irresistibly upon us. When the universe with its inexhaustible variety opens before us, when we contemplate the myriads of stars moving in ever-mystic harmony through the limitless immensity of space, when we gaze upon the ocean mingling with the sky in the boundless distance of the far horizon, when the earth and sea are rocked into profound calm, and creation itself seems wrapped in mystic contemplation--an undefinable feeling of melancholy seizes upon us, unknown desires awaken in the soul, they seem to call us into other countries far beyond the limits of the known--must it not then be the vague feeling after, the dim longing for, the infinite, which at such moments we feel strangely stirring in the calm depths of the divining soul?'
We find the same yearning breathing through the following beautiful poem of Mrs. Osgood's:
'As plains the home-sick ocean shell Far from its own remembered sea, Repeating, like a fairy spell, Of love, the charmed melody It learned within that whispering wave, Whose wondrous and mysterious tone Still wildly haunts its winding cave Of pearl, with softest music-moan--
'So asks my home-sick soul below, For something loved, yet undefined; So mourns to mingle with the flow Of music from the Eternal Mind; So murmurs, with its childlike sigh, The melody it learned above, To which no echo may reply Save from thy voice, Eternal Love!'
It is to his fervent and fiery expression of this longing for the infinite, characterizing, whether pure or perverted, almost the whole of Byron's poetry, breaking out sometimes in imprecations and despair, and not to his immorality, that his great popularity is to be attributed. Even in the midst of the most unhappy scepticism, it was the haunting passion of his soul. Alas! that this longing for the food of heaven should have been fed on husks until the lower rungs of the heaven ladder became so covered with the corruption of matter and fiery sparks of evil, that it seemed rather meant for the foul feet of demons, than for the elastic tread of the redeemed human soul to God! We quote from him in proof: