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One important feature of the poems so far discussed is that the central feeling of despair remains unqualified by hope or divine promise. There is, in effect, no bridge between these poems and any higher spiritual state. Despair is registered for the sake of despair and not for the sake of converting it into an opposing feeling, such as love. Yet within the severe restrictions placed on the poet by the singleness of this approach awaits the challenge to push deeper and deeper into the feeling itself, to touch on the " terrible crystal "[22] that is despair's extremity:

STRUGGLE'S GLOOM

With a blank sorrow, heavy I am now grown;
Like things eternal, changeless stands my woe.
In vain I try to overcome my foe.
0 Lord of Love! Make me more dead than stone.

Thy Grace of silent Smile I never feel;
The forger of evil stamps my nights and days.
His call my sleepless body ever obeys.
My heart I annihilate and try to heal.

The dumb earth-waste now burns a hell to my soul.
I fail to fight with its stupendous doom,
My breath is a slave of that unending gloom.
For Light I pine, but find a tenebrous goal.

Smoke-clouds cover my face of Spirit's fire;
Naked I move in night's ignorance deep and dire.[23]