Thus it seems as though the stormy sweep were to overwhelm its goal, instead of letting it prevail within its veiling radiance.

Yet this latter is within the power of the beholding "vision." That vision does not quench the flaming sweep, but rejoins it to the fitting submission of seeing acceptance. It is that backward sweep in pain by which pain achieves its mildness, its power to disclose and convey.

Spirit is flame. It glows and shines. Its shining takes place in the beholding look. To such a vision is given the advent of all that shines, where all that is, is present. This flaming vision is pain. In nature remains impenetrable to any mind that understands pain in terms of sensitivity. Flaming vision determines the soul's greatness.

The spirit which bears the gift of the "great soul" is pain: pain is the animator. And the soul so gifted is the giver of life. This is why everything that is alive in the sense in which the soul is alive, is imbued with pain, the fundamental trait of the soul's nature. Everything that is alive, is painful.

Only a being that lives soulfully can fulfill the destiny of its nature. By virtue of this power it is fit to join in that harmony of mutual bearing by which all living things belong together. In keeping with this relation of fitness, everything that lives is fit, that is to say, good. But the good is good painfully.

Corresponding to the great soul's fundamental trait, everything that has soul is not merely good painfully, but also It can be truthful only in that way; for, in virtue of the fact that pain is converse, the living can give sheltering concealment to their present fellowbeings and thus reveal them in their given nature, let them truly be what they are.

The last stanza of one poem begins (22) :

So painful good. so truthful is what lives;

One might think that this line merely touches on what is painful. In truth it introduces the saying of the entire stanza, which remains tuned to the silent conquest of pain. To hear it, we must not overlook. the carefully placed punctuation,