Chapter VII

When sudden ... how think ye, the end? Did I say “without friend?” Say rather from marge to blue marge The whole sky grew his targe With the sun’s self for visible boss, While an Arm ran across Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast Where the wretch was safe prest! Do you see! Just my vengeance complete, The man sprang to his feet, Stood erect, caught at God’s skirts, and prayed! —So, _I_ was afraid!

“Instans Tyrannus,” the _present_ tyrant, the tyrant for the time only, whose apparently illimitable power to hurt shrivels into nothing in presence of the King of kings, whose dominion is everlasting.

The poor victim of this tyrant’s oppression is a true child of God, but the nobility of his inner life is of course concealed from the proud wretch who despises him, and who, it must be remembered, is the speaker throughout. We must be careful, therefore, to estimate at their proper worth the epithets he applies and the motives he attributes to the object of his hate. _He_ can, of course, think of no other reason why his victim “would not moan, would not curse,” than that, if he did, “his lot might be worse.” And again, when temptation failed to shake his steadfast patience, the tyrant is quite consistent with himself, as one of those who call evil good, and good evil, in speaking of him as still keeping “to his filth.” The last stanza is magnificent. Has the power of prayer ever been set forth in nobler language?

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THE LOST LEADER.

I.

Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat—
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others, she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags—were they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley, were with us,—they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!