Chapter XXXVIII: Book II: The Sabbath

Fresh glides the brook and blows the gale,
Yet yonder halts the quiet mill;
The whirring wheel, the rushing sail,
How motionless and still!

Six days of toil, poor child of Cain,
Thy strength the slave of Want may be;
The seventh thy limbs escape the chain--
A God hath made thee free!

Ah, tender was the law that gave
This holy respite to the breast,
To breathe the gale, to watch the wave,
And know--the wheel may rest!

But where the waves the gentlest glide
What image charms, to lift, thine eyes?
The spire reflected on the tide
Invites thee to the skies.

To teach the soul its nobler worth
This rest from mortal toils is given;
Go, snatch the brief reprieve from earth
And pass--a guest to Heaven.

They tell thee, in their dreaming school,
Of Power from old dominion hurl'd,
When rich and poor, with juster rule,
Shall share the alter'd world.

Alas! since Time itself began,
That fable hath but fool'd the hour;
Each age that ripens Power in Man,
But subjects Man to Power.

Yet every day in seven, at least,
One bright republic shall be known;--
Man's world awhile hath surely ceased,
When God proclaims his own!

Six days may Rank divide the poor,
O Dives, from thy banquet-hall--
The seventh the Father opes the door,
And holds His feast for all!

THE HOLLOW OAK.

Hollow is the oak beside the sunny waters drooping;
Thither came, when I was young, happy children trooping;
Dream I now, or hear I now--far, their mellow whooping?

Gay below the cowslip bank, see the billow dances,
There I lay beguiling time--when I lived romances;
Dropping pebbles in the wave, fancies into fancies;--

Farther, where the river glides by the wooded cover,
Where the merlin singeth low, with the hawk above her
Came a foot and shone a smile--woe is me, the Lover!

Leaflets on the hollow oak still as greenly quiver,
Musical amid the reeds murmurs on the river;
But the footstep and the smile?--woe is me for ever!

LOVE AND FAME.

WRITTEN IN EARLY YOUTH.

I.

It was the May when I was born,
Soft moonlight through the casement stream'd,
And still, as it were yestermorn,
I dream the dream I dream'd.
I saw two forms from fairy land,
Along the moonbeam gently glide,
Until they halted, hand in hand,
My infant couch beside.

II.

With smiles, the cradle bending o'er,
I heard their whisper'd voices breathe--
The one a crown of diamond wore,
The one a myrtle wreath;
"Twin brothers from the better clime,
A poet's spell hath lured to thee;
Say which shall, in the coming time,
Thy chosen fairy be?"

III.

I stretch'd my hand, as if my grasp
Could snatch the toy from either brow;
And found a leaf within my clasp,
One leaf--as fragrant now!
If both in life may not be won,
Be mine, at least, the gentler brother--
For he whose life deserves the one,
In death may gain the other.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.

I.

Into my heart a silent look
Flash'd from thy careless eyes,
And what before was shadow, took
The Light of summer skies.
The first-born love was in that look;
The Venus rose from out the deep
Of those inspiring eyes.

II.

My life, like some lone solemn spot
A spirit passes o'er,
Grew instinct with a glory not
In earth or heaven before.
Sweet trouble stirr'd the haunted spot,
And shook the leaves of every thought
Thy presence wander'd o'er!

III.

My being yearn'd, and crept to thine,
As if in times of yore
Thy soul had been a part of mine,
Which claim'd it back once more.
Thy very self no longer thine,
But merged in that delicious life,
Which made us ONE of yore!

IV.

There bloom'd beside thee forms as fair,
There murmur'd tones as sweet,
But round thee breathed the enchanted air
'Twas life and death to meet.
And henceforth thou alone wert fair,
And though the stars had sung for joy,
Thy whisper only sweet!

LOVE'S SUDDEN GROWTH.

I.

But yestermorn, with many a flower
The garden of my heart was dress'd;
A single tree has sprung to bloom,
Whose branches cast a tender gloom,
That shadows all the rest.

II.

A jealous and a tyrant tree,
That seeks to reign alone;
As if the wind's melodious sighs,
The dews and sunshine of the skies,
Were only made for One!

III.

A tree on which the Host of Dreams
Low murmur mystic things,
While hopes, those birds of other skies,
To dreams themselves chant low replies--
Ah, wherefore have they wings?

IV.

The seasons nurse the blight and storm,
The glory leaves the air--
The dreams and birds will pass away,
The blossom wither from the spray--
One day--the stem be bare--

V.

But mine has grown the Dryad's life,
Coeval with the tree;
The sun, the frost, the bloom, the fall,
My fate, sweet tree, must share them all,
To live and die with thee!

THE LOVE-LETTER.

As grains of gold that in the sands
Of Lydian waters shine,
The welcome sign of mountain lands
That veil the silent mine;

Thus may the river of my thought,
That glideth now to thee,
Reveal the wealth as yet unwrought,
Which Love has heap'd in me!

So strove I to enrich the scroll
To thy dear hands consign'd;
I thought to leave the lavish soul
No golden wish behind!

Ah, fool! to think an hour could drain
What life can scarce explore--
Enough, if guided by the grain,
Thy heart should seek the ore!

THE LANGUAGE OF THE EYES.

Those eyes--those eyes--how full of Heaven they are!
When the calm twilight leaves the heaven most holy;
Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star
Did ye drink in your liquid melancholy?
Tell me, beloved eyes!

Was it from yonder orb that ever by
The quiet moon, like Hope by Patience, hovers,
The star to which hath sped so many a sigh,
Since lutes in Lesbos hallow'd it to Lovers?
Was that your Fount, sweet Eyes?

Ye Sibyl books, in which the truths foretold
Inspire the Heart, your dreaming priest, with gladness,
Bright Alchemists that turn to thoughts of gold
The leaden cares ye steal away from sadness,
Teach only me, sweet Eyes!

Hush! when I ask ye how, at length, to gain
The cell where Love, the sleeper, yet lies hidden,
Loose not those arch lips from their rosy chain;
Be every answer, save your own, forbidden--
Feelings are words for Eyes!

DOUBT.

Bright laughs the sun; the birds, that are to air
Like song to life, are gaily on the wing;
In every mead the handmaid hours prepare
The delicates of spring;[E]
But, if she love me not!
To me at this fair season still hath been
In every wild-flower an exhaustless treasure,
And, when the young-eyed violet first was seen,
Methought to breathe was pleasure;--
But, if she love me not!
How, in thy twilight, Doubt, at each unknown
Dim shape, the superstitious Love will start;
How Hope itself will tremble at its own
Light shadow on the heart!--
Ah, if she love me not!
Well; I will know the worst, and leave the wind
To drift or drown the venture on the wave;
Life has two friends in grief itself most kind--
Remembrance and the Grave--
Mine, if she love me not!

[E] "The choicest delicates from yonder mead."--_The Faithful
Shepherdess._

THE ASSURANCE.

I am loved, I am loved--Jubilate!
Hark! hark! how the happy note swells
To and fro from the fairy bells,
With which the flowers melodiously
To their banquet halls invite the bee!--
"He is loved, he is loved--Jubilate!"

The echo at rest on her mountain-keep
Murmurs the sound in her broken sleep--
"He is loved, he is loved--Jubilate!"
And those gossips, the winds, have come to scout
What the earth is so happy about,
And they catch the sound, and circle it round--
"He is loved, he is loved--Jubilate!"

And the rivers, who, all the world must know,
Were in love with the stars ever since they could flow,
With a dimpled cheek and a joyous sigh,
Whisper it up to the list'ning sky,
"He is loved, he is loved--Jubilate!"

It is not the world that I knew before;
Where is the gloom that its glory wore?
Not a foe could offend, nor a friend betray,
Old Hatred hath gone to his grave to-day!
Hark! hark! his knell we toll,
Here's to the peace of his sinful soul!
On the earth below, in the heaven above,
Nothing is left me now but Love.
Love, Love, honour to Love,
I am loved, I am loved--Jubilate!

MEMORIES, THE FOOD OF LOVE.

When shall we come to that delightful day,
When each can say to each, "Dost thou remember?"
Let us fill urns with rose-leaves in our May,
And hive the thrifty sweetness for December!

For who may deem the throne of love secure,
Till o'er the _Past_ the conqueror spreads his reign?
That only land where human joys endure,
That dim elysium where they live again!

Swell'd by a thousand streams the deeps that float
The bark on which we risk our all, should be.
A rill suffices for the idler's boat:
It needs an ocean for the argosy.

The heart's religion keeps, apart from time,
The sacred burial-ground of happy hours;
The past is holy with the haunting chime
Of dreamy sabbath bells from distant towers.

Oft dost thou ask me, with that bashful eye,
"If I shall love thee evermore as now!"
Feasting as fondly on the sure reply,
As if my lips were virgin of the vow.

Sweet does that question, "Wilt thou love me?" fall
Upon the heart that has forsworn its will:
But when the words hereafter we recall,
"Dost thou remember?" shall be sweeter still.

ABSENT, YET PRESENT.

As the flight of a river
That flows to the sea,
My soul rushes ever
In tumult to thee.

A twofold existence
I am where thou art;
My heart in the distance
Beats close to thy heart.

Look up, I am near thee,
I gaze on thy face;
I see thee, I hear thee,
I feel thine embrace.

As a magnet's control on
The steel it draws to it,
Is the charm of thy soul on
The thoughts that pursue it.

And absence but brightens
The eyes that I miss,
And custom but heightens
The spell of thy kiss.

It is not from duty,
Though that may be owed,--
It is not from beauty,
Though that be bestow'd;

But all that I care for,
And all that I know,
Is that, without wherefore,
I worship thee so.

Through granite as breaketh
A tree to the ray,
As a dreamer forsaketh
The grief of the day,

My soul in its fever
Escapes unto thee;
O dream to the griever,
O light to the tree!

A twofold existence
I am where thou art;
Hark, hear in the distance
The beat of my heart!

LOVERS' QUARRELS.

AN OLD MAXIM REFUTED.

They never loved as thou and I,
Who preach'd the laughing moral,
That aught which deepens love can lie
In true love's lightest quarrel.

They never knew, in times of fear,
The safety of affection,
Nor sought, when angry fate drew near,
Love's altar for protection.

They never knew how kindness grows
A vigil and a care,
Nor watch'd beside the heart's repose
In silence and in prayer;

For weaker love be storms enough
To frighten back desire;
We have no need of gales so rough
To fan our steadier fire.

'Twere sweet to kiss thy tears away,
If tears those eyes must know;
But sweeter still to hear thee say,
"Thou never badst them flow."

The wrongful word will rankling live
When wrong itself has ceased,
And love, that all things may forgive,
Can ne'er forget the least.

If pain can not from life depart,
There's pain enough around us;
The rose we wear upon the heart
Should have no thorn to wound us.

And hollow sounds the wildest vow,
If memory wake, the while,
The bitter taunt--the darken'd brow,
The stinging of a smile.

There is no anguish like the hour,
Whatever else befall us,
When one the heart has raised to power
Exerts it but to gall us.

Yet if--this calm too blest to last--
Some cloud, at times, must be,
I'm not so proud but I would cast
The fault alone on me.

So deeply blent with thy dear thought,
All faith in human kindness,
Methinks if thou couldst change in aught,
The only bliss were blindness.

But no--if rapture may not last,
It ne'er shall bring regret,
Nor leave one look in all the past
'Twere mercy to forget.

Repentance often finds, too late,
To wound us is to harden;
And love is on the verge of hate,
Each time it stoops for pardon.

THE LAST SEPARATION.

We shall not rest together, love,
When death has wrench'd my heart from thine;
The sun may smile thy grave above,
When clouds are dark on mine!

I know not why, since in the tomb
No instinct fires the silent heart--
And yet it seems a thought of gloom,
That even dust should part;

That, journeying through the toilsome past,
Thus hand in hand and side by side,
The rest we reach should, at the last,
The shapes we wore divide;

That the same breezes should not sigh
The self-same funeral boughs among,--
Nor o'er one grave, at daybreak, die
The night-bird's lonely song!

A foolish thought! the spirit goal
Is not where matter wastes away;
If soul at last regaineth soul,
What boots it where the dust decay?

A foolish thought, yet human too!
For love is not the soul's alone:
It winds around the form we woo--
The mortal we have known!

The eyes that speak such tender truth,
The lips that every care assuage,
The hand that thrills the heart in youth,
And smoothes the couch in age;

With these--The Human,--human love
Will twine its thoughts and weave its doom,
And still confound the life above
With death beneath the tomb!

And who shall tell, in yonder skies,
What earthlier instincts we retain;
What link, to souls released, supplies
The old material chain?

The stars that pierced this darksome state
May fade in that meridian shore;
And human love, like human hate,
Be memory--and no more!

Away the doubt! alas, how cold
Would all the promised heaven appear,
Did yearning love no more behold
What made its Eden here!

But wheresoe'er the spirit flies,
It haunts us in the shape it wore;
We give the angel in the skies
The mortal's smile of yore;

Yet, ah, when souls from life escape,
Material forms no more they know;
Not Heaven itself restores the shape
So fondly loved below!

Immortal spirits meet above;
But mine is still the human heart;
And in its faithful human love,
It mourns that dust should part!

THE POPE AND THE BEGGAR.

THE DESIRES THE CHAINS, THE DEEDS THE WINGS.

I saw a soul beside the clay it wore,
When reign'd that clay the Hierarch-Sire of Rome;
A hundred priests stood ranged the bier before,
Within St. Peter's dome.

And all was incense, solemn dirge, and prayer,
And still the soul stood sullen by the clay:
"O soul, why to thy heavenlier native air
Dost thou not soar away?"

And the soul answer'd, with a ghastly frown,
"In what life loved, death finds its weal or woe;
Slave to the clay's Desires, they drag me down
To the clay's rot below!"

It spoke, and where Rome's purple ones reposed,
They lower'd the corpse; and downwards from the sun
Both soul and body sunk--and darkness closed
Over that twofold one!

Without the church, unburied on the ground,
There lay, in rags, a beggar newly dead;
Above the dust no holy priest was found,
No pious prayer was said!

But round the corpse unnumber'd lovely things,
Hovering unseen by the proud passers by,
Form'd, upward, upward, upward, with bright wings,
A ladder to the sky!

"And what are ye, O beautiful?" "We are,"
Answer'd the choral cherubim, "His Deeds!"
Then his soul, sparkling sudden as a star,
Flash'd from its mortal weeds,

And, lightly passing, tier on tier, along
The gradual pinions, vanish'd like a smile!
Just then, swept by the solemn-visaged throng
From the Apostle's pile.

"Knew ye this beggar?" "Knew! a wretch, who died
Under the curse of our good Pope, now gone!"
"Loved ye that Pope?" "He was our Church's pride,
And Rome's most holy son!"

Then did I muse: such are men's judgments; blind
In scorn or love! In what unguess'd-of things,
Desires or Deeds--do rags and purple find
The fetters or the wings!

THE BEAUTIFUL DESCENDS NOT.

In Cyprus, looking on the lovely sky,
Lone by the marge of music-haunted streams,
A youthful poet pray'd: "Descend from high,
Thou of whose face each youthful poet dreams.
Once more, Urania, to the earth be given
The beauty that makes beautiful the heaven."

Swift to a silver cloudlet, floating o'er,
A rushing Presence rapt him as he pray'd;
What he beheld I know not, but once more
The midnight heard him sighing to the shade,
"Again, again unto the earth be given
The beauty that makes beautiful the heaven."

"In vain," a sweet voice answer'd from the star,
"Her grace on thee Urania did bestow:
Unworthy he the loftier realms afar,
Who woos the gods above to earth below;
Rapt to the Beautiful thy soul must be,
And not the Beautiful debased to thee!"

THE LONG LIFE AND THE FULL LIFE.

IMITATED FROM CLAUDIAN'S "OLD MAN OF VERONA."

In mine own hamlet, where, amidst the green,
By moss-grown pales white gleaming cots are seen,
There dwelt a peasant in his eightieth year,
Dear to my childhood--now to memory dear;
In the same hut in which his youth had pass'd
Dwelt his calm age, till earth received at last;
Where first his infant footsteps tottering ran,
Propp'd on his staff crawl'd forth the hoary man;
That quiet life no varying fates befell,
The patriarch sought no Laban's distant well;
Of Rothschild's wealth, of Wellesley's mighty name
To that seal'd ear no faintest murmur came.
His grand event was when the barn took fire,
His world the parish, and his king the squire.
Nor clock nor kalend kept account with time,
Suns told his days, his weeks the sabbath chime;
His spring the jasmine silvering round his door,
And reddening apples spoke of summer o'er.
To him the orb that set o'er yonder trees,
Tired like himself, lit no antipodes;
And the vast world of human fears and hopes
Closed to his sight where yon horizon slopes,--
That beech which now o'ershadows half the way,
He saw it planted in my grandsire's day;
Rooted alike where first they braved the weather,
He and the oaks he loved grew old together.
Not ten miles distant stands our County-hall--
To him remoter than to thee Bengal;
And the next shire appear'd to him to be
What seas that closed on Franklin seem to thee.

Thus tranquil on that happy ignorance bore
The green old age still hearty at fourscore;
To him, or me--with half the world explored,
And half his years--did life the more afford?
There the grey hairs, and here the furrow'd breast!
Ask, first--is life a journey or a rest?
If rest, old Man, long life indeed was thine;
But if a journey--oh, how short to mine!

THE MIND AND THE HEART.

"MA VIE C'EST UN COMBAT."

Why, ever wringing life from art
Do men my patient labour find?
I still the murmur of my heart,
My one consoler is my mind.

Though every toil but wakes the spell
To rouse the Falsehood and the Foe,
Can all the storms that chafe the well,
Disturb the silent TRUTH below?

The Mind can reign in Mind alone.--
O Pride, the hollow boast confess!
What slave would not reject a throne
If built amidst a wilderness?

Before my gaze I see my youth,
The ghost of gentler years, arise,
With looks that yearn'd for every truth,
And wings that sought the farthest skies.

Fresh from the golden land of dreams,
Before this waking world began,
How bright the radiant phantom seems
Beside the time-worn weary man!

How, then, the Heart rejoiced in all
That roused the quick aspiring Mind!
What glorious music Hope could call
From every Memory left behind!

Experience drew not then to earth
The looks that Fancy rear'd above,
And all that took their kindred birth
From thought or feeling,--blent in love.

In vain a seraph's hand had raised
The mask from Falsehood's fatal brow;
And still as fondly I had gazed
On looks that freeze to marble now.

Can aught that Mind bestows on toil
Replace the earlier heavenly ray,
That did but tremble o'er the soil,
To warm creation into May?

But now, in Autumn's hollow sigh,
The heart its waning season shows,
And all the clearness of the sky
Foretells the coming of the snows.

Farewell, sweet season of the Heart,
And come, O iron rule of Mind,
I see the Golden Age depart,
And face the war it leaves behind.

Me nevermore may Feeling thrall,
Resign'd to Reason's stoic reign--
But oh, how much of what we call
Content--is nothing but Disdain!

THE LAST CRUSADER.

Left to the Saviour's conquering foes,
The land that girds the Saviour's grave;
Where Godfrey's crosier-standard rose,
He saw the crescent-banner wave.

There, o'er the gently-broken vale,
The halo-light on Zion glow'd;
There Kedron, with a voice of wail,
By tombs[F] of saints and heroes flow'd;

There still the olives silver o'er
The dimness of the distant hill;
There still the flowers that Sharon bore,
Calm air with many an odour fill.

Slowly THE LAST CRUSADER eyed
The towers, the mount, the stream, the plain,
And thought of those whose blood had dyed
The earth with crimson streams in vain!

He thought of that sublime array,
The Hosts, that over land and deep
The Hermit marshall'd on their way,
To see those towers, and halt to weep![G]

Resign'd the loved familiar lands,
O'er burning wastes the cross to bear,
And rescue from the Paynim's hands
The empire of a sepulchre!

And vain the hope, and vain the loss,
And vain the famine and the strife;
In vain the faith that bore the Cross,
The valour prodigal of life!

And vain was Richard's lion-soul,
And guileless Godfrey's patient mind--
Like waves on shore, they reach'd the goal,
To die, and leave no trace behind!

"O God!" the last Crusader cried,
"And art thou careless of thine own?
For us thy Son in Salem died,
And Salem is the scoffer's throne!

"And shall we leave, from age to age,
To godless hands the Holy Tomb?
Against thy saints the heathen rage--
Launch forth thy lightnings, and consume!"

Swift, as he spoke, before his sight
A form flash'd, white-robed, from above;
All Heaven was in those looks of light,
But Heaven, whose native air is love.

"Alas!" the solemn Vision said,
"_Thy_ God is of the shield and spear--
To bless the Quick and raise the Dead,
The Saviour-God descended here!

"Ask not the Father to reward
The hearts that seek, through blood, the Son;
O warrior! never by the sword
The Saviour's Holy Land is won!"

[F] The valley Jehoshaphat, through which rolls the torrent of
the Kedron, is studded with tombs.

[G] See Tasso, Ger. Lib. cant. iii. st. vi.

FOREBODINGS.

What are ye?--Strangers from the Phantom shore?
Lights that precede Funereal Destinies,
Ev'n as the Spectres of the Sun, before
He rises from the dearth of Arctic seas?
What demon presence haunts the haggard air?
What ice-wind checks the blood and lifts the hair?

What are ye?--"Nightmares known not to the sane,
A sick man's sickly dreams"--the Leech replies,
Then prates he much of viscera, spleen, and brain,
And lays the Ghost with Galen;--"To the wise
All things are matter;" well, we would be taught,
Come, Leech, dissect the brain;--Now show me _Thought_!

Shame!--to the body, must the soul fulfil
A slavery thus subjected and entire?
Must every crevice into light be still
Choked with the clod? Each dread, and each desire
Of things unknown, be track'd unto its germ
In some crazed fibre rotting to the worm?

Trust we the dry philosophies that sneer
Back every guess into the world of spirit,
And what were left the present to revere?
And where would fade the future we inherit?
Try Heaven and Hell by the physician's test,
And men know neither--while they well digest!

What mortal hand the airy line can draw
'Twixt Superstition in its shadowy terror
And still Religion in its starry awe?--
Truth when sublime flows least distinct from error;
Light of itself eludes our human eyes;
Let it take colour, and it spans the skies!

Doubtful Foreshadows, have ye then of yore
Never been prophets, murmuring weal or woe?
Beckoning no Sylla over seas of gore?
Warning no Julius of the fatal blow?
Seen in no mother-guise by that pale son
Who led the Mede, and sleeps in Marathon?[H]

You, the Earth-shakers from whose right hands war
Falls, as from Jove's the thunderbolt, obey;
Gaul's sceptic Caesar had his guardian star,
Stout Cromwell's iron creed its chosen day.
'Tis in proportion as men's lives are great,
That, fates themselves,--they glass the shades of Fate.

The wisest sage the antique wisdom knew,
Gazing into blue space long silent hours,
Would commune with his Genius: as the dew
Recruits the river, so the unseen Powers
Of Nature feed with thoughts spiritual, soul.--
Belief alone links knowledge to The Whole.

Hail, then, each gleam, albeit of angry skies,
Terrible never to the noble sight!
Hail the dread lightning, if it lift the eyes
Up from the dust into the Infinite!
Look through thy grate, thou saddest captive, Doubt,
And thank the flash that shows a Heaven without.

[H] Hippias, before the battle of Marathon, in which he was
slain, dreamt a dream that he slept with his mother.--See
Herodotus.

ORAMA; OR, FATE AND FREEWILL.

Thin, shadowy, scarce divided from the light,
I saw a phantom at the birth of morn:
Its robe was sable, but a fleecy white
Flow'd silvering o'er the garb of gloom; a horn
It held within its hand; no faintest breath
Stirr'd its wan lips--death-like, it seem'd not Death.

My heart lay numb within me; and the flow
Of life, like water under icebergs, crept;
The pulses of my being seem'd to grow
One awe;--voice fled the body as it slept,
But from its startled depth arose the soul
And king-like spoke:--
"What art thou, that dost seem
To have o'er Immortality control?"
And the Shape answer'd, not by sound,
"A Dream!
A Dream, but not a Dream: the Shade of things
To come--a herald from the throne of Fate.
I ruled the hearts of earth's primaeval kings,
I gave their life its impulse and its date:
Grey Wisdom paled before me, and the stars
Were made my weird interpreters--my hand
Aroused the whirlwind of the destined wars,
And bow'd the nations to my still command.
A Dream, but not a Dream;--a type, a sign,
Pale with the Future, do I come to thee.
The lot of Man is twofold; gaze on thine,
And choose thy path into eternity."

Thus spoke the Shade; and as when autumn's haze
Rolls from a ghostly hill, and gives to view
The various life of troubled human days,
So round the phantom, pale phantasma grew,
And landscapes rose on either side the still
River of Time, whose waves are human hours.--
"What," said my soul, "doth not the Omniscient Will
Foreshape, foredoom; if so, what choice is ours?"
The Ghost replied:--
"Deem'st thou the art divine
Less than the human? Doth inventive Man
All adverse means in one great end combine,
And close each circle where the thought began,
So that his genius, bent on schemes sublime,
Scarce notes the obstructions to its purposed goal,
But turns each discord of the changeful time
Into the music of a changeless whole?
And deem'st thou Him who breathes, and worlds arise,
But the blind agent of His own cold law?
Fool! doth yon river less reflect the skies
Because some wavelet eddies round a straw?
Still to Man's choice is either margin given
Beside the Stream of Time to wander free:
And still, as nourish'd by the dews of Heaven,
Glides the sure river to the solemn sea.
Choose as thou wilt!"--
Then luminously clear
Flash'd either margin from the vapoury shade;
What I beheld unmeet for mortal ear,--
Nor dare I tell the choice the mortal made.
But when the Shape had left me, and the dawn
Smote the high lattice with a starbeam pale,
As a blind man when from his sight withdrawn
The film of dark,--or as unto the gale
Leaps the live war-ship from the leaden calm,--
So joyous rose, look'd forth, and on to Fate
Bounded my soul! Yet nor the Olympian palm
Which fierce contestors hotly emulate,
Nor roseate blooms in Cytherean dell,
Nor laurel shadowing murmurous Helicon,
Strain'd my desire divinely visible
In the lone course it was my choice to run.
Wherefore was then my joy?--THAT I WAS FREE!
Not my life doom'd, as I had deem'd till then,
An iron link of grim Necessity,--
A sand-grain wedged amidst the walls of men;
The good, the ill, the happiness or woe,
That waited, not a thraldom pre-decreed,
But from myself as from their germ to grow,--
Let the Man suffer, still the Slave was freed!
Predestine earth, and heavenly Mercy dies;
The voice of sorrow wastes its wail on air;
Freewill restores the Father to the skies,
Unlocks from ice the living realm of prayer,
And gives creation what the human heart
Gives to the creature, life to life replying.
O epoch in my being, and mine art,
Known but to me!--How oft do thoughts undying
Like rainbows, spring between the cloud and beam,
Colouring the world yet painted on--a dream.

* * * * *

EARLIER POEMS.

CHIEFLY CRITICAL OR REFLECTIVE.[A]

[A] These Poems, with one exception, have received but little
alteration since they were first composed, and are taken from
the little volume called "Eva, &c." The Poem called "THE IDEAL
WORLD," to which I refer as an exception, appeared in a much
ruder form in the earlier editions of the "Pilgrims of the
Rhine," to which it served as a Preface. I recast, and, indeed,
re-wrote it for the last edition of that work, from which (with
slight corrections, and the omission of the verses which
connected the poem with the tale by which it was first
accompanied) it is now reprinted.

THE SOULS OF BOOKS.

I.

Sit here and muse!--it is an antique room--
High-roof'd with casements, through whose purple pane
Unwilling Daylight steals amidst the gloom,
Shy as a fearful stranger.
There THEY reign
(In loftier pomp than waking life had known),
The Kings of Thought!--not crown'd until the grave.
When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb,
The beggar Homer mounts the Monarch's throne!
Ye ever-living and imperial Souls,
Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe,
All that divide us from the clod ye gave!
Law--Order--Love--Intelligence--the Sense
Of Beauty--Music and the Minstrel's wreath!--
What were our wanderings if without your goals?
As air and light, the glory ye dispense,
Becomes our being--who of us can tell
What he had been, had Cadmus never taught
The art that fixes into form the thought--
Had Plato never spoken from his cell,
Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?--
Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakspeare sung!

II.

Hark! while we muse, without the walls is heard
The various murmur of the labouring crowd,
How still, within those archive-cells interr'd,
The Calm Ones reign!--and yet they rouse the loud
Passions and tumults of the circling world!
From them, how many a youthful Tully caught
The zest and ardour of the eager Bar;
From them, how many a young Ambition sought
Gay meteors glancing o'er the sands afar--
By them each restless wing has been unfurl'd,
And their ghosts urge each rival's rushing car!
They made yon Preacher zealous for the truth;
They made yon Poet wistful for the star;
Gave Age its pastime--fired the cheek of Youth--
The unseen sires of all our beings are,--

III.

And now so still! This, Cicero, is thy heart;
I hear it beating through each purple line.
This is thyself, Anacreon--yet thou art
Wreath'd, as in Athens, with the Cnidian vine.
I ope thy pages, Milton, and, behold
Thy spirit meets me in the haunted ground!
Sublime and eloquent, as while, of old,
"It flamed and sparkled in its crystal bound;"[B]
These _are_ yourselves--your life of life! The Wise
(Minstrel or Sage) _out_ of their books are clay;
But _in_ their books, as from their graves, they rise,
Angels--that, side by side, upon our way,
Walk with and warn us!
Hark! the world so loud
And _they_, the movers of the world, so still!

What gives this beauty to the grave? the shroud
Scarce wraps the Poet, than at once there cease
Envy and Hate! "Nine cities claim him dead,
Through which the living Homer begg'd his bread!"
And what the charm that can such health distil
From wither'd leaves--oft poisons in their bloom?
We call some books immoral! _Do they live?_
If so, believe me, TIME hath made them pure.
In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace--
God wills that nothing evil should endure;
The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole,
As the dust leaves the disembodied soul!
Come from thy niche, Lucretius! Thou didst give
Man the black creed of Nothing in the tomb!
Well, when we read thee, does the dogma taint?
No; with a listless eye we pass it o'er,
And linger only on the hues that paint
The Poet's spirit lovelier than his lore.
None learn from thee to cavil with their God;
None commune with thy genius to depart
Without a loftier instinct of the heart.
Thou mak'st no Atheist--thou but mak'st the mind
Richer in gifts which Atheists best confute--
FANCY AND THOUGHT! 'Tis these that from the sod
Lift us! The life which soars above the brute
Ever and mightiest, breathes from a great Poet's lute!
Lo! that grim Merriment of Hatred;[C]--born
Of him--the Master-Mocker of Mankind,
Beside the grin of whose malignant spleen,
Voltaire's gay sarcasm seems a smile serene,--
Do we not place it in our children's hands,
Leading young Hope through Lemuel's fabled lands?--
God's and man's libel in that foul yahoo!--
Well, and what mischief can the libel do?
O impotence of Genius to belie
Its glorious task--its mission from the sky!
Swift wrote this book to wreak a ribald scorn
On aught the man should love or Priest should mourn--
And lo! the book, from all its ends beguiled,
A harmless wonder to some happy child!

IV.

All books grow homilies by time; they are
Temples, at once, and Landmarks. In them, we
Who _but_ for them, upon that inch of ground
We call "THE PRESENT," from the cell could see
No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar;
Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round,
Traverse all space, and number every star,
And feel the Near less household than the Far!
There is no Past, so long as Books shall live!
A disinterr'd Pompeii wakes again
For him who seeks yon well; lost cities give
Up their untarnish'd wonders, and the reign
Of Jove revives and Saturn:--At our will
Rise dome and tower on Delphi's sacred hill;
Bloom Cimon's trees in Academe;[D]--along
Leucadia's headland sighs the Lesbian's song;
With Egypt's Queen once more we sail the Nile,
And learn how worlds are barter'd for a smile:--
Rise up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er,
Ope but that page--lo, Babylon once more!

V.

Ye make the Past our heritage and home:
And is this all? No: by each prophet-sage--
No; by the herald souls that Greece and Rome
Sent forth, like hymns, to greet the Morning Star
That rose on Bethlehem--by thy golden page,
Melodious Plato--by thy solemn dreams,
World-wearied Tully!--and above ye all,
By THIS, the Everlasting Monument
Of God to mortals, on whose front the beams
Flash glory-breathing day--our lights ye are
To the dark Bourne beyond; in you are sent
The types of Truths whose life is THE TO-COME;
In you soars up the Adam from the fall;
In you the FUTURE as the PAST is given--
Ev'n in our death ye bid us hail our birth;--
Unfold these pages, and behold the Heaven,
Without one grave-stone left upon the Earth!

[B] "Comus."

[C] "Gulliver's Travels."

[D] Plut. in "Vit. Cim."

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD AND CONDORCET

Led by the Graces, through a court he moved,
"All men revered him, and all women loved;"[E]--
Happier than Paris, when to _him_ there came
The three Celestials--Learning, Love, and Fame,
He found the art to soothe them all, and see
The Golden Apple shared amidst the Three.
Yet he, this man, for whom the world assumed
Each rose that in Gargettian[F] gardens bloom'd,
Left to mankind a legacy of all
That from earth's sweetness can extract a gall.
With him, indeed, poor Love is but a name--
Virtue a mask--Beneficence a game.
The Eternal Egotist, the Human Soul,
Sees but in Self the starting-post and goal.
Nipp'd in the frost of that cold, glittering air,
High thoughts are dwarf'd, and youth's warm dreams despair!
He lived in luxury, and he died in peace,
And saints in powder wept at his decease!
Man loves this sparkling satire on himself;--
Gaze round--see Rochefoucauld on every shelf!
Look on the other;--Penury made him sour,
His learned youth the hireling slave of power;
His Manhood cast amidst the stormiest time,
A hideous stage, half frenzy and all crime:--
Upon the Dungeon's floor of stone he died,
With Life's last Friend, his Horace, by his side!
Yet he--this Sage--who found the world so base,
Left what?--His "Progress of the Human Race."
A golden dream of man without a sin;
All virtue round him and all peace within!
Man does not love such portraits of himself,
And thrusts the unwelcome Flatterer from the shelf.

[E] "The men respect you, and the women love you."--Such was the
subtle compliment paid by Prior to one equally ambitious of
either distinction; viz. Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke.

[F] Epicurean.

JEALOUSY AND ART.

If bright Apollo be the type of Art,
So is flay'd Marsyas that of Jealousy:
With the bare fibres which for ever smart
Under the sunbeams that rejoice the sky.
Had Marsyas ask'd not with the god to vie,
The god had praised the cunning of his flute.
Thou stealest half Apollo's melody,
Tune but thy reed in concert with his lute.
Each should enrich the other--each enhance
By his own gift the common Beautiful:
That every colour more may charm the glance,
All varying flowers the garland-weavers cull;
Adorn'd by Contrast, Art no rival knows,--
The violet steals not perfume from the rose.

THE MASTER TO THE SCHOLAR.

Write for the pedant Few, the vein shall grow
Cold at its source and meagre in its flow;
But for the vulgar Many wouldst thou write,
How coarse the passion, and the thought how trite!
"Nor Few, nor Many--riddles from thee fall?"
Author, as Nature smiles--so write;--for ALL!

THE TRUE CRITIC.

Taste is to sense, as Charity to soul,
A bias less to censure than to praise;
A quick perception of the arduous whole,
Where the dull eye some careless flaw surveys.
Every true critic--from the Stagirite
To Schlegel and to Addison--hath won
His fame by serving a reflected light,
And clearing vapour from a clouded sun.
Who envies him whose microscopic eyes
See but the canker in the glorious rose?
Not much I ween the Zoilus we prize,
Though even Homer may at moments doze.
Praise not to me the sharp sarcastic sneer,
Mocking the Fane which Genius builds to Time.
High works are Sabbaths to the Soul! Revere
Even some rare discord in the solemn chime.
When on the gaze the Venus dawns divine,
The Cobbler comes the slipper to condemn;
The Slave alone descends into the mine
To work the dross--the Monarch wears the gem.

TALENT AND GENIUS.

Talent convinces--Genius but excites;
This tasks the reason, that the soul delights.
Talent from sober judgment takes its birth,
And reconciles the pinion to the earth;
Genius unsettles with desires the mind,
Contented not till earth be left behind;
Talent, the sunshine on a cultured soil;
Ripens the fruit, by slow degrees, for toil;
Genius, the sudden Iris of the skies,
On cloud itself reflects its wondrous dyes:
And to the earth, in tears and glory, given,
Clasps in its airy arch the pomp of Heaven!
Talent gives all that vulgar critics need--
And frames a horn-book for the Dull to read;
Genius, the Pythian of the Beautiful,
Leaves its large truths a riddle to the Dull--
From eyes profane a veil the Isis screens,
And fools on fools still ask--"What Hamlet means?"

EURIPIDES.

If in less stately mould thy thoughts were cast
Than thy twin Masters of the Grecian stage,
Lone, 'mid the loftier wonders of the Past,
Thou stand'st--more household to the Modern Age;--
Thou mark'st that change in Manners when the frown
Of the vast Titans vanish'd from the earth,
When a more soft Philosophy stole down
From the dark heavens to man's familiar hearth.
With thee came Love and Woman's influence o'er
Her sterner Lord; and Poesy, till then
A Sculpture, warm'd to Painting;[G] what before
Glass'd but the dim-seen Gods, grew now to men
Clear mirrors, and the Passions took their place,
Where a serene if solemn Awe had made
The scene a temple to the elder race:
The struggles of Humanity became
Not those of Titan with a God, nor those
Of the great Heart with that unbodied Name
By which our ignorance would explain our woes
And justify the Heavens,--relentless FATE;--
But, truer to the human life, thine art
Made thought with thought, and will with will debate,
And placed the God and Titan in the Heart;
Thy Phaedra and thy pale Medea were
The birth of that most subtle wisdom, which
Dawn'd in the world with Socrates, to bear
Its last most precious offspring in the rich
And genial soul of Shakspeare. And for this
Wit blamed thee living, Dulness taunts thee dead.[H]
And yet the Pythian did not speak amiss
When in thy verse the latent truths she read,
And hail'd thee wiser than thy tribe.[I] Of thee
All genius in our softer times hath been
The grateful echo; and thy soul we see
Still through our tears--upon the later Scene.
Doth the Italian for his frigid thought
Steal but a natural pathos,--hath the Gaul
To mimes that ape the form of heroes taught
One step that reels not underneath the pall
Of the dark Muse--this praise we give, nor more
They just remind us--thou hast lived before!
But that which made thee wiser than the Schools
Was the long sadness of a much-wrong'd life;
The sneer of satire, and the gibe of fools,
The broken hearth-gods and the perjured wife.
For Sorrow is the messenger between
The Poet and Men's bosoms:--Genius can
Fill with unsympathizing Gods the Scene,
But Grief alone can teach us what is Man!

[G] The celebrated comparison between Sculpture and the Ancient
Painting and the Modern Dramatic Poetry, is not applicable to
Euripides, who has a warmth and colour of passion which few,
indeed, of the moderns have surpassed, and from which most of
the modern writers have mediately, if not directly, borrowed
their most animated conceptions.

[H] Among the taunting accusations which Aristophanes, in his Comedy
of the Frogs, lavishes upon Euripides, through the medium of
AEschylus, is that of having introduced female love upon the
stage! AEschylus, indeed, is made, very inconsistently,
considering his Clytemnestra (Ran. 1. 1042) to declare that
he does not know that _he_ ever represented a single woman in
love. At a previous period of the comedy, Euripides is also
ridiculed, through a boast ironically assigned to his own lips,
for having debased Tragedy by the introduction of domestic
interest--(household things, [Greek: oikeia pragmata]). Upon
these and similar charges have later critics, partly in England,
especially in Germany, sought by duller diatribes to perpetuate
a spirit of depreciation against the only ancient tragic poet
who has vitally influenced the later stage. The true merit of
Euripides is seen in the very ridicule of Aristophanes.

[I] "Wise Sophocles, wiser Euripides, wisest of all, Socrates,"
was the well-known decision of the Delphian Oracle. Yet the
wisdom of Euripides was not in the philosophical sentences with
which he often mars the true philosophy of the drama. His wisdom
is his pathos.

THE BONES OF RAPHAEL.

When the author was in Rome, in the year 1833, the bones of Raphael were discovered, and laid for several days in state in one of the churches.

Wave upon wave, the human ocean stream'd
Along the chancel of the solemn pile;
And, with a softer day, the tapers beam'd
Upon the Bier within the vaulted aisle:--
And, mingled with the crowd, I halted there
And ask'd a Roman scholar by my side,
What sainted dust invoked the common prayer?
"Stranger!" the man, as in disdain, replied,
"Nine days already hath the Disinterr'd
Been given again to mortal eye, and all
The great of Rome, the Conclave and the Pope,
Have flock'd to grace the second funeral
Of him whose soul, until it fled, like Hope,
Gave Beauty to the World:--But haply thou,
A dweller of the North, hast never heard
Of one who, if no saint in waking life,
Communed in dreams with angels, and transferr'd
The heaven in which we trust his soul is now
To the mute canvas.--Underneath that pall
Repose the bones of Raphael!"
Not a word
I answer'd, but in awe I drew more near,
And saw the crowd toil on in busy strife,
Eager which first should touch the holy bier,
I ask'd a boor, more earnest than the rest,
"Whose bones are these?"
"I know not what his name;
But, since the Pope and Conclave have been here,
Doubtless a famous Saint!"
The Boor express'd
The very thought the wandering stranger guess'd.
Which wiser, he, the Scholar, who had sneer'd
To hear the Stranger canonize the Dead;
Or they, the Boor, the Stranger, who revered
The Saint, where he the Artist?--Answer, Fame,
Whose Saints are not the Calendar's! Perchance
Tasso and Raphael, age to age, have given
The earth a lustre more direct from Heaven
Than San Gennaro, or thy Dennis, France;
Or English George!--Read History.[J]--
When the crowd
Were gone, I slipp'd some coins into the hand
Of a grave-visaged Priest, who took his stand
Beside the Bier, and bade him lift the shroud;
And there I paused, and gazed upon the all
The Worm had spared to Raphael.--He had died,
As sang the Alfieri of our land,
In the embrace of Beauty[K]--beautiful
Himself as Cynthia's lover!--That, the skull
Once pillow'd on soft bosoms, which still rise
With passionate life, in canvas;--in the void
Of those blank sockets shone the starry eyes,
That, _like_ the stars, found home in heaven! The pall
With its dark hues, gave forth, in gleaming white,
The delicate bones; for still an undestroy'd
Beauty, amidst decay, appear'd to dwell
About the mournful relics; and the light,
In crownlike halo, lovingly did fall
On the broad brow,--the hush'd and ruin'd cell
Of the old Art--Nature's sweet Oracle!
Believe or not, no horror seem'd to wrap
What has most horror for our life--the Dead:
The sleep slept soft, as in a mother's lap,
As if the Genius of the Grecian Death,
That with a kiss inhaled the parting breath,
That, wing'd for Heaven, stood by the charnel porch,
Lowering, with looks of love, th' extinguish'd torch,
Had taken watch beside the narrow bed;
And from the wrecks of the beloved clay
Had scared, with guardian eyes, each ghastlier shape away!
Come, Moralist, with truths of tritest worth,
And tell us how "to this complexion" all
That beautify the melancholy earth
"Must come at last!" The little and the low,
The mob of common men, rejoice to know
How the grave levels with themselves the great:
For something in the envy of the small
Still loves the vast Democracy of Death!
But flatter not yourselves--in death the fate
Of Genius still divides itself from yours:
Yea, ev'n upon the earth! For Genius lives
Not in your life--it does not breathe your breath,
It does not share your charnels;--but insures
In death itself the life that life survives!
Genius to you what most you value gave,
The noisy forum and the glittering mart,
The solid goods and mammon of the world,
In _these_ your life--and _these_ with life depart!
Grudge not what Genius to itself shall claim--
A life that lived but in the dreams of Art,
A world whose sunshine was the smile from Fame.
These die not, Moralist, when all are hurl'd,
Fasces and sceptre, in the common grave:--
Genius, in life or death, is still the same--
Death but makes deathless what Life ask'd--THE NAME.

[J] Gibbon, after a powerful sketch of the fraud, the corruption,
and the vices of George the Cappadocian, thus concludes:--"The
odious stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and
place, assumed the mask of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian
hero; and the infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed
into the renowned St. George of England, the patron of arms, of
chivalry, and the garter."--_Gibbon's Decline and Fall_, vol.
iv. c. xxiii.

[K] "Italian Beauty! didst thou not inspire
Raphael, who died in thy embrace?"--BYRON.

THE ATHENIAN AND THE SPARTAN.

A DIALOGUE.

THE ATHENIAN.

Stern Prisoner in thy rites of old,
To Learning blind, to Beauty cold,--
Never for thee, with garlands crown'd,
The lyre and myrtle circle round;
Dull to the Lesbian ruby's froth,
Thou revellest in thy verjuice broth.
With Phidian art our temples shine,
Like mansions meet for gods divine;
Thou think'st _thy_ gods despise such toys,
And shrines are made--for scourging boys,
As triflers, thou canst only see
The Drama's Kings--our glorious Three.
No Plato fires your youth to thinking,
Your nobler school,--in Helots drinking!
Contented as your sires before--
The Little makes ye loathe The More.
We, ever pushing forward, still
Take power, where powerless, from the will;
We, ever straining at the All,
With hands that grasp when feet may fall,[L]--
Earth, ocean,--near and far,--we roam,
Where Fame, where Fortune,--there a home!
You hold all progress degradation,
Improvement but degeneration,
And only wear your scarlet coat
When self-defence must cut a throat.
Yet ev'n in war, your only calling,
A snail would beat your best at crawling;
We slew the Mede at Marathon,
While you were gazing at the moon![M]
Pshaw, man, lay by these antique graces,
True wisdom hates such solemn faces!
Spartans, if only livelier fellows,
Would make ev'n US a little jealous!

THE SPARTAN (_calmly_).

Friend, Spartans when they need improvement
Take models not from endless movement.
We found our sires the lords of Greece;--
Ask'd why? this answer--"Laws and Peace."
Enough for us to hold our own;
Who grasps at shadows risks the bone.
You're ever up, and ever down,--
There's something fix'd in True Renown.
The New has charms for men, I'm told;
Granted,--but all our gods are old.
Better to imitate a god
Than shift like men.

THE ATHENIAN (_impatiently_).

You are so odd!
There is no sense in these laconics.
Ho, Dromio! bring my last Platonics.
This mode of arguing, though emphatic,
Is quite eclipsed by the Socratic.

SPARTAN.

Friend--

ATHENIAN.

_You_ have said. Now listen! Peace!

SPARTAN.

Friend--

ATHENIAN.

Gods! his tongue will never cease!
I tell you, man is made for walking,
Not standing still.

SPARTAN.

My friend--

ATHENIAN.

And talking!
Forward's my motto--life and motion!

SPARTAN.

Mine be the Rock, as thine the Ocean.

TIME.

Discuss, ye symbols of the twain
Great Creeds--THE STEADFAST AND IMPROVING;
The one shall rot that would remain,
The one wear out in moving!

[L] Thucyd. lib. 1, c. 68-71 (The Speech of the Corinthians).

[M] Herod. lib. 6, c. 120.

THE PHILANTHROPIST AND THE MISANTHROPE.

A DIALOGUE.

THE PHILANTHROPIST.

Yes, thou mayst sneer, but still I own
A love that spreads from zone to zone:
No time the sacred fire can smother!
Where breathes the man, I hail the brother.
Man! how sublime,--from Heaven his birth--
The God's bright Image walks the earth!
And if, at times, his footstep strays,
I pity where I may not praise.

THE MISANTHROPE.

Thou lov'st mankind. Pray tell me, then,
What history best excuses men?
Long wars for slight pretences made,
See murder but a glorious trade;
Each landmark from the savage state,
Doth virtue or a vice create?
Do ships speed plenty o'er the main?--
What swells the sail? The lust of gain!
What makes a law where laws were not?
Strength's wish to keep what Strength has got!
If rise a Few--the true Sublime,
Who lend the light of Heaven to Time,
What the return the Many make?
The poison'd bowl! the fiery stake!
Thou lov'st mankind,--come tell me, then,
Lov'st thou the past career of men?

THE PHILANTHROPIST.

Nay, little should I love mankind,
If their dark PAST my praise could find,
It is because--

THE MISANTHROPE.

A moment hold!
Enough gone times: _our own_ behold!
What lessons doth a past of woe
And crime upon our age bestow?
How few amongst the tribes of earth
Are rescued from the primal wild;
What countless lands the ocean's girth,
By savage rites and gore defil'd!
Afric--a mart of human flesh;
Asia--a satrapy of slaves!
And yonder tracts from Nature fresh,
Worn empires fill with knaves?
Are men at home more good and wise?
My friend, thou read'st the daily papers;
Perchance, thou seest but laughing skies,
Where I but mists and vapours.
But much the same seems each disease.
What most improved? The doctor's fees!
The Law can still oppress the Weak,
The Proud still march before the Meek.
Still crabbed Age and heedless Youth;
Still Power perplex'd, asks "What is Truth?"
To no result our squabbles come:
To some what's best is worst to some.
The few the cake amongst them carve,
And labourers sweat and poets starve;
And Envy still on Genius feeds,
And not one modest man succeeds.
All much the same for prince and peasant--
I've done.--How dost thou love the PRESENT?

THE PHILANTHROPIST.

'Tis not man's Present or man's Past;
_Beyond_, man's friend his eye must cast.
Must see him break each galling fetter;
To gain the best, desire the better--
From Discontent itself we borrow
The glorious yearnings for the morrow;
Science and Truth like waves advance
Upon the antique Ignorance.

THE MISANTHROPE.

Like waves--the image not amiss!
They gain on that side--lose on this;
Pleased, after fifty ages, if
They gulp at last an inch of cliff.

THE PHILANTHROPIST.

You really cannot think by satire,
To mine the truths you cannot batter;
Man's destinies are brightening slowly,
With them entwined each thought most holy.
What though the PAST my horror moves,
No Eden though the PRESENT seems,
Who loves Mankind, their FUTURE loves,
And trusts, and lives--

THE MISANTHROPE.

In dreams!

WISDOM.

In both extremes there seems convey'd,
A truth to own, and yet deny;
But what between the extremes has made
The master-difference?

HOPE.

I!--
What wert thou, Wisdom, but for me?
Though thou the Past, the Present see,
Through ME alone, the eye can mark
The _Future_ dawning on the dark.
I plant the tree, and till the soil;
I show the fruit,--where thou the toil;
Where thou despondest, I aspire--
Thine sad Content, mine bright Desire.
Under my earthlier name of HOPE,
The love to things unborn is given,
But call me FAITH--behold I ope
The flaming gates of Heaven!
Take ME from Man, and Man is both
The Dastard and the Slave;
And Love is lust, and Peace a sloth,
And all the Earth a Grave!

THE IDEAL WORLD.

ARGUMENT.