Glass 
 
 Book K7 - 
 

THIRD SERIES 
 
 OF 
 
 
 PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY: 
 
 
 MARTIN F. TUPPER. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 r 
 
 EDWARD MOXON & CO., DOVER STREET. 
 1867. 
 
 C 
 
f 
 
 
 <v 
 
 LONDON 
 SWIFT & CO., 55, KING STREET, W. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 
 
 
 page 
 
 Preamble ... ... ... I 
 
 Of Innocence and Guilt 
 
 
 - l 3 
 
 Of this World's Age 
 
 
 
 ... 28 
 
 Of Circumstance 
 
 
 
 ... 41 
 
 Of the Starry Heavens 
 
 
 
 ... 56 
 
 Of Probabilities 
 
 
 
 ■■■ 79 
 
 Of Scripture and Science 
 
 
 
 .. 8 9 
 
 Of Silence 
 
 
 
 100 
 
 Of Spiritual Presences 
 
 
 
 .. 113 
 
 Of Time 
 
 
 
 ."■ J 35 
 
 Of little Providences 
 
 
 
 .. 149 
 
 Of Success 
 
 
 
 .. 159 
 
 Of the smaller Morals 
 
 
 
 169 
 
 Of Rhyme and Rhythm 
 
 
 
 .. 181 
 
 Of Zoilism 
 
 
 
 .. 190 
 
IV 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Of Creeds 
 
 Of the future of Animals . . . 
 Of Happiness together or alone 
 A National Hymn for Harvest 
 A National Dirge in Trouble 
 A National Psalm of Victory 
 The Seven Sayings 
 Final ... 
 
 page 
 
 212 
 
 223 
 
 2 54 
 271 
 
 278 
 
 286 
 
 2 93 
 
 307 
 
PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 THIRD SERIES. 
 
 Preamble, 
 
 Again, toward the eventide of life, I touch 
 
 that rhythmic harp 
 Struck by the son of Sirach twenty centuries 
 
 agone ; 
 Again, I ask thy favour, — thou, my brother 
 
 or my sister, 
 Not as a stranger might but now a friend 
 
 of thirty years ; 
 
 Again, I canvass for my words thy patience 
 
 and thy love, 
 
 B 
 
2 Preamble. 
 
 Again, I show my thoughts to thee, for 
 
 sympathy and kindness : 
 Thoughts not stolen out of books, nor 
 
 noted day by day, 
 But springing fresh beneath my pen, 
 
 unsought and unrestrained; 
 Thoughts ever frankly spoken, as from 
 
 brother's heart to heart, 
 Regardless of the jibe of fools, and proof 
 
 against their spleen. 
 I would away with selfishness; I would 
 
 forswear all vanity ; 
 Nor write for praises, but in hope, to do a 
 
 little good ; 
 In all sincerity and singleness to work my 
 
 Master's work, 
 While yet the day of life is lent, with 
 
 leisure health and grace. 
 
Preamble. 
 
 Once more then after thirty years, I come, 
 
 O friend and brother, 
 Bringing my modern thoughts to thee in 
 
 their antique disguise : 
 This Eastern garb is somewhat, if its 
 
 ancient quaintness help 
 To catch thy kind attention, and to win 
 
 thy willing mind. 
 In those thirty years, a generation is 
 
 entombed, 
 And wondrous changes have there been, 
 
 and much of good and evil ; 
 And death hath made old friendships rare, 
 
 and many have been the wrecks 
 From storm to storm as some we knew 
 
 broke on the rocks of life ; 
 
 B 2 
 
4 Preamble. 
 
 And thankfulness and penitence and charity 
 and faith, 
 
 These well become us all, O friends, remem- 
 bering the past. 
 
 We have been through seas of sorrows, we 
 
 have traversed a whole wilderness of 
 
 trial, 
 Many sins and cares and pains and pleasures 
 
 have we met. 
 Often in the shadow of death, often in the 
 
 valley of weeping, 
 And rarely now and then have basked full 
 
 in the prosperous sun : 
 Danger and adventure have been ours, 
 
 good providences and strange accidents, 
 And well indeed if heinous sin hath not 
 
 bedimmed our light; 
 
Preamble. 5 
 
 Slander bespattered us at times, at times 
 
 fair fame caressed us, 
 And now disease had brought us down, 
 
 or strong health set us up; 
 Many disappointments and misfortunes, yet 
 
 manifold blessings and advancements, 
 Much was ours of grievous loss, yet some 
 
 good gains withal : 
 Thousands have fallen at our side, slain in 
 
 the battle of life, 
 Or dropping, scarcely missed, to death, 
 
 through Mirza's visioned bridge: 
 And still we stand to fight the fight, if 
 
 faint — thank God, pursuing, 
 Still is life with half its hopes and all its 
 
 mercies ours: 
 Therefore gratitude and penitence, faith 
 
 and hope and charity, 
 
6 Preamble. 
 
 These well become us each, O friends, 
 reviewing all that past. 
 
 To teach thy neighbour clearly, search 
 thine own heart deeply, 
 
 Search impartially, with prayer, in humble- 
 ness of mind ; 
 
 And from the bottom of that well thou 
 shalt draw up truth, 
 
 Which, quickened by the breath of day, 
 may flow to others' good. 
 
 Each man's heart is a mine unworked, 
 and all are rich in metal, 
 
 Silver or copper, arsenic or iron, mer- 
 cury lead or gold; 
 
 More is beneath than can ever be 
 brought up, veins to be wrought for 
 ages, 
 
ream 
 
 ble. 7 
 
 When the life of Eternity beginneth, 
 
 after the death , of Time. 
 No man knoweth his own wealth, his 
 
 mightiness for evil or for good, 
 No man hath guessed his capabilities, 
 
 nor how he shall expand; 
 No one ever writ the half, nor spoke 
 
 the tithe he thinketh, 
 Never yet was mind exhausted, nor one 
 
 heart dug out. 
 We are here for an hour to catch a fated 
 
 bent, and then, direct or crooked, 
 The arrow speedeth ever, as first aimed 
 
 and shot by us, 
 That arrow of Existence, our own un- 
 
 endable career, 
 Ever flying to its mark, the Infinite of 
 
 joy or sorrow. 
 
8 Preamble. 
 
 And every man's experience, is a lesson 
 due to all, 
 
 For no one ever yet was taught of 
 Heaven for selfish ends. 
 
 The trials and temptations thou hast seen, 
 thy battles lost or won, 
 
 Were meant not for thyself alone, to 
 strengthen only thee ; 
 
 The story of thy wreck in life, or winning 
 the Fair Havens 
 
 Shall be the chart of safety, to thy neigh- 
 bour for his bark : 
 
 Then say not thou so bitterly, — self- 
 shewing is self-seeking, — 
 
 A fool's heart is worn upon his sleeve, for 
 every daw to peck at: 
 
 No! there is a generous egotism, — in 
 wisdom genially uttered, 
 
Preamble. 9 
 
 Frank and honest plainness, which no true 
 
 man will despise. 
 In no self-seeking doth the Christian 
 
 analyse his heart, 
 In no self-praising can he show the spots 
 
 and wrinkles there; 
 A servant, he hath much to do, and little 
 
 time for doing; 
 A soldier, duty is his end, with courage 
 
 for the way ; 
 A man among his brother-men, he prizeth 
 
 well their love, 
 And scorning no one's censure, asketh no 
 
 one's praise. 
 
 A book is in no sort like a cable, to be 
 judged by its weakest inch, 
 
I o Preamble. 
 
 A chain to be condemned throughout, 
 because some links are faulty; 
 
 Neither as a hedge nor as a wall, to be 
 measured for its usefulness by gaps, 
 
 But generously, honourably, fairly, averaging 
 this and that: 
 
 If the tree have any well-ripe fruits, 
 produce them for the banquet, 
 
 But let the sourlings be, a good tree beareth 
 both: 
 
 It is the vice of our scribes to magnify both 
 best and worst 
 
 In books they think to help by praise, or 
 hope to harm by censure: 
 
 And some will read before they judge, other 
 some will judge without the reading, 
 
 Fairness guiding those, party and pre- 
 judice these; 
 
Preamble, 1 1 
 
 Yet is your confessor of no party ; 
 
 neither side can claim him ; 
 High, or low, narrow, or broad, — in all are 
 
 good and evil ; 
 The Patriot, as the Christian, is found of 
 
 every sect, 
 And moderate men will bid God-speed 
 
 to Patriots and to Christians; — 
 And, for the matter of prejudice, none 
 
 asketh other than strict justice 
 After honest diligence to learn an author's 
 
 mind; 
 But books will live, and books will die, 
 
 alone for their deservings, 
 And no man's fame is made or marred, 
 
 by other than himself: 
 While, for better things than fame, good- 
 doing and glad conscience, 
 
1 2 Preamble. 
 
 A champion, shod in steel with these, can 
 
 kick against the pricks; 
 Good doing, tokened by your love, O 
 
 world of unseen friends, 
 Glad conscience, stablished in Thy grace, 
 
 my Saviour and my God, 
 
( i3 ) 
 
 Of Innocence and Guilt. 
 
 Happy art thou O son, if thou hast walked 
 
 innocently, 
 Baffling corruption in thy heart, and 
 
 battling the temptations of the world ; 
 Happy, if thy present is not clouded with 
 
 the past, — nor miserably shadowed on 
 
 the future, 
 Happy among men art thou, if hitherto thy 
 
 converse hath been innocent : 
 If there be none of all thy brethren whom 
 
 thy greed hath wronged, 
 None to complain of thee for meannesses, 
 
 none to charge thee with injustice, 
 
14 Of Innocence and Guilt. 
 
 None whom thy vindictiveness hath 
 slandered, none by thee maligned, 
 
 No poor cruelly entreated, no rich fraudu- 
 lently spoiled ; 
 
 If there be none of all thy sisters, whom 
 thy passion hath betrayed, 
 
 No foul retrospects of folly, no dark con- 
 sciousness of crime, 
 
 No young unguilty face, to dim thy 
 remembrance with her tears, 
 
 No lower outcast claiming thee, hereafter, 
 soul and body : 
 
 If to thyself thou hast been true, if thou 
 hast been mindful of thy God, 
 
 Nor ever slept, nor ever woke, without a 
 prayer to Him, 
 
 If thou hast at all times done thy best, 
 bearing trials well, 
 
Of Innocence and Guilt. 15 
 
 If thou hast smiled at slander, and been 
 
 humble under praise, 
 If thou hast diligently used thy talents and 
 
 occasions, 
 If through good doing here, thou hast laid 
 
 up treasure elsewhere, 
 Happy art thou, and honourable ; yea thy 
 
 heart is peaceful, 
 Pleasant is thy sleep by night, and sweet 
 
 is thy complacency by day. 
 Truly, an innocent life bringeth its own 
 
 rewardings, 
 Truly, within and not without, is that 
 
 better heaven. 
 
 Yet, art thou still in peril, and hast need 
 of grace, my son, 
 
1 6 Of Innocence and Guilt. 
 
 To keep thee pure as now thou art, and 
 
 save thee from a fall : 
 Yea, thou hast need of Angels, ministering 
 
 good, 
 Thankfulness, humility, and fear; praying 
 
 and watching always. 
 For, this very hour, the Philistines may be 
 
 upon thee, Samson, 
 Delilah may mesh thee in her hair, and 
 
 steal from thee thy treasure, — 
 Or some evil covetousness stamp thee 
 
 Ananias, 
 Or thy soul may drain that poison, spiritual 
 
 pride. 
 Dread thine utter weakness, trust the 
 
 strength of God, 
 Regard thy purer past only as a gift of 
 
 mercy, 
 
Of Innocence and Guilt. 17 
 
 Kindly raise the fallen, considering thine 
 
 own corruption, 
 Look in fear upon the guilt that might 
 
 have been thine own, 
 Be humble, that is safety; in thankfulness 
 
 be humble, 
 And fling from thy clean hand the viper of 
 
 self-righteousness. 
 
 And wretched art thou, O son, — though 
 
 rich and gorged with pleasures, 
 Though rank, and wealth, and favour set 
 
 thee high above thy kind, 
 Yea, most miserable art thou, if guilt is as 
 
 a cancer on thy conscience, 
 In memory of evil deeds, wilful and unre- 
 
 pented : 
 
1 8 Of Innocence and Guilt. 
 
 If thy selfish falsehood hath broken loving 
 
 hearts, 
 If thy coarser passions riot in the mysteries 
 
 of sin, 
 If thou hast stolen and defrauded, if thou 
 
 hast harmed through malice, 
 If thou hast secretly indulged, or openly 
 
 professed pollution : 
 Yea, thou hast seeds of sorrow planted in 
 
 thy heart 
 Enough to make its borders sad for ever 
 
 and for ever ; 
 Yea, there is need of nothing else, nor fire 
 
 nor worm undying, 
 To make the sinner's punishment eternal 
 
 and supreme ; 
 His conscious soul aflame with all those 
 
 burning memories, 
 
Of Innocence and Guilt. 19 
 
 This is enough for vengeance in whatever 
 
 world : 
 Here, sharp terrors of discovery, and the 
 
 pale faces of his victims, 
 Remorse, disease, and self contempt, despair 
 
 for earth and heaven ; 
 Hereafter, all the past become a terrible 
 
 present, 
 Never to end and never to mend, without 
 
 one hope of better ; 
 Only misery to feed on, memory of chances 
 
 gone, 
 Ruined good, and squandered talents, all 
 
 one bitter chaos : 
 Such are the wages of the guilty, hourly 
 
 paid him here, 
 
 And ever more to be the price of all his evil 
 
 doings ; 
 
 c 2 
 
20 Of Innocence and Guilt. 
 
 Now, to darken every noon, and frighten 
 
 every night, 
 Then, to make eternal life an endless death 
 
 to him. 
 
 Yet, is there hope, O brother, — still in life 
 
 is hope, — 
 For He that giveth one more day, gave it 
 
 for repentance. 
 Now, in this blest hour, put aside thy sins, 
 Lay thy guilt on Christ, the scapegoat for 
 
 all evil : 
 If this word, sincerely uttered, reacheth thee 
 
 in solitude, 
 Put it not aside, but lift thy heart in 
 
 momentary prayer; 
 Who knoweth, whether thy Good Angel 
 
 be not now beside thee, 
 
Of Innocence and Guilt. 21 
 
 And did not the Father of the prodigal fall 
 
 on his neck and kiss him ? 
 If thou art in company with others, be not 
 
 ashamed of Truth, 
 Seek to be alone awhile, and gaze upon her 
 
 face: 
 This shall be a day to be remembered, the 
 
 dawn of happy good, 
 The breaking of thy fetters, and the death 
 
 to all thy fears : 
 Whatever may have been the past, however 
 
 black and hideous, 
 It hath a present cure, repentance with 
 
 amendment. 
 Be just in restitution where thou canst, 
 
 confessing with discreetness, 
 And prove not so unjust to God, as to 
 
 despair of grace ; 
 
22 Of Innocence and Guilt. 
 
 Guilt is pardoned at the word, that Heaven 
 
 waiteth long to hear, 
 And pardoned guilt is that New Life, the 
 
 next akin to innocence. 
 
 But, there are strange differences in guilt, 
 
 as there is infinity toward innocence, 
 This last leading up to God, and those 
 
 being footsteps in corruption : 
 And many causes of all kinds are leaven to 
 
 the twain, 
 Birth, education, circumstance, the mysteries 
 
 of partial Providence. 
 Far be it from any man to judge, ignorant 
 
 and full of prejudice, 
 For the race is run with various weights, 
 
 that have to be allowed for. 
 
Of Innocence and Guilt. 23 
 
 An orphan outcast of the streets, bred in 
 
 vice and cruelty, 
 Whose only teachings have been theft, 
 
 lying, lust and baseness, 
 With nought but evil round him, and his 
 
 mother's taint within, 
 Some reprobate father's image, stunted in 
 
 mind and body, — 
 How to compare him as to guilt, with 
 
 another nurtured in piety, 
 Carefully taught and tended, come of a 
 
 stock of saints, 
 With every help for either world, health 
 
 and wealth and kindness, 
 And leanings to the good and pure through 
 
 twenty generations ? 
 O Man, leave judgments to the Judge : it 
 
 needeth an infinity of wisdom 
 
24 Of Innocence and Guilt. 
 
 To set those balances aright, which bless 
 or ban a soul. 
 
 Yet there is a marvellous diversity among 
 
 the characters of men, 
 Heights of aspiration, and depths of degra- 
 dation, with infinite breadths upon the 
 
 level : 
 The many are read at a glance, neither 
 
 very good nor very evil, 
 Changeable to either sort, and kindly 
 
 weakly natured ; 
 The few, of infinite capacities, bent toward 
 
 right or wrong, 
 So that thou shalt not easily gauge the saint 
 
 or the sinner before thee : 
 There are higher heights in the spiritual 
 
 life, than thy thought may reach, 
 
Of Innocence and Guilt. 25 
 
 There are deeper depths in wickedness, 
 
 than common men can fathom ; 
 In either the immortal is perceived, the 
 
 strong flight of that spirit is begun, 
 To wing its way for ever, through all good 
 
 or evil worlds. 
 O Man, set steadily thy will to catch the 
 
 breeze of Heaven, 
 Nor luff that iron rudder to the Maelstrom 
 
 of the Lost; 
 It is given to thy nature to be great, an 
 
 awful Immortality, 
 And in thy hand is placed betimes its 
 
 happiness or woe. 
 Needs must there be a separation, dividing 
 
 the evil from the good ; 
 Worlds of retribution and reward, as worlds 
 
 of resurrection in experience : 
 
26 Of Innocence and Guilt. 
 
 So long as consciousness surviveth, so long 
 
 shall memory be keen ; 
 And there is no crueller avenger, no 
 
 tenderer rewarder than Remembrance. 
 The Muses were daughters of Mnemosyne ; 
 
 and Night the mother of Memory 
 Had likewise the Furies for her daughters, 
 
 Remorse and bitter Shame. 
 Even with pardoned guilt, the scars will 
 
 ache though healed : 
 But innocence hath no such scars, no 
 
 aching if no healing : 
 To be well-forgiven may be joy, so to be 
 
 redeemed from punishment, 
 Yet must that spirit recollect, painfully 
 
 what evil it hath worked : 
 And there is a cloud upon its brow that 
 
 never darkened innocence, 
 
Of Innocence and Guilt. 27 
 
 Whose crown of glory is not dimmed by 
 memories of sin. 
 
 O youth, O man, O fair maid or matron, 
 Keep innocency, — nothing less ensureth 
 
 peace at the last : 
 Or, if utterly thou hast lost it, let no rash 
 
 despair 
 Provoke thee to be reckless of the Grace 
 
 that yearneth to restore thee : 
 Haste with penitence and prayer : all have 
 
 need of mercy ; 
 All may ask it, if they will, and have it 
 
 for the asking. 
 
( *8 ) 
 
 Of this World's Age. 
 
 God is truth, God is light, God is right 
 
 and reason ; 
 He cannot darken nor deceive, nor cheat 
 
 the sons of men : 
 That which He graveth on the rock, as 
 
 that which He writeth in the Book, 
 Leadeth not astray, is not dangerous to seek, 
 
 nor difficult to find. 
 Fear not thou, meek Christian, the flare 
 
 from Reason's torch 
 Illumining the caverns of the Earth, and 
 
 searching secrets there ; 
 
Of this World's Age. 29 
 
 Be not ashamed, O Philosopher, but boldly 
 
 show thy proofs 
 That mother Earth is old beyond all human 
 
 computation ; 
 That infinite periods are needed for her 
 
 mountains made of shells, 
 For her saltmines dried from ancient seas, 
 
 for her ores and fossil forests, 
 For the monsters living through their 
 
 centuries on continents of mud, 
 Millions of years ere Adam was, with Eden 
 
 for his home. 
 As leaves of some old book, inscribed with 
 
 unknown characters, 
 The strata, folios on folios, testify to bye- 
 gone histories : 
 Whether in the page-like slates, and schales 
 
 and films of stone, 
 
30 Of this World's Age, 
 
 Each with its beauteous illustration, ferns 
 and flies and fishes, 
 
 Or in the miles of massy chalk, or swath- 
 ing thicknesses of clay, 
 
 Or granite where all life was fused by force 
 of primal fires, 
 
 Or lower still where water, in the green 
 Laurentian lime, 
 
 Preserved to our microscopic wonder, the 
 first-born atomies of life, — 
 
 Everywhere, is manifestly written in cha- 
 racters that all may read 
 
 A vast antiquity for Earth scarce shorter 
 than a past Eternity. 
 
 Moses, the wisest among men, taught by 
 the God of wisdom, 
 
Of this World's Age. 3 1 
 
 Knew and spake of old the truths we now 
 
 discover : 
 In the beginning of all sons, myriads of 
 
 eras back, 
 In the beginning with the Word, who both 
 
 was God and with God, 
 In that beginning of beginnings, He created 
 
 all things, 
 The suns as they stand, and their planets as 
 
 they roll, the universe, the Heavens 
 
 and the Earth. 
 What need hath man to learn the history 
 
 of all those ages ? 
 Why should his teacher of religion 
 
 heap him with the chaos of their 
 
 facts ? 
 Tribes of most ancient lower-life over- 
 swarmed the desolated globe, 
 
32 Of this World's Age. 
 
 Preyed on each other and were whelmed, 
 by earthquakes, deluges, volcanoes ; 
 
 In a beautiful series of improvement, higher 
 succeeding to the humbler, 
 
 As if the choice of Wisdom was Perfection 
 by degrees : 
 
 Each wave of life congealing was a step- 
 ping-stone beyond, 
 
 Until they bridged that ancient sea with 
 monumental death. 
 
 But why encumber our minds with lore so 
 slightly worth 
 
 When in man's little year he scarce hath 
 time for duties ? 
 
 It were wise to leave riddles in the rocks, 
 for science to solve thereafter, 
 
 But not to vex an infant race, with themes 
 beyond its ken : 
 
Of this World's Age. $$ 
 
 So, when this everlasting scroll, that God 
 
 hath fashioned all things, 
 Was first and once, as by an Angel, flung 
 
 across the universe of matter, 
 The spirit of the Book, and of the World, 
 
 commandeth holy silence, 
 And the gulf of innumerable ages is leapt 
 
 by Revelation. 
 Era followed era, while Earth lay ripening 
 
 for man, 
 And multitudes of living things then served 
 
 their generations : 
 The rocks and giant hills are full of fossil 
 
 forms, 
 And half the crust of Earth is built of 
 
 microscopic shells : 
 Dragons fattened in the slime, while forests, 
 
 matting overhead, 
 
34 Of this World's dge. 
 
 Drained, from premundane sunshine, our 
 
 brightest coloured tints : 
 And grinding cataracts of ice, and tilts of 
 
 land and water 
 Many times wrought destruction on those 
 
 pristine tribes of Earth ; 
 Often the creation was renewed, standing 
 
 on the ruins of a former, 
 Often, by fire or by flood, the catastrophes 
 
 swept on to desolation. 
 Then, after many many ages, when earth 
 
 stood rich in soils, 
 Laden with ores and fuel, stocked and stored 
 
 with wealth, 
 Fitted, at God's behest, to bring forth food 
 
 for man, 
 And baited with secrets for his intellect as 
 
 well as with jewels for his pride, 
 
Of this World's Age. $$ 
 
 Then, after some more crashing ruin, when 
 
 the globe was void and formless, 
 Dashed into fragments as a potsherd, and 
 
 empty of all life, 
 Then, the Spirit moved, on the face of 
 
 drowning waters, 
 And God commanded order, crystallizing 
 
 from those ruins. 
 Thus our Cosmos grew ; He willed it, day 
 
 by day, 
 (Why not a week of days, as easy as an 
 
 instant or an seon ?) 
 And, in harmonious succession, rising from 
 
 the lowest to the highest, 
 All our humbler creatures, and their mother 
 
 Earth, 
 Waited ready for their lord, the man whom 
 
 God created. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 Of this World's Age. 
 
 Adam is our date, — as we are Adam's 
 
 children ; 
 From Adam's birth six thousand years have 
 
 well nigh sped on Earth. 
 To Adam's race alone, the Word by Moses 
 
 spake, 
 And God was pleased Himself to live a 
 
 very Son of Eve. 
 It may be there were earlier tribes, in some 
 
 premundane eras, 
 Tribes analogous with man, but not of 
 
 Adam's race : 
 Skulls in the sandstone, or the chalk, or the 
 
 lias may yet be gathered, 
 To scatter sagest theory, but not harm 
 
 foolish faith : 
 
Of this World* s Age. 37 
 
 Hitherto nothing hath appeared, beyond 
 
 some faint remains 
 Of savage men, who dwelt in caves, before 
 
 our Noah's flood, 
 Battling wretchedly with beasts, extinct since 
 
 that last deluge, 
 And downward sunk in misery, a whole 
 
 degraded race, 
 Children of Cain scattered over earth, curst 
 
 for their father's sake, 
 With his black mark set on them over all, 
 
 as witnessed to this hour ; 
 Even in the Ark of refuge, the wife of 
 
 Ham was one, 
 And so, indelibly for ever, was multiplied 
 
 that ancient stain. 
 Perchance, if any so-called men were in 
 
 those old creations, 
 
38 Of this World's Age. 
 
 God may have raised their bodies, in some 
 
 earlier resurrection : 
 No trace would then be found, saving of 
 
 the lower animals ; 
 While the absence of their lord proclaimed 
 
 his higher calling : 
 But, what mattereth it to us, the new made 
 
 race of Man, 
 The dynasty of Adam, formed to fill that 
 
 ancient throne ? 
 From him, through a thousand generations, 
 
 God doth give all good, 
 Commanding duties, promising rewards, 
 
 and stirring hopes and fears ; 
 For which our privilege is gratitude, our 
 
 daily strength is Faith, 
 Our aim a nobler sphere, and this old 
 
 world's great future. 
 
Of this World's Age. 39 
 
 Yea: for a bright regeneration is ripening 
 
 for this Earth, 
 Its thousand years of days of years, accord- 
 ing to the Scripture, 
 A year for a day and a day for a year, no 
 
 simple thousand years ; 
 Three hundred threescore and five thousand 
 
 make the wondrous sum : 
 Then, — and the promise is to us, to us and 
 
 to our children, 
 Commencing within a generation that yet 
 
 shall see the end, 
 That glorious consummation for the Earth, 
 
 our longed-for age of glory, 
 Our holiday of happiness, our Sabbath of 
 
 high praise, 
 
40 Of this World's Age. 
 
 Shall gladden ail Earth's creatures, the lion 
 
 as the ox, 
 The trees of the wood, and the flowers of 
 
 the field, the hills and plains and 
 
 valleys. 
 
( 4* ) 
 
 Of Circumstance, 
 
 Boast not, O man of much adventure, for 
 
 thou canst compass little, 
 Save by steering with the tide, to catch the 
 
 swing of circumstance ; 
 Skill and courage are as nought, striving 
 
 against the current, 
 But best are shown and used, when with it, 
 
 not against it. 
 A wise man watcheth for his chance, to 
 
 seize it on the instant, 
 And, to be ready for that chance, must be 
 
 well prepared beforehand : 
 Therefore, a diligence in all things is the 
 
 strongest fulcrum of success, 
 
42 Of Circumstance. 
 
 Therefore the many sided mind is ripe for 
 every prize. 
 
 How mightily beyond our power, beyond 
 
 our will or thought 
 The force of outer circumstance constraineth 
 
 to obey : 
 Yet a man is no straw upon the hurricane ; 
 
 his consciousness is calm ; 
 In patience, strength, and prayer he still can 
 
 stem the tempest ; 
 Waiting and watching his occasion, self- 
 possessed and shrewd, 
 He yet may make the vortex serve him not 
 
 enslave him. 
 If thou art master of thyself, circumstance 
 
 shall harm thee little ; 
 
Of Circumstance. 43 
 
 But weakness sloth and sin make men as 
 
 leaves on eddies. 
 True, some seeming accident can fell the 
 
 strong man by a blow, 
 Decisive and inevitable, to be patiently 
 
 accepted as of Providence ; 
 Even if the throne of Palasologus be lost 
 
 through such slight cause, 
 Well, — it was the will of Heaven, not the 
 
 whim of chance ; 
 Or haply an honest serf, running with the 
 
 crowd of sightseers 
 To win a glance at his loved Prince, the 
 
 Russian's Czar and father, 
 Blest by happy circumstance, but ready for 
 
 the act 
 In loyal heart and daring hand, and kindli- 
 ness and honour, 
 
44 Of Circumstance. 
 
 Stayeth the crime of the assassin ; and 
 leapeth into instant fortune 
 
 Hero and darling of his people, ennobled 
 and enriched. 
 
 Or haply, in the dead of night, some half- 
 mad jealous sister 
 
 Terribly perpetrateth murder upon sleeping 
 infant innocence ; 
 
 And the false finger of suspicion pointed at 
 the wretched father, 
 
 Ruin swept his home, calumny and hatred 
 crushed him, 
 
 And all through evil circumstance, that he 
 could not escape : 
 
 Yet had he governed early the wicked way- 
 ward daughter, 
 
 Or lived the life of purity, that no ill 
 tongue could taint, 
 
Of Circumstance. 45 
 
 Or frankly and manfully outspoken, quell- 
 ing the voice of clamour, 
 He, as pitied, not condemned, might have 
 
 overmastered circumstance. 
 All things spring of seeds, nothing groweth 
 
 but from roots, 
 Even calumnious suspicion is weak against 
 
 strong character : 
 And many times an innocent in fact hath 
 
 suffered as a criminal in law- 
 Deserving all that penalty, well due to old 
 transgressions. 
 
 Wide is the range of circumstance, but nar- 
 rower the difference in condition, 
 
 Happiness is measured out, to most, with 
 equal hand. 
 
4-6 Of Circumstance. 
 
 Innocency, rarest among men, — yet some 
 
 there be who keep it, 
 Innocency from the great offence, clean life 
 
 with quiet conscience, 
 Innocency giveth in all states a double dole 
 
 of happiness, — 
 And guilt detracteth from them all the half 
 
 if not the whole. 
 Even disease upon her bed, lying there year 
 
 after year, 
 Is cheerful and contented, with religion in 
 
 her heart ; 
 Even strong health upon his hunter, gallop- 
 ing over the uplands, 
 Is wretched from his sins, blaspheming as 
 
 he leapt : 
 The little workhouse orphan, slave to some 
 
 woman tyrant, 
 
Of Circumstance. 47 
 
 Singeth at her half-starved toil merrily spite 
 of hardship ; 
 
 While yonder highbred beauty, wearied 
 with waltzing at the ball, 
 
 Sobbeth on her sofa, envious, piqued, un- 
 happy. 
 
 It is not accident of circumstance, but innate 
 quality of soul 
 
 That addeth peace or taketh it away, as 
 well with the highest as the lowest. 
 
 Many things marvellous to us, until we 
 
 know their causes, 
 Justify the government of Providence, with 
 
 those their causes known. 
 Sometimes the profligate father hath a pious 
 
 son. 
 
48 Of Circumstance. 
 
 Driven to such happy contrariety through 
 
 hate of Helot- vice ; 
 Sometimes a profligate son shall cheat his 
 
 pious father 
 For morals all too stern, and ill-advised 
 
 restraints : 
 Guilt shall heap up wealth, if keenness and 
 
 industry be added, — 
 And saints must come to poverty, if prudence 
 
 be not theirs ; 
 Triumph is not given to the right, if vigour 
 
 be wanting in its champion ; 
 And high success may crown the wrong 
 
 through energy and skill. 
 Causes win consequents, and laws will 
 
 govern universally, 
 Neither are they warped but by a miracle, 
 
 that miracle born of prayer. 
 
Of Circumstance. 49 
 
 While thou canst, give diligence ; every sort 
 
 of knowledge 
 Riseth to the surface in its turn on the 
 
 eddying torrent of life : 
 And it is the privilege of genius, energy 
 
 seizing on occasion, 
 To use all sorts of knowledge, and make 
 
 them serve its ends. 
 I have known a poor school teacher, hus- 
 banding his scant leisure, 
 Studious of Chinese lore, while many 
 
 mocked his folly ; 
 But in due time good circumstance swept 
 
 by, an interpreter was wanted for a 
 
 treaty, 
 The Chinese scholar was in quest, and lo ! 
 
 a man ready with his learning ; 
 
50 Of Circumstance. 
 
 Wealth and fame and fortune came within 
 
 his reach, 
 And so well-skilled he gathered wealth and 
 
 fame and fortune. 
 As occasion passeth on, if thy hand pluck 
 
 not quickly at its sleeve, 
 It walketh away, thy chance is gone, 
 
 because thou wast not ready. 
 The soil must be well-dressed, to give the 
 
 seed full growth, 
 And for the battle of life, both mind and 
 
 body should be athletes. 
 Therefore the aim of education should be 
 
 more to build up character 
 Than painfully to store the mind with 
 
 multitude of facts : 
 And the training, the discipline, the gram- 
 mar, these are ends as well as means ; 
 
Of Circumstance. 51 
 
 Nerving and establishing the man, for much 
 
 beyond his classics. 
 Our youths have Spartan lessons, and grow 
 
 thereby strong and patient ; 
 Our maidens throng the Capuan school, for 
 
 vanities and caprice. 
 Mindfully, with high conscience, true 
 
 scholars study all things, 
 And learn betimes to use aright all weapons 
 
 in all armouries. 
 A wise man redeemeth his time, that he 
 
 may improve his chances ; 
 Diligence ever winneth reward upon oc- 
 casion : 
 Never have I seen the statesman, the orator 
 
 poet or preacher, 
 To whom his school day lessons came not 
 
 as continual allies. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 Of Circumstance. 
 
 However wide the field, analogy in all 
 
 things is so perfect, 
 No knowledge seemeth unavailable, no toil 
 
 bringeth not its gain. 
 Therefore read and mark, and think and 
 
 write for memory, 
 Therefore scorn no lore, for all are full of 
 
 uses; 
 The student of a shingle beach may find in 
 
 stones true sermons ; 
 The watcher of a microscope shall win deep 
 
 wisdom out of monads ; 
 He that knoweth to swim can save himself 
 
 or another, 
 So earning second lives, by readiness for 
 
 occasion ; 
 The linguist, multiplying usefulness, and 
 
 fusing his ideas in other tongues, 
 
Of Circumstance. 53 
 
 Is fitted both to teach and learn, through 
 being well prepared ; 
 
 The musician pleaseth by his skill, philo- 
 sophers make rich through science, 
 
 But all must have given diligence, to be 
 quick to the call of Circumstance. 
 
 Every one of us getteth his desert, somehow, 
 
 somewhen, somewhere, 
 Penalties are earned as surely as rewards, 
 
 pains alike with pleasures : 
 No man gathereth grapes of thorns, neither 
 
 figs of thistles ; 
 Everything is consequent, and nothing by a 
 
 chance : 
 This thy torment of disease, this racking of 
 
 a joint or of a nerve, 
 
54 Of Circumstance. 
 
 Is due to thine own foolishness, and hath 
 
 been well deserved : 
 All things grow of seeds, accident hath no 
 
 real being, 
 That we sow we reap, that which is is 
 
 ordered. 
 
 A wise man fitteth into Circumstance, easily 
 
 cheerfully and wholly, 
 Even as a globule of quicksilver filleth up 
 
 its any little mould ; 
 Instantly adaptable his mind acquiesceth 
 
 contentedly and bravely 
 In all the will of Providence, led on by 
 
 Duty's clue : 
 For he wotteth well and shrewdly, that, let 
 
 whatever happen, 
 
Of Circumstance. 55 
 
 Circumstance is the servant, not the master 
 
 of his soul, 
 And that, looking still toward Heaven in 
 
 his travail on the earth, 
 He is gradually fitted for his place, and the 
 
 work he hath to do. 
 
( 56 ) 
 
 Of the Starry Heavens. 
 
 " The heavens declare the glory of God, 
 
 and the firmament showeth His handy 
 
 work: 
 " One day telleth another, and one night 
 
 proclaimeth to another : 
 " There is neither speech nor language, 
 
 where their voices are not heard ; 
 " Their sound is gone out through all the 
 
 earth, and their words to the ends of 
 
 the world." 
 The Spirit that sang in David, as the Mind 
 
 that preached in Paul, 
 
Of the Starry Heavens, 57 
 
 Knew and recorded long ago how various 
 
 are the lights of heaven ; 
 That there is one glory of the sun and 
 
 another glory of the moon, 
 And another glory of the stars, differing 
 
 each from other : 
 And now doth modern science but retouch 
 
 that ancient truth, 
 Dividing by three-angled glass those glories 
 
 in proportions, 
 So that we calculate and prove what Paul 
 
 and David saw, 
 And show that the Bible of the saint is 
 
 equally the text-book of the sage. 
 
 O stars, inhabited of angels, worlds of won- 
 drous glory, 
 
58 Of the Starry Heavens. 
 
 That shine in your far stations, flaming 
 
 sentinels of Space, 
 How full of mystery and marvel, rich in 
 
 unthought wealth, 
 How beauteous and how vast are ye, strange 
 
 islands of the Blest ! 
 Walking in these fields by night, with dews 
 
 and solitude around me, 
 Or on that rippled shingle, with music in 
 
 the waves, 
 I lift my heart up with mine eyes, yearning 
 
 toward the stars, 
 Each so different in. glory, all so brilliant 
 
 and enormous, 
 Wondering which of them is mine, my 
 
 kingdom of inheritance, 
 Claimed through The Heir of all things, 
 
 my Saviour, God and Brother. 
 
Of the Starry Heavens. 59 
 
 Is there not for each of us his star, as those 
 
 of yore declared, — 
 (And old tradition runneth rooted strong in 
 
 earth, like couch,) 
 A fated realm for the immortal, made 
 
 co-heir in Christ, 
 A waiting throne with its angel here, to 
 
 guard him on the way ? 
 Each star beckoneth on to glory, our distant 
 
 twinkling goal, 
 Albeit this clay-cold soil of earth may clog 
 
 the wayward feet ; 
 Ever are we creeping on in darkness, with 
 
 Duty for a lantern through it all ; 
 Ever righting ambushed foes, and God to 
 
 fight for us ; 
 Ever do we grope and guess, hoping where 
 
 we cannot see, 
 
60 Of the Starry Heavens. 
 
 And all our wisdom here the while, is 
 walking straight in faith. 
 
 O bright candles of the Lord, searching out 
 
 earth's dark corners, 
 Calm witnesses to many deeds that fain 
 
 would hide in night ; 
 Alas ! for the evils ye behold, the wrongs 
 
 and harms and sorrows, 
 The discords that rush up from us to your 
 
 harmonic sphere ! 
 Yea, sinner, cease from sinning, in the sight 
 
 of all these eyes, 
 Let them not see thy guilt, for shame, to 
 
 testify far off; 
 For thou art watched, O sinner, and thy 
 
 works recorded ; 
 
Of the Starry Heavens. 61 
 
 Repent, return, and sin no more beneath 
 the conscious stars. 
 
 Suns, fixed centres of bright systems, grouped 
 
 with unseen planets, 
 All, one universe of globes careering round 
 
 God's Throne, 
 How meanly can we estimate the glory and 
 
 high grace 
 Hid in some sparkle, twinkling there, ten 
 
 billion leagues away ! 
 Possibly, each star-sun is the central heaven 
 
 to its system ; 
 Probably, the worlds round each are tried 
 
 and purified as ours ; 
 For, matter tendeth to corruption, and 
 
 moral trials unto purity ; 
 
62 Of the Starry Heavens. 
 
 Exceeding broad are His commandments, 
 
 filling the extremities of Space. 
 He spreadeth out the heavens like a curtain, 
 
 woven of many lights, 
 A golden tissue of comets' trails, bejewelled 
 
 with set worlds, 
 The Great King's robe of glory flowing to 
 
 the footstool of His throne, 
 And glittering with its million suns, celestial 
 
 mounts of light. 
 Our minds have skill to weigh those 
 
 worlds, to measure out their dis- 
 
 tances, 
 To note the nice diversities that tint their 
 
 spectral hues; 
 We calculate their structure and their 
 
 elements, haply their creatures and 
 
 their histories, 
 
Of the Starry Heavens. 63 
 
 And shrewdly from a slenderest hint deduce 
 some strong-limbed truth : 
 
 We judge that each, — of three millions we 
 can count, and millions more half-seen, 
 
 The clouds of diamond-dust around Je- 
 hovah's chariot wheels, — 
 
 Is vaster than thought's vastest, brighter 
 than imagination's brightest, 
 
 And peopled with glad creatures, all perfect 
 in their kind, 
 
 Of novel forms in beauty, shapes and senses 
 unconceived, 
 
 With other lights in colour, and other tones 
 in music, 
 
 Strange pleasures, and new virtues, incom- 
 municable thoughts, 
 
 And powers we cannot guess, capacities, in- 
 tensities, expansions, 
 
64 Of the Starry Heavens. 
 
 Pertaining to exalted natures, rich in glorious 
 
 gifts, 
 And nobler in themselves than we, as 
 
 creatures nearer God. 
 
 Yet, are your thrones, O some among the 
 
 stars, waiting for their human kings, 
 Heirs to fill those highest seats, made void 
 
 through war in heaven. 
 With many of you, each is vacant of its 
 
 head, — some down-hurled son of 
 
 glory — 
 And ready for a substituted chief, a brother 
 
 of the Christ, 
 A ransomed child of Adam, made through 
 
 suffering perfect, 
 Lower than the angels at his first, but 
 
 higher than them all hereafter. 
 
Of the Starry Heavens. 6$ 
 
 Each star is a mighty kingdom, tributary 
 
 to the central Sun, 
 And stood, or swerved, in loyalty, when 
 
 Lucifer tempted changes ; 
 In some the pristine rulers, fallen from their 
 
 pure seraphic state, 
 Have left those Canaan cities to be won by 
 
 Israel's host; 
 In some they stood sublime, Abdiels among 
 
 the sons of Belial, 
 Gaining the regalia for themselves, Arch- 
 angels though not men ; 
 Angels stood and angels fell ; as men may 
 
 fall or stand, 
 God's darling youngest-born, His Benjamins 
 
 and Davids. 
 
 F 
 
66 Of the Starry Heavens. 
 
 There be globes, near of kin to our world, 
 wanderers, dependents on the sun, 
 
 So vast and rare and light, we may guess 
 them spiritual mansions ; 
 
 That outer quaternion of planets, flying in 
 a wider orbit, 
 
 The so-styled Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus 
 and furthest Neptune : 
 
 These, each larger than this earth, by a 
 thousand times and more, 
 
 Weigh yet as lightness for their bulk, seem- 
 ingly less substantial. 
 
 Have such worlds expanded, balancing alike 
 for density, 
 
 But swollen as to gaseous globes, fitted for 
 some half-material beings ? 
 
 Have these four, purified by fire, attained 
 their incorruptible perfection ; 
 
Of the Starry Heavens, 67 
 
 The like whereof we look for Earth, for 
 Venus, Mercury and Mars ? 
 
 And is it that the lost huge planet, shattered 
 into ninety provinces, 
 
 Asteroid-orbs that sweep midway between 
 near Mars and Jupiter, 
 
 Burst and demolished for its sin, is a warn- 
 ing to our grosser worlds, 
 
 Now looking equally to judgement, and 
 waiting for a baptism of fire ? 
 
 That huge and ruined world, was it once 
 the realm of Lucifer 
 
 Prince of the powers of the air, since fallen 
 through ambition ? 
 
 And are the shattered fragments of his 
 kingdom homes for evil angels, 
 
 Flung down to earth in meteors, and 
 
 troubling our skies with pestilence, — 
 
 F 2 
 
68 Of the Starry Heavens. 
 
 Wandering stars, soon to be put out, in 
 
 blackness of darkness for ever ? 
 For behold, — that devastated globe, vast as 
 
 Jupiter or Neptune, 
 May have been comet-struck for sin just 
 
 before man was made ; 
 And its degraded monarch have striven thus 
 
 to seize 
 The new weak creature's kingdom for his 
 
 glory and revenges. 
 
 And for those better four, flowering in 
 
 season from their roots, 
 Each hath grown to its millenium, and 
 
 won that seon of its glory ; 
 Each is now the happy home of beings 
 
 purified from matter, 
 
Of the Starry Heavens. 69 
 
 Having passed, long eras since, through 
 
 fiery ordeals to perfection. 
 Then, as for our humbler four, Mars, 
 
 Earth, Mercury, and Venus, 
 Now we stand for illustration set before 
 
 the universe of worlds, 
 Showing that earlier phase, the hour of 
 
 sin and trial, 
 Homely in Time's working-dress before 
 
 our Sabbath suit ; 
 But meant to be hereafter clothed-upon and 
 
 grown to be fit heavens for their children, 
 Wide enough for all the generations of 
 
 all creatures born therein. 
 Earth (and those near planets in their 
 
 season, at intervals of million ages,) 
 May swell and ripen in the fire, when its 
 
 elements shall melt with fervent heat ; 
 
70 Of the Starry Heavens. 
 
 Expanded thus as Jupiter, magnified some 
 
 thirteen hundred times 
 Yet with its equipoise unaltered, being in 
 
 its density the same, 
 Cleansed by that baptism of fire, as once 
 
 washed clean by water, 
 Made an ethereal palace for holier ran- 
 somed creatures, 
 Earth then would thus be large enough, 
 
 the heritage for all her children, 
 Children of every class, the humblest as 
 
 the highest, 
 Not only man, but all his serfs, degraded 
 
 through his sin, 
 Innocents who yet shall share his blessing 
 
 in Salvation. 
 
Of the Starry Heavens. 71 
 
 Comets, enormous and imponderable, spheres 
 
 of burning vapour, 
 Flying on your fiery track with more than 
 
 lightning speed, 
 Darted from every point by thousands, 
 
 mesh of tangled threads 
 Shot from the depths of space, as spinning 
 
 star to star, 
 Are ye then electric shuttles, weaving warp 
 
 and woof 
 Of light and life throughout the universe, 
 
 travelling from suns to planets ? 
 
 Moons, struck off as at a tangent from 
 the sides of new-made worlds, 
 
 Slumbering, as slept Adam, before his fall 
 came nigh, 
 
y 2 Of the Starry Heavens. 
 
 Are ye not outcast satellites, possibly sad 
 
 homes for evil, 
 Exiled from those brighter spheres, where 
 
 good alone may dwell ? 
 The rings that girdle Saturn, the orbs that 
 
 float round Jupiter, 
 These may be the prisons for the convicts 
 
 of those worlds : 
 And what then, set aside for us, is yonder 
 
 globe of cinders, 
 Blistered with heat, or glaciered with cold, 
 
 on either hideous hemisphere, — 
 Our lamp of night, our witness to most 
 
 sin, thefts, and lusts, and murders, 
 Our neighbouring shore of burning cones, 
 
 airless, empty, waterless, — 
 Goddess of the worst idolatries, witchcrafts, 
 
 crimes, and cruelties, 
 
Of the Starry Heavens. 73 
 
 Hecate, Asharoth, Diana, our pale and 
 
 guilty Moon ? 
 May not this be thus the prisonhouse, 
 
 where evil shall be pent, 
 When, concrete in ill bodies, sin is driven 
 
 out of Earth ? 
 
 Meteors, — who knoweth, who can guess, 
 
 your various inexplicable natures ? 
 Or, fragments of that shattered world, 
 
 aerolite morsels of its provinces ? 
 Or haply, lava-masses from the mountains 
 
 of the moon ? 
 Or bubble worlds of gas? or ministering 
 
 flames of fire ? 
 Or wandering powers of the air ? or young 
 
 stars shot beyond their orbits ? 
 
74 Of the Starry Heavens. 
 
 Or strange concretions of matter, collected 
 by atoms on the firmament ? 
 
 Or globes of electric light, fired by an 
 atmospheric touch ? 
 
 Who knoweth, who can guess ? — In beauti- 
 ful majestic slowness 
 
 Now, like a moon, a meteor's arch will 
 span the summer sky, 
 
 Then with a burst of lustre will quench the 
 common starlight, 
 
 Leaving heaven by contrast black, before 
 our startled eyes ; 
 
 Now, like a fiery hail across autumnal 
 clouds 
 
 The meteors rush and crackle, like a sleet 
 of arrows, 
 
 Or burst on high and hurl below hot 
 masses of strange metal, 
 
Of the Starry Heavens. 75 
 
 As shot from lunar mortars, and with 
 thunder of artillery. 
 
 Yea ; how lightly by us all are the wonders 
 
 of the firmament considered ; 
 Marvels every night, by grovelling man 
 
 unnoted : 
 Yet the most ancient of all books, most read 
 
 and by all nations 
 Equally and freely as a universal tongue, is 
 
 yonder starlit heaven. 
 The wise Chaldaean, and the shepherd of 
 
 Judsea, thought far more than we 
 Of what those characters might mean, 
 
 which God hath writ in suns : 
 They guessed at much we know, and long 
 
 ago have travelled for themselves 
 
j6 Of the Starry Heavens. 
 
 Among the stars in spirit, as Will might 
 
 give them wings. 
 And still that silent sermon is preached to 
 
 us each by night 
 Whispering, come up hither, we can show 
 
 you wonders. 
 Who heedeth ? even heeding, who doth 
 
 not idly gossip names, 
 Ursa, Orion, and the Pleiades, nursery tales 
 
 and figures ? — 
 Lo, it is the universe thou scannest, half 
 
 the wealth of God, 
 His wisdom, and His power, and where 
 
 His honour dwelleth, 
 Creations inconceivable, exquisitely poised 
 
 and ordered, 
 Full of hallowed harmonies and glorious 
 
 evermore, 
 
Of the Starry Heavens. 77 
 
 Worlds to which earth is but a millet-seed, 
 
 — suns so much vaster than our sun 
 That numbers fail to show us of how 
 
 little count it is: 
 The star we name Alcyone, centre of all 
 
 these systems, 
 Is a mass as of a hundred million suns, 
 
 our sun making half a million earths. 
 Yet, Earth, with all its littleness, is the 
 
 spot which Heaven's King 
 Chose in His infinite humility, to favour 
 
 as the greatest, 
 Selected for that drama, whereat all the 
 
 worlds are wondering, 
 Salvation through incarnate God, and 
 
 glory born of sorrow: 
 And man, poor victim of that sorrow, is 
 
 yet to be the co-heir of that glory, 
 
78 Of the Starry Heavens. 
 
 Meanwhile groping in the dark, and crying 
 like an infant for the dawn; 
 
 Still, with a mind to rise to God, a tongue 
 to speak His praise, 
 
 A heart to give Him love for love, a soul 
 to live with Him for ever! 
 
( 79 ) 
 
 Of Probabilities. 
 
 Before all things, God was probable, the 
 first and the greatest Probability, 
 
 One self-existing source of Life, the solitary- 
 seed of all creation: 
 
 That He should be good was probable, for 
 evil tendeth to decay, 
 
 Neither subsisteth of itself, but is only the 
 corruption of a better : 
 
 That He should be all mighty, all wise, 
 all merciful, all just, 
 
 Would be certainties of One Great Good, 
 eternally without competitor: 
 
80 Of Probabilities. 
 
 Yet would His benevolence forbid a sullen 
 
 and an isolated oneness, 
 And so a plurality of Persons would be 
 
 likely in that Essence: 
 Thus taking counsel with Himself, in equal 
 
 harmonious companionship 
 He should, everlastingly beneficent, have 
 
 willed the happy presence of His peers. 
 And these should be Three in one, a 
 
 Trinity, neither more nor fewer, 
 The likeliest number for society, to last as 
 
 a partnership of friends. 
 It were probable that one name should 
 
 stand the Primal Father, 
 And that another should be hailed the 
 
 Everlasting Son, 
 And that the Spirit of these twain, eternally 
 
 united, 
 
Of Probabilities. 81 
 
 Should shine the lightsome living Bond, of 
 God, that Great Triune : 
 
 Were it more probable that God, a non- 
 affectioned Unit 
 
 Should choose eternal solitude, unsympa- 
 thetic Self, — 
 
 Nor rather elect as His vast happiness a 
 gloriously consorted Essence, 
 
 Equal, in three united Friends who live 
 and love as one? 
 
 So then, that Grandest Probability, of God 
 and His attributes and Persons, 
 
 Is hinted as an aid to faith, though scarce a 
 proof to doubt. 
 
 And for that objection in thy thoughts, of 
 some antagonist evil, 
 
82 Of Probabilities. 
 
 Some seemingly eternal opposite hindering 
 
 eternal good, 
 Consider was it probable or not, that crea- 
 tures be imperfect, 
 Or faultless in perfections, and thus equalled 
 
 with their Maker ? 
 And if imperfect and allowed free space for 
 
 worse or better, 
 Better, with grace given from above, or 
 
 worse, that grace withheld, 
 (Withheld from no caprice, no lack of large 
 
 Benevolence, 
 But urged by deep good cause for the 
 
 greater blessing of Creation,) 
 The creature thus might fall, his good might 
 
 grow corrupted, 
 His powers decayed, his health diseased, his 
 
 moral brightness darkened, 
 
Of Probabilities. 83 
 
 And so should sin and evil, concretes not 
 
 utter abstracts, 
 Cling, as if native parasites, to creatures 
 
 less than perfect. 
 
 But if a fall were probable, thus from the 
 nature of matter, 
 
 What were the next high probability ex- 
 pectable from God ? 
 
 His grace would plan, His skill invent, a 
 scheme of full recovery, 
 
 Whereby the universe of intellect might 
 learn and love Him better. 
 
 Himself would be the creature, Himself 
 would bear the penalty, 
 
 Himself, as suffering in that creature, should 
 lift it to Himself. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 Of Probabilities. 
 
 So should He take into His Being, nearer 
 
 to the Triune Essence, 
 A lost and won Creation, made only all 
 
 the happier from its grief. 
 
 And look to the details of our Fall : death 
 
 was not first for man ; 
 But reigned in old creations, asons before 
 
 Adam. 
 And when the Maker willed, and our great 
 
 forefather came 
 Full aged monarch of the world, to people 
 
 and to rule it, 
 The simplest test, an apple, was given for 
 
 obedience, and he fell ; 
 Yearning for knowledge as for good, the 
 
 tempted novice failed. 
 
Of Probabilities. 85 
 
 And so the second Adam should die that 
 self- same hour, 
 
 Having lived what the first had overleapt, 
 some thirty years and three. 
 
 There seemed a probability herein that 
 Christ should fill that sum, 
 
 Infant, youth, and man, antedating full- 
 grown Adam. 
 
 And how should He be born but as of 
 
 miracle ? and wherefore should not 
 
 Eve who sinned 
 See honour given to her sex through highly 
 
 favoured Mary ? 
 It were likely that God's great grace should 
 
 glorify transgressing woman, 
 Therefore was the Virgin overshadowed by 
 
 the Spirit of all Life. 
 
86 Of Probabilities. 
 
 And how should He die but as of sacrifice ? 
 
 innocent, the conqueror of death, 
 The martyred priest of truth hung between 
 
 earth and heaven, 
 Preaching there with outstretched arms to 
 
 angels and to men, 
 Victim to His own great justice, and the 
 
 outcast of the world. 
 Thus was the Gospel fully probable : and 
 
 all that ever happened 
 Equally in Providence and grace to the 
 
 well-enlightened mind 
 Would seem to be probable and fit, neither 
 
 should have happened otherwise; 
 For God had ordered every mean and cer- 
 tified its end. 
 
Of Probabilities. 87 
 
 It was likely that a Mahomet should rise, 
 
 forcing religion by the sword, 
 Likely that Rome should graft the papal 
 
 on the pagan, 
 Likely that a Luther should restore the 
 
 purity of faith, 
 Likely that differing sects should slay one 
 
 another in Jerusalem : 
 That England should be Freedom's refuge, 
 
 as a distant outpost island, 
 And thence should be great among the 
 
 nations, from her ships, her colonies, 
 
 and commerce ; 
 That hardship should energize the North, 
 
 that luxury should enervate the South, 
 That the East, decaying from old age, 
 
 should be servant to the strong young 
 
 West; 
 
88 Of Probabilities. 
 
 And that, as a planet by itself, America 
 should grow and prosper 
 
 Vaster and mightier than all those older 
 dynasties and empires. 
 
 And so of most things else ; enlightened by 
 their issues, 
 
 We note them well-foreshadowed in their 
 likelihoods to be : 
 
 And 1 judge that a prophet might arise, 
 keen in unassisted reason, 
 
 Nor needing higher inspiration than a deep- 
 read knowledge of mankind, 
 
 "Who might deduce the future from inspec- 
 tion of the past, 
 
 Gathering from likelihood and cause all 
 consequents to come. 
 
( 3 9 ) 
 
 Of Scripture and Science. 
 
 A book of revelation for the fallen, to lead 
 
 us back to good, 
 (Wherefrom through a thousand generations 
 
 we all have gone astray,) 
 The book that had to speak of God, of 
 
 souls, and hell, and heaven, 
 In utterance from the pious of all ages, 
 
 announcing religion and redemption, 
 
 How could it turn from its great end, to 
 
 deal with trivial things, 
 Our lesser themes of science, the temporal 
 
 instead of the eternal ? 
 
90 Of Scripture and Science. 
 
 Wherein should we desire for our minds 
 playthings to gladden curiosity, 
 
 And not rather for our hearts the nourish- 
 ment of spiritual good ? 
 
 It were beneath the dignity, it were beside 
 the object, 
 
 It were derogation from the Bible, should it 
 stoop to be the manual of science. 
 
 Moreover, pride is to be humbled, — and 
 knowledge pufFeth up; 
 
 The loftiness of man must be brought low, 
 by innermost conviction and conversion; 
 
 Affections grovelling down to earth our 
 God would raise and purify, 
 
 And cure man's moral cancer by the 
 Gospel of his Love : 
 
 So then, let Reason not expect, that the 
 grand revelation of Religion 
 
Of Scripture and Science. 91 
 
 Will be liberal in answers to the questions 
 our intellect would ask of Nature ; 
 
 Let us hope it rather rich unto salvation, 
 in thoughts that lead to glory, 
 
 A feast of wine upon the lees for souls who 
 thirst for Grace. 
 
 Yet, whensoever the Great Teacher might 
 
 touch with His skirts in passing 
 The barren sands of science that edge His 
 
 narrow way, 
 He should for morality show truth, not 
 
 countersigning falsehood, 
 Making it manifest He knoweth, more 
 
 than he will turn aside to tell ; 
 Truth, not pedantically exact, — the sun 
 
 may rise and set, 
 
92 Of Scripture and Science. 
 
 He may speak of the ends of the earth, He 
 
 may tell of the windows of heaven ; 
 But, as in the miracle of Joshua, proving 
 
 that if earth stood still 
 The moon, not less than the sun, must 
 
 stop in due obedience to that mandate ; 
 Truth, incidentally declaring He hath made 
 
 the round world so strong, 
 Showing earth a sphere self-poised, and 
 
 not a long flat plain ; 
 He may tell of Adam's race, the redeemed 
 
 and favoured family, 
 But leave quite unrecorded whether there 
 
 were other sorts of Man : 
 Moses may teach us in the Genesis how 
 
 earth was re-established in Order, 
 But he need not touch Old Matter, nor the 
 
 ages of pre-existing life ; 
 
Of Scripture and Science. 93 
 
 These things are written in the stones, 
 
 for reason at its leisure to search 
 
 out, 
 But what is written in the Book is a 
 
 searching proper for the spirit : 
 Nature, as pictured on the Bible, is simply 
 
 recorded in appearance, 
 The sun may rejoice to run his course, 
 
 the heavens may drop down dew ; — 
 Albeit the dew ariseth, albeit the sun stand 
 
 still, 
 Even a philosopher unblamed will use 
 
 those common phrases : 
 But ofttimes hints of higher knowledge 
 
 are dropped as by accident in Scrip- 
 ture, 
 Testifying even to this hour that the Bible 
 
 is before the age. 
 
94 Of Scripture and Science. 
 
 He stretcheth out the north over the empty 
 
 space, and hangeth the world upon 
 
 nothing ; 
 Here is a glimpse at polar tilts, and their 
 
 magnetic bearing : 
 We read about rivers of oil, and oil sucked 
 
 out of the rock, — 
 The latest of discoveries with us, but known 
 
 to Job and Moses : 
 Behemoth and Leviathan are chronicled, 
 
 as close in contiguity with man ; 
 And many monsters, thought extinct, are 
 
 now proved his companions ; 
 The Mammoth, and possibly the Dragon, 
 
 that giant lizard of the wold, 
 Were synchronous with man upon his earth ; 
 
 so Scripture saith to Science : 
 Ancient times and peoples of those earliest 
 
 books of Moses, 
 
Of Scripture and Science. 95 
 
 Giants on the earth in old days, Zamzum- 
 
 mim and their like, 
 Hint at possible primal tribes beside our race 
 
 of Adam, 
 Albeit none have found as yet one bone or 
 
 stone for proof: 
 The flood that drowned the world of men 
 
 on Asia's sunny plain, 
 Was not of necessity for Europe, where man 
 
 was not yet found : 
 The fountains of the deep were broken up ; 
 
 the foundations of the world are out 
 
 of course ; 
 He changeth the vestures of the globe, by 
 
 strata laid on strata : 
 In the days of the patriarch Peleg, was not 
 
 the earth divided, — 
 By continents and islands broken off, accord- 
 ing to the old traditions ? 
 
g6 Of Scripture and Science. 
 
 He hath weighed the substance of the globe, 
 
 exactly, as in a balance ; 
 Holding it up by His omnipotence, the 
 
 hollow of His hand : 
 He sitteth on the circle of the world, guiding 
 
 its career upon that orbit, 
 And calleth out the stars by name, His 
 
 worlds, His many mansions ; 
 He recordeth some sweet influence of the 
 
 Pleiades, — possibly that central Throne 
 The wondrous Star Alcyone, round which 
 
 this universe revolveth : 
 If winged angels are in vision, were they 
 
 not framed with due analogy, 
 Not as painters dream, impossibly fledged 
 
 and pinioned, 
 But wisely and reasonably too, according to 
 
 proportions and proprieties, 
 
Of Scripture and Science. 97 
 
 With two wings covering the face, to cleave 
 
 the air therewith, 
 And two wings spread beyond the feet, to 
 
 steer the course thereby, 
 And two, to speed the flight; so seen of 
 
 Isaiah and Ezekiel : 
 Doth not the Preacher when he preacheth, 
 
 of the wheel broken at the cistern, 
 And the pitcher broken at the fountain, and 
 
 the death of worn-out age, 
 Tell of arteries and veins, and the circulating 
 
 blood of life, 
 The life that is the blood, unguessed for 
 
 thirty centuries ? 
 Who gave England Judah's Lion ? Who 
 
 appointed eagles for the Nations ? 
 Is it not He who hath forewarned this car- 
 case of their gathering together ? — 
 
 H 
 
98 Of Scripture and Science. 
 
 Many are running to and fro, and words go 
 
 very swiftly, 
 And knowledge is increased, is flashed as 
 
 lightning flasheth ; 
 All corners of the earth are being peopled, 
 
 her rough places are made plain, 
 The valleys are exalted, and the very Alps 
 
 cut through ; 
 We shall fly with wings as eagles, subduing 
 
 yet the air of our globe, — 
 As fire and earth and water are subdued, all 
 
 being parts of our heritage ; 
 And the world shall be one great brother- 
 hood, acknowledged of one blood, 
 Freely to buy and to sell, going freely hither 
 
 and thither, 
 And all shall have one lip, one language, 
 
 one religion, 
 
Of Scripture and Science. 99 
 
 With tolerance for all creeds, as in Peter's 
 
 sheet of beasts. 
 Are not these things and their like written 
 
 in the text book of the saints ? 
 Is not that book worthy of all reverence 
 
 from the sages ? 
 
 H 2 
 
( ioo ) 
 
 Of Silence. 
 
 Holy Silence, happy Silence, thought- 
 creating Silence, 
 
 Blessed and luxurious Silence, — lo, how 
 scarce thou art ! 
 
 Within, loud turmoil of the spirit, or vexing 
 whispers of the conscience, 
 
 Worrying remembrances of evil, craving 
 aspirations after good ; 
 
 Without, the clamour of the world, of talk- 
 ing men and women, 
 
 And all those material perturbations dis- 
 turbing our tiny planet-selves, — 
 
Of Silence. 101 
 
 Alas ! how seldom is a man the fortunate 
 
 anchorite of silence ; 
 How rarely can he taste that balm, or listen 
 
 to that music ! 
 
 In old days great Pythagoras commanded 
 holy silence 
 
 As nurse of all the virtues and the learnings 
 
 and the loves ; 
 Five years his acolytes were dumb, and only 
 
 looked their thoughts, 
 And then might help the Teacher, vessels full 
 
 of infused lore : 
 Silence was their breeding-time for crystals 
 
 of the mind ; 
 And many would be wiser if they studied 
 
 thus from Samos : — 
 
102 Of Silence. 
 
 Half the awe of idols lay in mystery of 
 silence ; 
 
 Half the power of priestcraft is cold reti- 
 cence at will. 
 
 Silence was Pygmalion's love concreted in a 
 statue ; 
 
 Silence was the abstract charm to Zimmer- 
 man in solitude. 
 
 Silence strangely melteth down the felon's 
 iron heart ; 
 
 Silence to the Trappist is the mute beside his 
 coffin. 
 
 How oftentimes is Silence the wisest of 
 replies ! 
 
 "When insolence provoketh, when slander 
 false-accuseth, 
 
 When ignorance and prejudice are full of 
 idle talk ; 
 
Of Silence. 103 
 
 Let silence be the answer on thy lip and in 
 
 thy life. 
 So too, when many praise, as well as when 
 
 they blame, 
 And when thy name is loudest in the 
 
 mouths of men, 
 Thy strength is to sit still, in wise and 
 
 humble silence; 
 Let Silence lay her finger on thine unpre- 
 
 sumptuous lip. 
 
 Lo, the vast difference to souls within the 
 
 sphere of silence ! 
 That magic ring to one is life, to other 
 
 nigh to death. 
 Innocence tenderly enjoyeth the blessed 
 
 calm of silence, 
 
104 Of Silence. 
 
 Listening as an infant to its lullaby of 
 
 peace : 
 Guilt, terrified at self, abhorreth silent 
 
 solitude, 
 And findeth that sweet music only loud 
 
 with hideous sound : 
 The keen mind, full of thought, rejoiceth 
 
 in a quiet hour; 
 While dullards hold it irksome, to be killed 
 
 as best they can : 
 Health can hear therein only glad hopes 
 
 and memories ; 
 While nervous irritable disease hath peopled 
 
 it with fears : 
 The poet loveth that rare calm, as incense 
 
 to his spirit ; 
 The tattling gossip longeth but to spoil it 
 
 with his talk. 
 
Of Silence. 105 
 
 To all it is a test of state, bearing to be 
 
 alone, 
 Alone with God and conscience, and the 
 
 memories of thy life : 
 If eager to escape from these, avoid accusing 
 
 silence ; 
 If calm in their communion, thou wilt seek 
 
 it as thy friend. 
 Hast thou kept thine innocency? are thy 
 
 memories pure ? 
 Is thine that honest and good heart, which 
 
 The Master loveth ? 
 Then shalt thou rejoice alway to breathe 
 
 the balm of silence 
 On lonely hills or strolling by the solitary 
 
 sea. 
 
io6 Of Silence. 
 
 Silence strengtheneth love, — innocent and 
 
 unintended silence, 
 Whereto do cling excuses and kind fancy- 
 pleading well : 
 Silence weakeneth love, — obstinate, guilty 
 
 silence, 
 Where doubts and fears and thoughts of 
 
 scorn combine to wean the heart. 
 The long-unanswered letter doth friendship 
 
 nigh to death, 
 And few affections can endure determined 
 
 dogged silence. 
 And woe, too, for the clamorous home where 
 
 silence hath no lover, 
 But scolding worry drowneth good, alike by 
 
 day and night : 
 There is the brawling wife, there are the 
 
 wrangling children, 
 
Of Silence. 107 
 
 There the tongue's hot embassage provoketh 
 
 instant strife ; 
 There the sad peace-lover in vain imploreth 
 
 blessed silence, 
 For all the loves and graces have been scared 
 
 from that loud home. 
 
 Wise and kind and good are the eloquent 
 
 Silences of Scripture, 
 For grace is shown in light withheld, not 
 
 less than in light given. 
 It would have diverted man from God, the 
 
 one great end of his existence, 
 Had he been told too fully of the constant 
 
 ministry of angels : 
 He would have scorned short Time, in 
 
 teachings of the past Eternity ; 
 
108 Of Silence. 
 
 And even an awful Future is made lower in 
 
 importance than the Present : 
 He would have been terrified from duties, 
 
 if the spirits of the dead had hemmed 
 
 him round, 
 Or were it to be made his care, to help or 
 
 serve them in their Hades : 
 Curious questions are unanswered with, 
 
 " What is that to thee ?" 
 The simpler, u Follow me," is utterly man's 
 
 duty. 
 Yet may we speculate and argue, for God 
 
 hath given us reason, 
 And lights may dawn on Providence, that 
 
 Scripture had not shown. 
 He biddeth ears to ear, He willeth eyes to 
 
 see, 
 He is pleased if intelligence search out His 
 
 workings with humility. 
 
Of Silence. 109 
 
 The Silences that whisper in earth's caverns 
 
 to the everlasting hills, 
 The Silences of angels and of ghosts, and 
 
 of animals with their spirits, 
 These deep mysteries are themes that man 
 
 may desire to look into, 
 Groping through their darkness to feel for 
 
 hidden truths. 
 The puzzling wonders in creation, mingled 
 
 good and evil, — 
 Not due to Adam's sin, which blighted 
 
 Adam's race, 
 But longer of old and with innocent tribes, 
 
 in those past million ages 
 After the undateable Beginning and before 
 
 our week of Cosmos, — 
 Those are in silence till one seeth in these 
 
 latter days, 
 
no Of Silence. 
 
 That all things less than God decay from 
 
 imperfections. 
 And angels were the labourers, under their 
 
 great husbandman The Son, 
 Toiling for Him with skill and joy, rewarded 
 
 and applauded ; 
 Each of them brought some organism, when 
 
 our earth was peopled, 
 Which He should then infuse with life, and 
 
 add the curious senses. 
 His artizans were made by Him, and so 
 
 their works are His ; 
 And truer work have they to do than ever- 
 
 chaunted hymns; 
 The ministry of angels is seen in all 
 
 creation, 
 As well as through our daily walk in teach- 
 ing and delivering ; 
 
Of Silence. 1 1 1 
 
 And haply each may watch in love over his 
 
 own blest handywork, 
 For God made all things for Himself, but 
 
 through His holy angels. 
 These be truths scarce heard, lest utterance 
 
 breed idolatries, 
 That man may walk with God alone ; and 
 
 Silence thus is wisdom. 
 
 Speech is silver, Silence gold, according 'to 
 
 the Spaniard ; 
 Silence is the pearl, and speech the gaping 
 
 oyster. 
 Silence is the subtle scent, and speech the 
 
 smothery smoke ; 
 Silence is the mellow fruit, and speech the 
 
 million leaves. 
 
112 Of Silence. 
 
 Some have called her wisdom, as at least 
 concealing folly ; 
 
 Some have dubbed her more than half the 
 Bhuddist's dream of Heaven : 
 
 Sleep and trance and ecstacy are all near kin 
 to Silence ; 
 
 And the calm quietude of death is ever- 
 blessed Silence. 
 
( H3 ) 
 
 Of Spiritual Presences, 
 
 That there be spirits multitudinous, infinite 
 
 for differences and numbers, 
 Spirits of good and evil, with all their 
 
 many intermediates, 
 The mischievous, the humorous, the sensual, 
 
 as well as the pious and the wise, — 
 Spirits of sinners as of saints, of idiots, 
 
 things and animals, — 
 That crowds of these there be, existing 
 
 somewhere somehow, 
 Most confess, and few deny, recognizing 
 
 spirit-immortality. 
 
 I 
 
114 Of Spiritual Presences. 
 
 As the tree hath fallen, so the limbs must 
 
 lie; 
 The bent and scars of time survive and 
 
 spread for ever : 
 He that is pure becometh purer, he that is 
 
 mean will yet be meaner, 
 The filthy shall be filthier still, the gracious 
 
 grow in grace. 
 Spirit never dieth, neither is it merged into 
 
 its God, 
 For weal or woe a separate life, its Maker's 
 
 friend or foe : 
 And every inch of space in all earth's nooks 
 
 and corners, 
 The highest Alpine peaks, as the deepest 
 
 Ural mines, 
 The caverned halls of the Atlantic, the 
 
 crowded hives of cities, 
 
Of Spiritual Presences. 115 
 
 Every room in every house, every hill and 
 
 valley, — 
 All have teemed with life, and been earth's 
 
 homes to spirits. 
 
 So then these might claim to revisit each 
 
 its birthplace, 
 And there re-act the good or ill that 
 
 chiefly warped its fate : 
 And, if this had been allowed, the globe 
 
 would be crowded up with spirits, 
 Multitudes everywhere together, generation 
 
 jostling generation, 
 Until the commonest experience should be 
 
 that of meeting ghosts, 
 Mentally recognised and felt, if not also 
 
 heard and seen ; 
 
 I 2 
 
Ii6 Of Spiritual Presences. 
 
 And such perpetual obstruction to human 
 life and duty, 
 
 Hindered and every way made void by in- 
 terfering spirits, 
 
 Would steal responsibility from man, and 
 make his trial futile, 
 
 Mingling his career, that should be separate, 
 with the deeds of a cloud of ancestors. 
 
 But, there is that Great Gulf fixed; and 
 
 none, or few, may pass it ; 
 So few, — if any ever passed, — that none is 
 
 nigh to truth. 
 Spirit, once emancipate from flesh, glorying 
 
 in new-found freedom, 
 Speedeth away to some vast orb where only 
 
 spirits dwell, 
 
Of Spiritual Presences. 117 
 
 There to await the Resurrection, there to 
 
 anticipate the judgment, 
 There to dream of bliss to come, or dread 
 
 foreboded pangs, 
 There to be happy in self-consciousness, or 
 
 to be tormented by remorse, 
 There, as in God's waiting-hall, to bide His 
 
 coming verdict. 
 
 Few: — what if such few, allowed for some 
 dread reason, 
 
 Have overleapt that wide abyss, as mes- 
 sengers from Hades ? 
 
 Or, what if some have never left their scene 
 of life's ordeal, 
 
 And so may haply have remained, nor need 
 a real returning ? 
 
1 1 8 Of Spiritual Prese?ices. 
 
 It may be, burdened with dark secrets, 
 
 harassed by inexpiated crimes, 
 A wretched soul hath now and then clung 
 
 fiercely to its birthplace ; 
 It may be that either of a pair, long joined 
 
 in happy marriage, 
 Hovereth in deep love about the other, 
 
 visiting its mate continually : 
 It may be, doting on her child, a mother's 
 
 ghost hath lingered 
 To guard him, like an angel, from some 
 
 perilous evil nigh : 
 It may be, rights or wrongs, deeply burnt 
 
 into the spirit 
 May bring it grovelling back, till full 
 
 revenge be found : 
 There have been writ such stories; some 
 
 have seen strange sights ; 
 
Of Spiritual Presences. 119 
 
 Knockings, voices, sobbings, have disturbed 
 
 the castle guest : 
 The long unburied skeleton beneath the 
 
 murderer's hearth, 
 The flickering lights at midnight in the 
 
 tapestried oak-chamber, 
 The hurried taps along the wall, the 
 
 whispers heard across the bed, 
 The footsteps down the staircase, — nothing 
 
 seen though closely followed, — 
 The wail forewarning death, that time- 
 worn family presage 
 Accomplishing its own sure end through 
 
 superstitious fear, — 
 The spectral faces in old mirrors, the gallery 
 
 paced by its procession, 
 The murders and the treasures, and the 
 
 wrongs revealed by ghosts, — 
 
120 Of Spiritual Presences. 
 
 Such strange tales are rife ; and fancy, with 
 
 imposture, 
 Hath multiplied these terrors to the credulous 
 
 and cowardly : 
 Yet, some few cases, — few, if any, — calmly 
 
 well-attested, 
 Have staggered shrewdest doubters, and 
 
 compelled our sceptic faith : 
 Here and there, we may have had revisitants 
 
 from Hades, 
 Now and then, some spirit may have lin- 
 gered long on earth : 
 There be many things undreamt of our 
 
 philosophy, as the chief Poet hath 
 
 declared, 
 Which natheless may be truths and facts 
 
 about that world of spirits ; 
 And seers must stand well prepared, through 
 
 some magnetic fitness ; 
 
Of Spiritual Presences. 121 
 
 The unsealed eye, the common ear, per- 
 
 eeiveth not such presences : 
 But, as all ordinary law ruleth by regular 
 
 appointment, 
 Which nothing less than God's own hand 
 
 may alter as through miracle, 
 So it is only by a miracle, to be evidenced 
 
 with rare cautions, 
 That ever spirit hath been left to do some 
 
 work on earth, 
 That ever disembodied ghost was troubled 
 
 about burial, 
 That ever any soul of man hath leapt that 
 
 Great Gulf fixed. 
 
 Next, for the mystery of dreaming, — meet 
 
 we spirits there ? 
 Or find we not that same Great Gulf, we 
 
 may not pass, nor they ? 
 
122 Of Spiritual Presences. 
 
 Sleep is the merciful relaxing, unstringing 
 
 of the vital bow, 
 A loosing of the harpsichords, alike for mind 
 
 and body, 
 Whereby they drain, through rest, from the 
 
 harmonies of nature round them, 
 Both tunefulness and energy to sing their 
 
 hymn of life : 
 And dreams are as the dews, uprising out 
 
 of memories, 
 Vaporous clouds upsteaming from the 
 
 marshes of the mind, 
 Now tinged by setting Fancy, and roseate 
 
 with sweet thoughts, 
 Now rendered gloomy through regrets, or 
 
 terrible from conscience. 
 
Of Spiritual Presences. 123 
 
 Every day is closed as by its death, when 
 
 we wrap us in the winding-sheet of sleep, 
 
 Every night our spirits expand, as partially 
 
 disfranchised from the body ; 
 It is a foreshadowing of the future, sleep the 
 
 type of death, 
 And dreams suggesting to the soul its coming 
 
 good or evil : 
 Our dull fatigued material lieth in a breath- 
 ing dissolution, 
 While immaterial essence wandereth hither 
 
 and thither; 
 Sometimes, in old scenes of earth, curiously 
 
 mingled with the present, 
 Sometimes, fashioning the future, wildly and 
 
 discoloured by the past, 
 Sometimes — (as some think) — hovering with 
 
 sister spirits, 
 
1 24 Of Spiritual Presences. 
 
 Met in visionary worlds that vanish ere the 
 
 morning : 
 None remember, and no one may declare, 
 
 what passeth in those dreams ; 
 Only their influences remain, with hints 
 
 when just awaking : 
 We cannot win them back, nor coax their 
 
 perished presence ; 
 The consciousness of work-day life to them 
 
 is instant banishment : 
 Often have we, all in vain, endeavoured so 
 
 to stay them ; 
 But the world-element of wakefulness scat- 
 tered all those shadows ; 
 Quickly fade they, soon forgotten, wreaths 
 
 of mist in sunshine, 
 And rare is any record of them figured on 
 
 the light. 
 
Of Spiritual Presences. 125 
 
 Haunted by dark fancies, by sweet reveries 
 
 refreshed, 
 The waking spirit ill remembereth aught 
 
 but peace or trouble : 
 And it hath accorded with my musings, that 
 
 some second life 
 Separate, continuous, and reasonable, is the 
 
 condition of sleeping; 
 Separate, as with other accidents, faces, 
 
 scenes, and circumstances; 
 Continuous, night after night, with special 
 
 past and future ; 
 Reasonable, after its own sort, though little 
 
 led by judgment ; 
 And conscious, as through habit, of some 
 
 sense of right and wrong : 
 With the body's waking, that other life 
 
 vanisheth away, 
 
126 Of Spiritual Presences. 
 
 Gradually builded up again, with the body's 
 
 slumbering. 
 Neither is reality more strong for scenes and 
 
 pains and pleasures 
 Than in their keen ideals, born of sleep and 
 
 dreams by night. 
 Often in the mediate condition, half sleep- 
 ing and half waking, 
 We doubt within ourselves which of the 
 
 twain is truest, 
 This work-day world of matter, with its 
 
 real and hard experiences, 
 Or that the spirits' sabbath, free from worry, 
 
 fear, and care : 
 This so looketh like a dream, that so 
 
 showeth a reality, 
 Either seemeth other, as a sort of double 
 
 life. 
 
Of Spiritual Presences. 127 
 
 Whether in the body, or out of the body, — 
 
 who shall truly tell ? 
 For the mysteries of sleep are deep, in 
 
 dreams and mental travel. 
 
 O rare kingdom of the mind, by space and 
 
 time unbounded, 
 Where one may live a lifetime within a 
 
 single night, 
 And seem to speed on spirit-wings beyond 
 
 this humble planet, 
 And happily expand in light, as blossoming 
 
 elsewhere, — 
 O pure realms of thought, how few in all 
 
 earth's millions 
 Can claim to reign ideal kings above your 
 
 vast domain ! 
 
128 Of Spiritual Presences. 
 
 Who hath known the spirit of a man, or 
 how he fareth in his dreams, 
 
 Or wherein the experience of one is tallied 
 by another's ? 
 
 I know a mind conscious in itself of two 
 clear states of being, 
 
 The one with all its accidents in wakeful- 
 ness, the other with its qualities in 
 sleep : 
 
 Day by day continuously, the history of its 
 common life is one ; 
 
 Night by night continuously, alike there is 
 its unity of dreams : 
 
 Haply, the chambers of the brain, each 
 with its special occupant, 
 
 Fancy, judgment, form, music, love, con- 
 tention, 
 
 Sink to natural rest in sequence one by one, 
 
Of Spiritual Presences, 129 
 
 Closing the windows of their house, in some 
 
 alternate order : 
 Thus, while earthly talents gradually sink to 
 
 slumber, 
 The native genius of the spirit waketh up 
 
 spontaneously in dreams. 
 There is then the life of cultivation, social, 
 
 normal, temporal ; 
 And there is the life of intuition, spiritual, 
 
 strange, and individual : 
 Each hath a separate experience, yet is there 
 
 but one spirit, 
 As if it lived, by day or night, at home in 
 
 different rooms. 
 Rarely have I heard from others, never 
 
 have I known myself 
 
 That any disembodied soul hath come to 
 
 earth in dreams; 
 
 K 
 
I 3° Of Spiritual Presences. 
 
 Fancy pictureth the dead, affection listeneth 
 
 to their voices, 
 But all thou hearest, all thou seest, grew of 
 
 thine own brain. 
 
 Lastly, for the ministry of angels: doubt- 
 less, these be sent : 
 
 Shrewdly the good centurion proved their 
 frequent presence. 
 
 When this our world was born, newly 
 rolling out of chaos, 
 
 (Chaos, an old ruin of past ages, no firstling 
 of the God of order,) 
 
 What was your mission, happy angels, when 
 thus ye sang for joy ? 
 
 Were ye then nothing but the minstrels, the 
 choristers and bards of Heaven f 
 
Of Spiritual Presences. 131 
 
 Verily, beside and beyond your exquisite 
 soul-harmonies in music, 
 
 Ye may have worshipped as artificers, in- 
 telligently taught of God, 
 
 Moulding lower works, exquisite in micro- 
 scopic beauty, 
 
 Which He then quickened into life and 
 signed with His own signet. 
 
 Wisdom and mercy well enjoined some 
 special toil to each, 
 
 Some insect, or some flower, some crystal, 
 seed, or shell ; 
 
 Suffering His servants as co-workers, bring- 
 ing tribute-offerings, 
 
 The children's gifts to God their Father, on 
 that His new-world's birthday. 
 
 And as ye worked in Eden, ye may since 
 
 have watched on earth 
 
 K 2 
 
132 Of Spiritual Presences. 
 
 Those darlings of your skill His blessing 
 
 made so perfect, 
 Present yourselves, though all unseen, in 
 
 woods and fields and valleys, 
 And everywhere rejoicing in the works He 
 
 praised so well. 
 
 And as our ministering spirits, doing the 
 
 Master's bidding, 
 The Great King's happy soldiers, obeying 
 
 His command, 
 Whether ye be Cherubim, or Seraphim, or 
 
 names of light unknown, 
 O pure and precious essences, ten thousands 
 
 of ten thousands, — 
 How happily we think of you for help, in 
 
 time of doubt or trial, 
 
Of Spiritual Presences. 133 
 
 How tenderly ye watch, and guide, and 
 
 whisper — go this way ! 
 Those among you highest under God, 
 
 brightest and first of the creation, 
 Embodied crystals of His attributes, and 
 
 purest of His works, 
 Ever in the sunshine of His presence, Arch- 
 angels (named in heaven 
 The strength of God, the joy of God, His 
 
 wisdom, love, and truth) 
 How gladly we remember that, as Gabriel, 
 
 or Michael, 
 Ye ministered to Mary, and to Abram, and 
 
 to Christ; 
 How thankfully we hope that humbler 
 
 ranks of angels 
 Defend salvation's common heirs from 
 
 danger and from sin ! 
 
134 Of Spiritual Presences. 
 
 Yet is there never an appearance ; spiritually, 
 invisibly, 
 
 Through the listening heart and mind, oft 
 in prayer and watching, 
 
 Thus not righting against reason, nor con- 
 straining circumstance, 
 
 Ye do lead and teach and guard, and stand 
 our spirit-friends. 
 
 Amen ! we yield to your suggestions ; 
 Amen ! we lean upon your arms, — 
 
 And feel no fear and no distrust but you 
 will help us well. 
 
 So, not worshipping but honouring, as we 
 honour friends, 
 
 Our fellowship is, under God, with minis- 
 tering spirits. 
 
( 135 ) 
 
 0/T, 
 
 ime. 
 
 A little while, a little while, — we know 
 
 not what He meaneth, — 
 So much to lose, so much to gain, — all in 
 
 this little while ! 
 How strange a mystery is this, that the 
 
 changeable should fix for ever, 
 That the perishable seaflower should last, 
 
 eternally crystallised in silex : 
 A little while, a little space, a little chance 
 
 and power, 
 Resulting yet in marvel, and everlasting 
 
 strength j 
 
136 Of Time. 
 
 So we creep on our way, faint and darkling 
 to the last, 
 
 And then emerge in brightness, and yearn- 
 ingly expand to freedom. 
 
 Be it a month, or fourscore years, life is but 
 a short swift season ; 
 
 A cradle, or the cincture of the world, would 
 be equally a prison to the soul. 
 
 Just as one hath learned to cull a little 
 wisdom, 
 
 Humbleness with confidence in self, courage, 
 tenderness, religion, 
 
 Frankness, purity of life, health and cleanli- 
 ness and silence, 
 
 Patience and hearing other sides, and charity 
 with excusing, 
 
 Just as we have gained at last, through trial 
 and experience, 
 
Of Time. 137 
 
 Power to live more simply, more truly, and 
 
 more wisely, 
 The bell tolleth, and we go, obeying the 
 
 behest of Heaven, 
 The Master calleth and we come, to carry 
 
 our life elsewhere : 
 O the vanity, the dignity, the woefulness, 
 
 the happiness of life — 
 O many thoughts about this theme, wherein 
 
 we all have part. 
 
 No man is safe until his death : Tellus the 
 
 Athenian spake shrewdly; 
 There is no staying in one stay, no certainty 
 
 in life. 
 As wave succeedeth wave, passion foameth 
 
 over passion, 
 
138 Of Time. 
 
 One shall scarce be overcome, when another 
 
 pusheth on to combat : 
 The prodigal, hardly cured, catcheth the 
 
 leprosy of avarice ; 
 The wanton pleasure-hunter, chastened, 
 
 falleth into cruelties of rage : 
 I have known strict moralities in youth issue 
 
 in the old man's meanness ; 
 I have known the dissolute and prodigal 
 
 change to the generous and pious : 
 For each was but one phase, of its own 
 
 peculiar character, 
 Shewn in different lights, the polarised and 
 
 common ; 
 Youth hath rare prismatic tints, but hard 
 
 old age few beauties ; 
 And nature's primal outburst is tamed and 
 
 toned by years. 
 
Of Time. 139 
 
 The best are ever in most peril, save for 
 grace and habit, 
 
 As strung and tuned more exquisitely in the 
 key of passion. 
 
 None is ever safe ; though mercy, circum- 
 stance, and custom 
 
 Be the triple wall around some David or 
 Josiah, 
 
 Honour, sentiment, or feeling, may tempt 
 to fatal sin ; 
 
 And the one potency against it, is faithful 
 humble prayer. 
 
 Oftentimes the young man holdeth on, pure 
 in his earliest course, 
 
 Resisting temptation as it riseth, and wrest- 
 ling down proclivities of nature ; 
 
 I have watched him safe to manhood, — then 
 through evil weakness 
 
140 Of Time. 
 
 He hath turned aside, and is fallen; his 
 
 prime and age are marred ! 
 And often some poor youths, dissolute and 
 
 shameless at the first, 
 Are checked betimes and sorrowful, anon 
 
 through grace repentant : 
 These penitents in age, as that once saint 
 
 in boyhood, 
 Let all be humble for the present, culling 
 
 wisdom from the past, — 
 All, out of God, are insecure; all shall 
 
 stand or fall, 
 As mercy willeth, not unsought : and none 
 
 is safe alone. 
 
 Wherefore is there always such a charm to 
 the pure and thoughtful spirit 
 
Of Time. 141 
 
 In ancient things, and times of old, and all 
 
 the hoary past ? 
 That the cromlech and the ruin and the coin 
 
 have a sort of nimbus round them, 
 A hallowing kind of halo as in reverence to 
 
 their age ? 
 "Wherefore is the very rust and moss counted 
 
 for the bloom of beauty, 
 And homage rendered simply to the veritable 
 
 antique ? — 
 One of the attributes of God is deep and 
 
 indefinite antiquity, 
 And all His characters are dear to Reason's 
 
 purest thought : 
 He, as The Ancient of Days, antedateth all 
 
 past time, 
 Therefore with intuitive desire His creatures 
 
 emulate that attribute. 
 
142 Of Time. 
 
 Time is a speck on Space, a cork in the 
 
 boundless ocean, 
 A bubble floating lightly, about the eternal 
 
 universe, 
 Which is an illimitable sphere, and existences 
 
 its circumambient surface, 
 And God the centre of convergence, and the 
 
 radii His ever-present powers : 
 And whenever it commenced, our cosmos 
 
 must have burst in suddenly, 
 Cutting the circle with abruptness, and 
 
 breaking its continuous circumference. 
 The absolute beginning of creation must 
 
 seem to have had relative beginnings ; 
 As if recording life before, which had not 
 
 really lived : 
 
Of Time. 143 
 
 The tree created had its rings, as if of ancient 
 
 seasons, 
 The very seed newborn, was germed as from 
 
 a parent, 
 The lion bounding in his might, gave 
 
 evidence of former years, 
 And Adam at his prime, appeared to prove 
 
 his childhood. 
 The butterfly argued a chrysalis, a caterpillar, 
 
 an egg, 
 The fruitful soil of Eden showed old strata 
 
 decomposed, 
 Its first day, born in Autumn, spake of 
 
 previous spring and summer, 
 Its light from distant stars had travelled 
 
 millenaries down. 
 Yet, none of these had pre-existed : neither 
 
 did the God of Truth 
 
144 Of Time 
 
 Suffer seeming falsehood on His works, 
 
 albeit He made them thus : 
 For by His word, distinctly, the fiat of 
 
 creation was proclaimed, 
 All things ready at their best, with fruit 
 
 after their kind. 
 Whenever Creation was begun, it must have 
 
 entered in its panoply, 
 Perfect in results as of the past, in order to 
 
 be perfect in this present : 
 And the God of eternal truth, willing to 
 
 save reason's doubting, 
 Simply revealeth in The Word, — all firsts 
 
 were at perfection : 
 Therefore, rich in seeds; therefore with 
 
 apparent testimony 
 To some previous generation, condensed in 
 
 His quick fiat. 
 
Of Time. 145 
 
 Short of eternity for matter, the only rest 
 
 for reason 
 Is this temporal creation, with thus its 
 
 riddles solved : 
 The Almighty caused a present, born 
 
 momentarily at will, 
 To seem, not needfully to be, the growth of 
 
 older pasts ; 
 And then to spare our faith all doubts 
 
 about His truthfulness, 
 Grandly maketh proclamation, — the crea- 
 ture at its best. 
 This cleareth up the mystery, this answereth 
 
 reason's question; 
 God's word expoundeth His works, even 
 
 as His works His word. 
 
146 Of Ti 
 
 ime. 
 
 He that dreameth of a monad, that all 
 
 evolved thereout, 
 Assumed the Maker of this monad, framer 
 
 of a microscopic cosmos ; 
 Place it far back in old eternity, still its birth 
 
 was temporal, 
 Only the vaster marvel, if one atom- 
 seed; 
 But no wholesome mind can bear with such 
 
 a folly, 
 Choosing the touch of a creator at some 
 
 riper date. 
 Wherefore not a macroscopic cosmos? 
 
 Minuteness magnineth miracle: 
 Even if beneath Omnipotence all things 
 
 were not equal. 
 At its best God's World-idea rolled out in 
 
 teeming beauty, 
 
Of Time. 147 
 
 Involving apparent preparations, as of years 
 
 long past : 
 But possibly the times of non-intelligence 
 
 were hastened to give man his heritage, 
 And needed not the million ages our slow- 
 growths demand. 
 Worshippers of some new sort, freewilled, 
 
 reasonable, fallible, 
 Were wanted at the Court of God, to 
 
 illustrate His name, 
 To show true attributes in Heaven, solely to 
 
 be seen through sin, 
 As colours in light are proved, only by the 
 
 spectrum to distort them : 
 Therefore this fabric of the world might 
 
 well be hurried up to man, 
 To quell the great expectancy, by clumping 
 
 up those ages. 
 
 L 2 
 
148 Of Time. 
 
 We are at the climax of the periods, we 
 
 sum up long aeons ; 
 All the ancient chaos of the world resulted 
 
 in man's era ; 
 And our mundane life is, as it were an egg, 
 
 a seed, 
 To bring forth Reason's fruit, in time, for 
 
 immortality. 
 
( i49 ) 
 
 Of little Providences. 
 
 Hast thou not noted, O my brother, how 
 
 carefully thy steps are guided, — 
 How tenderly when thou dost well, — how 
 
 sternly, doing ill ; 
 What instant recompense or penalty, for 
 
 duties or transgressions, 
 Just judgment even here, in due reward and 
 
 punishment ? 
 Hast thou not watched upon thy way the 
 
 myriad little matters 
 Proving to thee everywhere that Providence 
 
 is nigh, 
 
I 5° Of little Providences. 
 
 Guiding, according to the covenant, ordered 
 
 in all things and sure, 
 And making circumstances work together 
 
 for thy good ? 
 Infinitely great, infinitely little, infinite for 
 
 past and future, 
 Everything is infinite around us, infinite 
 
 alike within us. 
 There are globes of an immensity so vast, 
 
 that earth is but a molecule beside 
 
 them, 
 And spores of invisible fernseed are worlds 
 
 of sensitive life. 
 What is man, that Thou art mindful of 
 
 him ? Behold, he is an atomy of dust 
 Dropt for a moment on a spot, that is but as 
 
 a molehill to the mountains, 
 Himself a microscopic world, each man in- 
 finitely wondrous, 
 
Of little Providences. 151 
 
 With a past of preparations none have 
 
 guessed, a future of evolvements none 
 
 can calculate. 
 Thou art as a nothing to the universe, yet 
 
 even thy thoughts are registered ; 
 Thou wanderest hither and thither, but 
 
 every step is ordered ; 
 Thou goest as in freeness of thy will, yet 
 
 Providence is ever on the way, 
 Beautifully guiding and preventing, inlaying 
 
 the Mosaic of thy life. 
 All things hang together, causes facts and 
 
 consequents ; 
 Nothing but hath had its seed, and yet shall 
 
 yield its fruit : 
 Thou mayest take small heed, thou hast 
 
 counted it a chance, 
 But that which now hath flowered, groweth 
 
 on old roots ; 
 
152 Of little Providences. 
 
 The egg was laid long years agone, before 
 
 yon eagle in the clouds ; 
 The word was uttered in thy youth, that 
 
 made this friend or foe. 
 
 If for the climax of Eternity there seem vast 
 telescopic ends. 
 
 Through Time, minutely running, flow the 
 microscopic means, — 
 
 All things leavening up in mass, all con- 
 verging to a focus, 
 
 And every thread and every ray a miracle of 
 care; 
 
 A miracle of mercy too, unless thy folly 
 scorn it; 
 
 A miracle of wisdom, whatever be thy 
 thought. 
 
Of little Providences. 153 
 
 Sometimes, glimmering in the darkness, we 
 
 note that shadowy Hand, 
 Sometimes catch a glitter of the golden 
 
 thread 
 Showing its light as a spider's clue, through 
 
 our caverned labyrinths, 
 And always safely leading, if we will not 
 
 let it go. 
 The little hints of Providence are dropped 
 
 as millet seed, 
 To crackle as we tread, and guide our dark- 
 ling steps : 
 The thought, not yet on our lips, swift 
 
 uttered by a friend, 
 The scene, pressed upon the mind, and 
 
 present through a seeming accident, 
 Even the pattern on a carpet, even the 
 
 paper of a room, 
 
154 Qf little Providences. 
 
 The right man casually met, the curious 
 
 coincidence of matters, 
 The fruits to-day is gathering from plant- 
 ings of old yesterdays, 
 The finding out, how often, — that strangers 
 
 have part-lot with us, 
 Mixt with our past, joined to our present, 
 
 and promising or threatening our 
 
 future, — 
 The mysteries and histories in words, the 
 
 wonderful properties of numbers, 
 The wit and apposite energy in jokes, puns, 
 
 anagrams, and riddles, 
 All tell of unconsidered providences, ordering 
 
 and working everywhere, 
 And waiting for the mind of man to note 
 
 perfection in them. 
 
Of little Providences. 155 
 
 The glory of God is in the highest, His 
 
 glory is also in the lowest, 
 
 Guiding the worlds in their courses, and 
 piloting the thistledown not less ; 
 
 He rideth on the wings of the storm, He 
 lingereth in the perfume of a lily, 
 
 He mouldeth the iceberg, and the Alp, and 
 the atoms of a dust cloud in the desert : 
 
 He that reared Jorullo, the burning Mexican 
 mountain, 
 
 Twelve thousand feet in a night, one hun- 
 dred years ago, 
 
 The same Hand exquisitely layeth, in tesse- 
 lated microscopic beauty, 
 
 The rainbowed roofs and pavements within 
 the mouths of snails : 
 
 He that raised up a Timour, or a Csesar, 
 for judgment on the nations, 
 
156 Of little Providences. 
 
 Sitteth beside the school-child, as she singeth 
 
 at her sampler ; 
 He that inspired Adam's tongue, to give fit 
 
 names to creatures, 
 Ordained its rustling chirrup to the cricket 
 
 on the hearth. 
 
 There is an intricate perfection, a minute 
 
 fitness and completeness 
 In everything about us, Providence, Grace, 
 
 and Nature : 
 All marvellously guided at every inch and 
 
 instant, 
 Circumstances, laws, and elements, animate 
 
 beings or inanimate ; 
 Music, numbers, and mechanics, grammar, 
 
 art and science, 
 
Of little Providences. 157 
 
 All, however human, showing sparks of the 
 
 divine ; 
 Even the plays upon words, the witty turns 
 
 of converse, 
 Declare superior wisdom lying hidden in 
 
 their mirth ; 
 Majesty, shorn of its externals, is it but a 
 
 jest, — or something more ? 
 While Nelson's name proclaimed from birth 
 
 his honour from the Nile. 
 He that numbereth the stars, hath numbered 
 
 the hairs of thy head, 
 No sparrow, and no dynasty, falleth without 
 
 our Father : 
 The little and the great are His, the ludi- 
 crous even as the grave, 
 Ay, and the evil as the good ; for, evil is 
 
 but good corrupted : 
 
J 58 Of little Providences. 
 
 This is the mystery of mysteries ; and where 
 to draw the line ? 
 
 He is all-power and all-love, yet thus per- 
 mitting misery ; 
 
 He is the mover in all life, alike in sinner 
 as in saint ; 
 
 He blasteth in the pestilence, even as He 
 blesseth in the sunshine : 
 
 All we are sure of, as in faith, is that He 
 worketh righteousness ; 
 
 How, we see not now : but we shall know 
 hereafter. 
 
( 159 ) 
 
 Of Success. 
 
 Of old, men worshipped Good Success, — 
 
 made good by its succeeding; 
 And now they worship nothing, but go 
 
 wondering at Success : 
 The altar is not built, and the incense is not 
 
 burnt, 
 But he that hath succeeded is, in spite of 
 
 wrong, a hero : 
 They ask not how, nor why ; Success is 
 
 answer wholly, — 
 The how of sin and why of shame, are 
 
 nought if one succeedeth. 
 
1 60 Of Success. 
 
 And in their profanity they judge, that facts 
 
 are coins of Providence, 
 As stamped by God's authority, and issued 
 
 in His name ; 
 But wrongs, though facts, must not be held 
 
 such darlings of His mind, 
 He giveth those no mintmark, though the 
 
 forgers pass them freely. 
 The Providence of God is throned on high 
 
 above all facts : 
 Facts do not evidence His will, but oftener 
 
 His forbearance. 
 A fact, a great success, may be a sin or fault 
 
 or folly ; 
 God never wrought a wrong, in Nature 
 
 Providence or Grace. 
 Laws once good may warp, and bend to evil 
 
 issues, 
 
Of Success. 161 
 
 But their corruption is a charge not to be 
 
 laid on Providence: 
 True, He permitteth and is silent ; wicked- 
 ness awhile may prosper; 
 But none may claim for Providence a fact 
 
 of crime or shame. 
 Nation riseth against nation, both thus 
 
 punished for their sins, 
 And athletes batter athletes, while Justice 
 
 looketh on, — 
 And victory will be given to the strongest, 
 
 not for the conqueror's deserts, 
 But, simpler so, because the weak had earned 
 
 this crushing judgment. 
 In vain ye chaunt Te Deum : He loveth 
 
 not such praises, 
 He stood aside and suffered, and His hand 
 
 was not stretched out. 
 
 M 
 
1 62 Of Success. 
 
 Yet, the dread penalty shall fall, the meed 
 
 for wrong successful, 
 For nations are as persons, and are judged 
 
 for that they do, — 
 And " cursed be the man that moveth his 
 
 neighbour's landmark," 
 Shall ban conflicting peoples for those mur- 
 ders and those thefts. 
 This is their day for triumph, but judgment 
 
 cometh with the morrow, 
 Woe unto the wrong-doer, his crimes — are 
 
 millstones round his neck. 
 Nothing can sanctify a sin, not even great 
 
 success, 
 And unrepented sin is punished in a nation 
 
 by its ruin. 
 
Of Success, 163 
 
 Wouldest thou make enemies, Succeed ; 
 
 thou humblest many rivals ; 
 Envy, hatred, malice, shall dog thy great 
 
 career ; 
 And failing, those are not thy friends ; thy 
 
 sin hath been ambition, 
 And having missed the prize thyself, they 
 
 mock at thee for spite. 
 Wouldest thou find friends, Succeed; the 
 
 crowd love hero-worship] 
 And of those worshippers are some whose 
 
 hearts are worth the winning : 
 Also, the generous of thy rivals will be 
 
 friends to cheer thee for successes ; 
 And such be souls of noblest mark, friends 
 
 whom the good can love. 
 O Success ! what a triumph to be safe, in 
 
 view of all those perils ; 
 
 M 2 
 
164 Of Success. 
 
 O Success ! what a happiness within, re- 
 membering those enemies without ; 
 
 O Success ! if linked with pride and selfish- 
 ness, how evil : 
 
 O Success ! how great a good, well won and 
 humbly worn. 
 
 Hast thou once succeeded, — hast thou hit 
 
 the gold ? 
 Take heed thou tempt not fortune, — she 
 
 may turn her wheel and leave thee : 
 Prudence whispereth, forbear; but energy 
 
 answereth prudence — 
 Success shall never be the drag to check my 
 
 flying chariot : 
 Often is there seen the youth, diligent rather 
 
 than ambitious, 
 
Of Success. 165 
 
 Stopt short in early mid career by soon 
 
 achieved success : 
 The prize, the class, the local praise, have 
 
 satisfied his yearning ; 
 His mind is not moulded of the highest, 
 
 seeing thus he feareth for his fame ; 
 Selfish glories have been gained, he will risk 
 
 nothing further; 
 And so that prudent whisper helped both 
 
 indolence and pride. 
 Early fruit is seldom followed by a second 
 
 crop; 
 That precocious tree is shadowed by its 
 
 hedge of laurels. 
 But if a mind be vigorous, and love not its 
 
 own glory, 
 The tree shall strike root downward, and 
 
 shoot its branches upward, 
 
1 66 Of Success. 
 
 And leaving those young days, and all that 
 
 hedge of laurels, 
 Will dare again to fling out fruits, and tempt 
 
 a new success : 
 It is more generous so to dare : and lo, those 
 
 fruits are better, 
 Riper, richer to the taste, than in its first 
 
 young days. 
 
 Alas ! the many yearning souls that never 
 
 won Success 
 And yet have well deserved to win, for 
 
 diligence and merit. 
 Alas, the gems unprized, — alas, the flowers 
 
 ungathered, 
 Alas, the disappointed hopes, the spirits 
 
 broken down ! 
 
Of Success. 167 
 
 This seemeth bitter to thy tongue, but it 
 may be sweetness in thy stomach, 
 
 Failure is Success to thee, if thou couldst 
 read all truth. 
 
 Take comfort in the happy thought that 
 thou art guided wisely ; 
 
 Thy duty is to well-deserve that unachieved 
 Success. 
 
 Courage ! — try- once more ; remember Palissy 
 the Potter ; 
 
 Remember Bruce, six times o'erthrown, and 
 conqueror in the seventh ; 
 
 Remember Joseph in his prison, soon all 
 Egypt's ruler; 
 
 Remember Christ upon His Cross, — did He 
 not seem to fail ? 
 
 Never yet was Great Success, but it com- 
 menced with Failure, — 
 
1 68 Of Success. 
 
 Smoke is first and then the flame : and chaos 
 before cosmos : 
 
 Night preceded day ; it is written, the even- 
 ing and the morning ; 
 
 Seeds lie long in darkness, and their flowering 
 is not yet : 
 
 Only strive, only deserve ; and fear not thou 
 a Failure ; 
 
 Courage and constancy be thine, and thine 
 shall be Success. 
 
( 1 69 ) 
 
 Of the smaller Morals. 
 
 Keep the ten commandments with thy 
 
 might, and do all highest duties ; 
 But also pay thy lesser tithes of anise, mint 
 
 and cummin : 
 Honest, pure, contented, kindly, true, 
 
 religious, 
 Serving God, and loving man, — be these all 
 
 thine at best : 
 But heed thou also humbler things, the 
 
 trifles of thy life, 
 For life is filled with trifles, and they may 
 
 not be despised. 
 Much of happiness is missed through mere 
 
 neglect of trifles, 
 
170 Of the smaller Morals. 
 
 Much of good-doing destroyed, for lack of 
 tact and manner. 
 
 And godly men have erred in this contempt 
 for taste and beauty, 
 
 By vulgar freedom driving high-bred souls 
 away: 
 
 O the mass of meannesses, of harsh ungenial 
 acts, 
 
 Scarce short of sin as shorn of grace, whereof 
 some saints are guilty — 
 
 Saints, as men may taunt them, and who 
 thus would style themselves, 
 
 But oftener chiefs of sinners as regard the 
 smaller morals. 
 
 Selfish, inconsiderate, illiberal, and vain, 
 
 Can any such be saints indeed, — or hypo- 
 crites at heart ? 
 
 And some there be, protesters against pam- 
 pering of the flesh, 
 
Of the smaller Morals. 171 
 
 Separating cleanliness from godliness, who 
 
 hold it holy to be filthy : 
 But He who bade the heart be sprinkled 
 
 from an evil conscience, 
 Gave a simultaneous command, that the 
 
 body should be washed in pure water ; 
 From the crown of the head to the sole of 
 
 the feet ; keep this small moral daily ; 
 It shall be life and strength to thee, the 
 
 cheapest of good comforts. 
 
 A sound mind in a sound body, is the 
 blessedness of creatures ; 
 
 So spake the wise of old, and we cannot 
 mend their wisdom. 
 
 And chief, for the sound mind ; to pass by 
 highest morals — 
 
 Quiet conscience, hopes to come, and dili- 
 gence in duty, — 
 
172 Of the smaller Morals. 
 
 Guard thou these lesser matters : never nurse 
 
 regrets ; — 
 For sins, repent, forsake ; for chances lost, 
 
 forget them : 
 Take thy cup as it is mixed ; accept thy lot 
 
 with patience; 
 Count all things sent of Providence, that are 
 
 not shame or wrong : 
 Many have killed their comforts by sadden- 
 ing reveries ; 
 Regrets are weakness, folly, grief; spunge 
 
 all regrets away. 
 Never worry for the future ; as never bewail 
 
 the past ; 
 Trust in God ; for, day by day, He giveth 
 
 daily bread ; 
 Thy fears may never come to head, thy 
 
 carefulness is vanity, 
 
Of the smaller Morals. 173 
 
 And all thou gainest by distrust is loss of 
 
 peace of mind. 
 Never delay about the present ; duties are 
 
 all nows, — 
 Do that thou hast to do at once, and rid 
 
 thee of its care. 
 The letter left unanswered is a petty thorn . 
 
 of thought ; 
 Occasion once neglected may not visit thee 
 
 again : 
 Things to be done, once done, are flung 
 
 behind for ever, 
 And hinder not our onward way, nor vex us 
 
 with their coming; 
 Cheerfully, diligently, reasonably, work the 
 
 work before thee, 
 Abjuring all those lesser sins, regret, distrust, 
 
 delay. 
 
174 Of tb c smaller Morals. 
 
 Next, after health of mind, study health of 
 
 body ; 
 Each man is his best physician as to meats 
 
 and drinks. 
 All excess is bad ; abstinence, as intemper- 
 ance; 
 Gluttony is evil, — and starvation ; the ascetic 
 
 sinneth as the epicure. 
 Eat thankfully, drink cheerfully, both in 
 
 moderation ; 
 And let thine appetite survive its temperate 
 
 repast. 
 Against ill dreams by night, and aches and 
 
 pains by day, 
 Guard good health from heat and cold and 
 
 wet and sudden changes ; 
 
Of the smaller Morals. 175 
 
 A little care, a little sense, shall save thee 
 
 bitter trouble ; 
 It is no petty moral to preserve thy body's 
 
 health. 
 
 Then, after prudent self-attentions, for the 
 
 inner man and outer, 
 
 \ 
 Regard the happiness of others, and so be 
 
 happier thyself. 
 Have a merry word for every child, a gentle 
 
 word for all dependents; 
 A frank word for every man, a courteous 
 
 word for every woman. 
 Speak kindly to thy horse and dog, that 
 
 serve thee well and love thee ; 
 And bid the carman grease this wheel, or 
 
 shift that galling buckle. 
 
1 76 Of the smaller Morals. 
 
 Spare the snail thy foot might crush, and 
 save the drowning fly, 
 
 And shew the meanest thing alive that thou 
 art like its God. 
 
 Drop a good word genially and shrewdly 
 between contentious neighbours, 
 
 And, with discreet knight errantry, help and 
 defend the right. 
 
 Crown every passing day with some good 
 action daily, 
 
 And add to this the frequent prayer, un- 
 heard of all but Heaven, 
 
 And add to these the happy thoughts re- 
 corded on thy tablets, 
 
 And so redeem the time in little matters as 
 in great. 
 
Of the smaller Morals. 177 
 
 For other smaller morals ; pay quickly that 
 
 thou owest; 
 The needy tradesman is made glad by such 
 
 considerate haste. 
 Pay duly also those other petty debts, the 
 
 letter, or the visit, or the gift ; 
 It is always happiest to be just ; and wiser 
 
 so to rivet up young friendships. 
 For mirthful times, exaggeration is the soul 
 
 of wit, 
 At others, speak plain truth ; but blurt not 
 
 out a secret. 
 From eye and ear and tongue and touch and 
 
 thought reject all lewdness ; 
 A poisonous double-savour will corrupt the 
 
 sweetest spikenard. 
 Watch temper; evil temper is the com- 
 monest sin, 
 
 N 
 
178 Of the smaller Morals. 
 
 And many perish through that sinj un- 
 scathed by grosser crime : 
 Yet temper is in some a peevish habit of 
 
 ill-health ; 
 Let diet be its petty cure, as animal per- 
 
 verseness. 
 Trust men, and let them know it; they 
 
 shall never cheat thee; 
 But if thou show suspicions, they will use 
 
 thee as they can. 
 Be not eager for a bargain, mindful of its 
 
 starving worker, — 
 O the feverish hands of want that wrought 
 
 this rich brocade ! 
 Smite not thy neighbour in the dark, nor 
 
 stab him in the back ; 
 Speak thine accusing openly, and hear ere 
 
 thou condemn him. 
 
Of the smaller Morals. 179 
 
 Hide what is ugly and offensive, taught by 
 
 the modesty of nature ; 
 Conceal defects for charity ; and cover up 
 
 small faults. 
 Respect the religion of a man, whatever be 
 
 his creed, — 
 Reverencing even superstition, if it seem both 
 
 harmless and sincere. 
 Keep justice, keep generosity, yielding to 
 
 neither singly; 
 And follow each good impulse, but with 
 
 reason by its side. 
 Consider, the Christian is a Gentleman ; and 
 
 all that becometh gentle blood 
 Is thine of privilege and right, thine honour- 
 able vocation : 
 Thou shalt be delicate, and true, chivalrous, 
 
 calm, courageous, 
 
 N 2 
 
180 Of the smaller Morals. 
 
 Exhaling a sweet perfume from the garden 
 of thy graces, 
 
 That yieldeth fragrant flowers, rooted in the 
 sturdy decalogue, 
 
 And veiling under beauty's mask the skele- 
 tons of life. 
 
( i8i ) 
 
 Of Rhyme and Rhythm. 
 
 Herein is a deep mystery of Language, a 
 mystery that none hath solved, 
 
 A mystery that few consider, and no book 
 noteth down : 
 
 How came it that for fifty centuries, of rea- 
 sonable Man upon this earth, 
 
 Speaking, singing, writing, full of love and 
 music, 
 
 No one, till nine centuries ago, thought upon 
 the melodies of rhyme, 
 
 No poet woke its echo, and no lover worked 
 its charm ? 
 
182 Of Rhyme and Rhythm, 
 
 How happened it that all the seers of old, 
 psalmists and chief musicians, 
 
 The lyrist with his amatory song, the 
 bacchanal shouting Evoe, 
 
 Choruses pacing out their measures, in 
 cadence with their words, 
 
 And all that either tragedy, or comedy, hath 
 breathed in perfect rhythm, 
 
 Never, — but by scarce accident, utterly un- 
 noticed and unfelt, — 
 
 Rose to the high harmony of rhyme, or fell 
 into the pleasantries of jingle. 
 
 Go to Isaiah or to Job, to Moses Deborah 
 or David, — 
 
 Search throughout Hesiod and Homer, Bion 
 Theocritus and Moschus, 
 
 Ask of Pindar, Aristophanes, iEschylus, 
 Sophocles, Euripedes, 
 
Of Rhyme and Rhythm, 183 
 
 Even of Anacreon and Sappho, Horace 
 
 Ovid and Tibullus, 
 Virgil and Lucretius and Martial, Catullus 
 
 Juvenal and Persius, 
 Is there one of them who guessed, what 
 
 magic lingereth in Rhyme, 
 Did any of those lyric chiefs dream of this 
 
 new glory ? 
 
 Think with what added sweetness, Horace 
 
 might have wooed his Lydia, 
 Or Lesbia and her sparrow, have charmed 
 
 us, in rhymed song; 
 With what electric force, Tyrtaeus would 
 
 have roused the phalanx, 
 And how the Dorian verses should have 
 
 echoed in the hills ; 
 
184 Of Rhyme and Rhythm. 
 
 How, pointed sharper by a rhyme, old 
 Martial's epigrams had bitten, 
 
 How pastoral bucolic strains had sounded 
 with sweet endings : 
 
 Verily, strange it seemeth, that with tongues 
 so rich in similarities, 
 
 Where every tense, and case, and mood, is 
 normally alike, 
 
 No one, through all ages, thought of the 
 gamut of language, 
 
 But only rang the changes on its times and 
 not its tones. 
 
 And stranger still it seemeth, that none have 
 noted this strangeness, 
 
 That scholiasts, commentators, teachers, over- 
 look it all ; 
 
 I wot not where to seek, for one who saw 
 this marvel, 
 
Of Rhyme and Rhythm, 185 
 
 Or told how wonderful it is, that rhyming 
 is so new. 
 
 Consider ; it would seem the very vice, of 
 
 earliest savage tongues, 
 Nursery-chime of the childhood of the 
 
 world, a jingling everywhere ; 
 Their love-ditties and war songs, their feasts 
 
 and hunts and dirges, 
 Should all be full of rhyming, from Jubal 
 
 down to Merlin : 
 And yet for nigh five thousand years, all 
 
 poetry had flowed in rhythm, 
 And neither Warrior, Sage, nor Fool, had 
 
 rhymed a hymn or song; 
 Their ears, exquisite for time, curiously 
 
 lacked for melody ; 
 
1 86 Of Rhyme and Rhythm. 
 
 Even their alliterative echoes led not on to 
 
 rhymes ; 
 The strophe and antistrophe, were measures, 
 
 but not music, 
 And syllables were counted, but no man 
 
 gauged a sound : 
 There was needed, through long ages, the 
 
 prophet to arise, 
 Teaching the metrical ear musical melodies 
 
 too. 
 
 So, with another sense, brightened by 
 
 modern energies, 
 It is but recently that landscape hath seemed 
 
 pleasant to the sight : 
 Lately as in our grandsire's day, none could 
 
 appreciate the AIds, 
 
Of Rhyme and Rhythm. 187 
 
 A cultivated plain, was all they thought of 
 
 praising ; 
 The grandest sublimities of nature were but 
 
 horrid in their eyes, 
 And none took note of scenery, nor cared to 
 
 toil up mountains ; 
 But the painter and the poet were at hand, 
 
 pouring their eloquent preachings, 
 And scales fell off men's eyes, and the 
 
 glacier and the precipice are glorified. 
 
 Even thus it fared with poetry ; until nine 
 
 centuries ago, 
 And after well nigh fifty had heard the 
 
 speech of men, 
 The world awaited a discoverer, who found 
 
 the trick of rhyme, 
 
1 88 Of Rhyme and Rhythm. 
 
 And charmed at once its listening ears, by- 
 sweet expected echoes. 
 
 Haply he came from the uttermost East, 
 beyond the shores of Ind, 
 
 From the far land of Sinim, or more remote 
 Japan ; 
 
 And wandering minstrels caught the strain, 
 and wise monks heard it gladly, 
 
 And chaunted hymns and songs apace, in 
 rough and cheery rhyme ; 
 
 And soon the sweet infection spread over 
 every land, 
 
 Charming the Northmen and the Celts, en- 
 listing troubadours and trouveres, 
 
 None asking whence it sprang, while all 
 enjoyed its pleasure, 
 
 And no man known as the inventor, of 
 what so many used. 
 
Of Rhyme and Rhythm. 189 
 
 Only, in their Hades far away, were those 
 ancient poets stirred, 
 
 Finding that even Masters may have some- 
 what left to learn ; 
 
 That even their sweet harps had lacked this 
 newest string ; 
 
 That even choicest rhythm might be bettered 
 by a rhyme. 
 
( l 9° ) 
 
 Of Zoilism. 
 
 To pass just judgment on a good man's 
 book, to gauge its author's mind, 
 
 To print and scatter through the world thy 
 verdict on his works, 
 
 This is an honourable trust, a matter re- 
 sponsible and anxious, 
 
 Demanding knowledge, patience, care, with 
 special kindness and acuteness : 
 
 Haply the work upon thy desk is the 
 ripened labour of a lifetime, 
 
 Years of thought, research, and prayer, con- 
 densed within that book ; 
 
Of Zoilism. 191 
 
 Happiness, fame, and fortune, hang on its 
 success, 
 
 It may be also livelihood, children's bread, 
 and honour; 
 
 While the heart of a mother or a wife, and 
 not alone its author's, 
 
 Will be pained or gladdened by the judg- 
 ment, passed upon the one they love : 
 
 Yet, to this great result, this toilsome long 
 achievement, 
 
 Some self-elected censor giveth one dyspeptic 
 hour; 
 
 Cursorily scanning it in haste, he decideth 
 with superficial carelessness; 
 
 And that despotic sentence shall be multi- 
 plied to the ends of the earth. 
 
 Even if no lower motives enter, no envious 
 hatred of success, 
 
192 Of Zoilism. 
 
 In that same field where he hath failed, and 
 
 will not brook a rival ; 
 Even if no spirit of slander provoketh him 
 
 to harm good fame ; 
 If there be no lust of mischief in a man, 
 
 anonymous and cowardly ; 
 Even if the shibboleth of party commandeth 
 
 neither praise nor blame ; 
 If no book merchant interests affect 
 
 antagonist Sosii, 
 Still, there is indomitable hurry; no time 
 
 for honest judgment ; 
 So many volumes to be scanned, and all 
 
 before to-morrow : 
 Grant what honesty thou wilt, still, over- 
 worked and fevered, 
 The critic is but rarely fit to judge a true 
 
 book truly. 
 
Of Zoilism. 193 
 
 So, cometh it to pass, that the world heedeth 
 
 lightly of such teachers ; 
 We hear their arbitrary dictates, but heed 
 
 our own free thoughts : 
 In spite both of indolence and industry, men 
 
 judge mainly for themselves, 
 And, lazy though they be, kick hard against 
 
 the tyrants ; 
 They read and like and buy, following their 
 
 own opinions, 
 And take small count of critics, howsoever 
 
 such may dream : 
 The mighty We, yon nameless unit, how 
 
 well scorned it is ! 
 
 That undefined grand Name is Nothing 
 
 when we know it. 
 
 o 
 
1 94 Of Zoilism. 
 
 The wizard's wand is powerless; for this 
 Prospero hath broken it himself, 
 
 He hath outraged truth and honour, there- 
 fore is his censure praise : 
 
 His spite is but a spur that quickeneth 
 merit's paces ; 
 
 His puffs may swell dull bubbles, but only 
 till they burst ; 
 
 The venom blast of envy, that hateth young 
 success, 
 
 Is but as a tonic in the air, bracing and 
 fixing popularity ; 
 
 Even the should-be Marsyas, as flayed by 
 his malignant censors, 
 
 Stolidly rhinoceros-hided, scorneth all their 
 scalpels. 
 
Of Zoilism. 195 
 
 No man dreadeth Zoilus, no woman courteth 
 Aristarchus ; 
 
 No Keats again shall die of such ; no Shelley 
 pale before them : 
 
 Actors, unfaithful hypocrites, they over- 
 play their parts ; 
 
 Pens are poignards in their hands ; an ink- 
 stand the fountain of detraction. 
 
 The critic, taking refuge in reviling, as an 
 idler method than reviewing, 
 
 Filleth the public ear, for gain, with flashy 
 slanders ; 
 
 But the crowds that laugh and listen, while 
 they like such humours, 
 
 Only despise that cankerous tongue, and 
 take the victim's part : 
 
 Critics have diligently managed, by dint of 
 
 long ill-doing, 
 
 o 2 
 
196 Of Zoilism. 
 
 To have lost all credit and esteem, and have 
 
 flung the world away ; 
 It was not easy with their powers, save for 
 
 the corruption of their morals ; 
 Men were content to follow them, but not 
 
 through shame and mud ; 
 Smothered in his own ink, stabbed by his 
 
 own steel pen 
 Snared in his special gin, tangled in his 
 
 proper meshes, 
 And fallen into the pit that he had digged 
 
 for other, — 
 Zoilus is socially quenched, and the libeller 
 
 is libelled by his mates ; 
 The malice of his strictures is as viper's-fat 
 
 for cure, 
 His judgment hath no weight, his slanders 
 
 glorify their victim, 
 
Of Zoilism. 197 
 
 He dare not avow among his fellows he 
 
 hath written such and such, 
 Treacherously wounding in the dark, he 
 
 liveth yet in terror of discovery, 
 And where he stabbed he stabbed in vain, 
 
 only to blunt his dagger. 
 
 A fool can ask questions, that shall puzzle 
 
 the sage to answer, 
 And feeble wits write forcibly, offhand, on 
 
 wisdom's works. 
 Thersites, bitter hunchback, — with Zoilus 
 
 well clubbed and Aristarchus, — 
 Is sworn to quench all Nestors, and to laugh 
 
 Elishas down; 
 These have taught the people, these have 
 
 earned good fame, — 
 
198 Of Zoillsm. 
 
 Therefore ignorance and envy league in 
 lies to harm them. 
 
 And, if a man hath written books, this (in 
 attempt) is easy ; 
 
 Forthwith, he, and they, are jointly fixed for 
 targets : 
 
 Mingling the writer with his work, infir- 
 mities can load the scale, — 
 
 He may be old, weak dotard ! or he may be 
 young, pert boy ! 
 
 Even if halt or blind, your modern critic 
 spareth not for these, — 
 
 Go up, go up, thou bald head ! the blind, 
 to be leader of the blind ! 
 
 Or thou canst sneer at his moralities, severely 
 pure thyself, 
 
 Haply, he is not sworn a Rechabite; pos- 
 sibly hath debts and troubles ; 
 
Of Zoilism. 199 
 
 Or, it may be that, heretofore, he hath said 
 
 or done some folly, 
 Or prodigal sons, or a vixen wife, may blow 
 
 upon his credit ; 
 Grand old Sophocles may be slandered 
 
 through his children, Xantippe be 
 
 alleged a shame to Socrates, 
 And Job be charged with his afflictions, if 
 
 he chance to have written a book. 
 
 Let all such count against your author, 
 
 helping to damn his volume, 
 What merit should there be in this, if such 
 
 dark stains in him ? 
 Yet fruits are for judgment by themselves, 
 
 in spite of the condition of the trees ; 
 A crystal's angles are its own, wherever be 
 
 the mountain cavern; 
 
200 Of Zoilism. 
 
 And a book hath a separate being, purely- 
 irrespective of its author, 
 
 Albeit our interests are heightened, if it 
 honestly reflect the man. 
 
 The just critic should gauge each work, by 
 its innate special qualities, 
 
 Unprejudiced by accidents, that hang about 
 the worker ; 
 
 But our unjust judges in literature hunt 
 down men, not books, 
 
 Filled with bitter personality, sarcastic and 
 foulspoken. 
 
 How shall ignorance contrive to show like 
 
 learning's self, 
 When some unscrupulous reviewer sitteth 
 
 down to judge his master ? 
 
Of Zoilism. 20 1 
 
 That book is doomed to be condemned ; the 
 
 critic must not read it ; 
 Some awkward beauties in the thing might 
 
 tamper with his verdict : 
 So, it shall be handed to a clerk, to note its 
 
 worst and weakest, 
 And tear out pages, rich in faults, and every 
 
 best omitted ; 
 Happy if some chance misprint destroy 
 
 grammatical concord, 
 Happy if a word be found misquoted, or 
 
 some fact ill dated. 
 Then for a diligent half hour to con some 
 
 cognate treatise, 
 Some digest of his victim's theme, but on 
 
 the opposite tack : 
 Dipping from book to book, well indexed 
 
 and well noted, 
 
202 Of Zoilism. 
 
 He mastereth a few strange terms in the 
 
 science off-hand to be discussed, 
 Glanceth at the disputable spots, held to be 
 
 his author's crotchets, 
 And thus is ready for the onslaught, a 
 
 cavalier of points. 
 Then, with supercilious ease, great in stolen 
 
 knowledge, 
 Glibly shall he pen his essay on our author's 
 
 theme ; 
 Dropping down grandly from on high, as a 
 
 vulture swoopeth upon carrion, 
 He pounceth at the petty faults discovered 
 
 by his clerk, 
 Propoundeth that antagonistic view as the 
 
 sole one a sane man can adopt, 
 And bringeth that false date in proof, that 
 
 all the rest is worthless ! 
 
Of Zoilism. 203 
 
 It is wonderful how small and mean, beside 
 
 this omniscient reviewer, 
 Is seen the wretched author, though a 
 
 master in his craft : 
 It is marvellous with what contempt, what 
 
 vast array of learning, 
 Sanchoniathon, Manetho, and Berosus, freely 
 
 quoting all, 
 Our critic, — stripling from the schools, or 
 
 starveling at the bar, — 
 Goadeth his helpless prey, that old be- 
 
 leagured pundit, 
 A swordfish pricking at a whale, with never 
 
 a voice to tell 
 How full he is of oil, for a million midnight 
 
 lamps : 
 Lastly, to finish with a flourish, and prove 
 
 superior lore, 
 
204 Of Zoilism. 
 
 To catch the people's wonder, and show the 
 
 judge's wisdom, 
 Let him touch by innocent accident, upon 
 
 the curious fact 
 That Sanscrit was our passion when a boy, 
 
 as is now the arrow-headed character ! 
 Hints of such high scope exalt the critic's 
 
 chair, 
 And help to crush the caitiff whom his 
 
 judge is to condemn. 
 
 There is rubbish printed by the ton, that 
 ought to be well censured ; 
 
 But this is always praised, for merchan- 
 dize of books : 
 
 Novels, mere insects of an hour, are pro- 
 phesied undoubted immortality 
 
Of Zoilism* 205 
 
 And float their bubble life upon the well- 
 paid puffs of fame ; 
 
 And it is betimes a wisdom, when praise is 
 found effete, 
 
 To keep the shuttles up by battledores of 
 censure ; 
 
 Even actions, as for libel, have renovated 
 tales of scandal, 
 
 Ostensibly for morals, but to make the 
 public buy. 
 
 Sometimes, praise is very prodigal; this 
 author is a noble ; 
 
 Or — so ignoble as to be her critic's para- 
 mour; 
 
 Or — a writer with a following, some par- 
 tizan of Church or State ; 
 
 Or — his publisher is potent, canvassed by 
 the press for favours : 
 
2o6 Of Zoilism. 
 
 So, the censor is to praise ; let him read that 
 
 book with diligence, 
 And note with seeming ecstacies its poor 
 
 and trivial best ; 
 Happy is it for his honesty, if he find 
 
 therein aught worthy of applause, 
 But either way, through good and ill, this 
 
 hireling slave applaudeth. 
 O the multitude of witlings, partially be- 
 lauded for their hour, 
 Whom the world hath willingly let die, in 
 
 spite of critic-friends ; 
 O the galaxy of few great names, mocked 
 
 by the starving Aristarchi, 
 Who long have known their scorn, to be 
 
 herald of the whole earth's reverence ! 
 Where is there a man that hath escaped, of 
 
 all our best and wisest, 
 
Of Zoilism. 207 
 
 The false malignant judgment of the Critics 
 in his time ? 
 
 Every one hath stood as a Sebastian, naked, 
 to be shot with arrows, 
 
 Each, like that sweet saint, achieving im- 
 mortality of love. 
 
 What shall we say of yonder band, philo- 
 sophers, bards, and sages, 
 
 All condemned and scorned at first by dull 
 presumptuous censors ? 
 
 Wordsworth, simple and sublime, how long 
 they laughed at thee ! 
 
 Coleridge, the gentle and profound, which 
 of them did honour to thine eloquence ? 
 
 Byron, answering scorn with scorn, well 
 didst thou turn and rend them, — 
 
 And even Shakespeare, Newton, Pope, were 
 scouted and defamed ! 
 
208 Of Zoilism, 
 
 I have known yet baser motives affect our 
 
 heralds of fame, 
 Soiling the ermine, on the bench, of our 
 
 self-dubbed judges in literature. 
 Mercury, winged trumpeter, carrieth not the 
 
 purse in vain ; 
 iEacus, Minos, Rhadamanthus, are bribeable 
 
 alas ! as Bacon. 
 A certain writer in The Tadmor forwarded 
 
 a fulsome panegyric, 
 Professing boundless admiration for the 
 
 works of a certain author : 
 His letter, frankly written, touched upon 
 
 the penury at home, 
 And asked some score of pounds, a loan — 
 
 no more — of honour : 
 
Of Zoilism. 209 
 
 That letter had its postscript; the seed 
 would be surely seen well sown ; 
 
 A hundredfold of literary fame should fill 
 the sower's bosom : 
 
 Was not this a critic in The Tadmor? 
 Could he not control The Scribe ? 
 
 Had he not a voice in The Museum ? Were 
 they not all one brotherhood ? 
 
 Well should the generous author, glorified 
 throughout the press, 
 
 Be recompensed, as richly he deserved, by 
 the grateful writer in The Tadmor ! 
 
 The letter, flung aside with indignation, re- 
 ceived not its answer as expected ; 
 
 And straightway half the Arabs of the press 
 defamed that unwise author : 
 
 Scribe and Tadmor and Musaeum are to this 
 day found his foes ; 
 
210 Of Zoilisnu 
 
 How priceless then must be the praise, of 
 Scribe and Tadmor and Musaeum ! 
 
 Yet there is an honest phalanx, gallant, 
 
 honourable, capable, 
 Strong good hounds, and hunting fair, and 
 
 of a generous stock. 
 These will not vilely dog the heels of merit 
 
 lest it scape them ; 
 These will not cut across the scent, as 
 
 lurchers running foul ; 
 Straight and staunch they follow, and, if 
 
 they kill their fox, 
 They worry not the vermin, and he well 
 
 deserved his end. 
 
 And there is a nobler band, high in power 
 and conscience, 
 
Of Zoilism. 211 
 
 Who help the struggling genius, while still 
 
 friendless and unknown : 
 Whose frowns are only for the impious; 
 
 whose wrath is reserved for the impure ; 
 Whose ridicule may scathe conceit, but 
 
 spareth even ignorance if modest ; 
 Whose rich libations of praise are poured on 
 
 worth and wisdom ; 
 Whose verdict is an echo from High 
 
 Heaven, of the Well done, faithful 
 
 servant ! 
 
 P 2 
 

 ( 212 ) 
 
 Of Creeds. 
 
 A pure life, a liberal mind, an honest and 
 good heart, — 
 
 This is the threefold cord bent upon the 
 anchor of religion ; 
 
 If either of those strands be rotten, that bark 
 is found in peril, 
 
 Nigh to be drifted on the reef, when as its 
 hawser parteth : 
 
 Void of purity in morals, faith is but a hy- 
 pocrite of words, 
 
 Charity cannot dwell with a mean and 
 narrow spirit, 
 
Of Creeds. 213 
 
 And there is but little hope, failing integrity 
 
 of purpose ; 
 Faith, hope, charity, the triple-twisted cable 
 
 of religion. 
 In a mere creed there is no salvation, no 
 
 happiness in articles or dogmas, 
 No real safety for the soul in the best cold 
 
 code of forms ; 
 Though thy theology be logical, and thy 
 
 scheme most orthodox, 
 Though thy sect be of the straitest, thy 
 
 chain from the fathers of the strongest, 
 These are none of them the comforters to 
 
 bring a man peace at the last, 
 These are not the elements of heaven in the 
 
 soul: 
 Holiness that hath no evil memories, kind- 
 liness loveable to all, 
 
214 Of C ree ds. 
 
 And cheerful trust toward God, will out- 
 weigh all the creeds. 
 
 Truth is as a sphere of crystal, so many- 
 many-sided every way, 
 
 With all its microscopic angles polished down 
 and blent, 
 
 That none can feel the corners, none per- 
 ceive the bevils, 
 
 A globe of million facets, like an insect's 
 eye: 
 
 And the longer a man liveth on the earth, 
 growing wiser from experiences, 
 
 The nearer he attaineth to this smoothness, 
 this absence of the sharp and rough. 
 
 He is tolerant, large, and genial, allowing 
 differences readily, 
 
Of Creeds. 215 
 
 And fitting every angled hole with simply- 
 circled ease : 
 
 He knoweth that there always is an answer 
 to be equitably heard and weighed, 
 
 Ever a view from the opposite point, another 
 surface to the shield, 
 
 Prejudices, bents, and educationals, all to be 
 righteously considered, 
 
 And strange epidemics for human minds, no 
 less than for their bodies : 
 
 The Empire of the Moslem Wahabees abhor 
 as foul abominations, 
 
 Not leprosy nor murder, but silken kerchiefs 
 and tobacco ; 
 
 Swines' flesh, the Gentile farmer's glory, 
 will be sin and shame to a Jew; 
 
 Bulls' flesh defileth unto death the intellec- 
 tual Brahmin; 
 
216 Of Creeds. 
 
 To be shaven is misfortune and disgrace to 
 
 half the stately East ; 
 The manly beard, till yesterday, was ridicule 
 
 to polished Europe ; 
 Eastwardly, a score of wives are credit, 
 
 comfort, honour; 
 Westwardly, suspicion of a second is misery, 
 
 guilt, and ruin; 
 One man sweareth by water, to cure him, 
 
 nay to save him ; 
 Pulse and lentils with another are religion in 
 
 his food ; 
 Ritual is all in all for this man, Spiritual ah 
 
 in all for that ; 
 Conscience is to one his law, authority to 
 
 another ; 
 Here, faith is pinned upon a book, there all 
 
 truth is in the teacher, 
 
Of Creeds. 217 
 
 A third relieth on the office, a fourth hath 
 
 assurance in himself; 
 One man seeth in his priest, as if the God 
 
 incarnate ; 
 Another claimeth for himself peculiar in- 
 dwelling of the Spirit ; 
 With this mind all argument is closed, by 
 
 the dictum of an ancient saint ; 
 With that mind light is to be found, only 
 
 in a new apostle : 
 The Nazarite and Rechabite abjure that 
 
 which maketh glad the heart of man ; 
 Garments of every shape are each held the 
 
 livery for heaven ; 
 Ecstacies and phantasies of madmen are 
 
 hailed by their elect as inspirations ; 
 And idiots among the Alps are counted for 
 
 God's children by the Switzer. 
 
218 Of Creeds. 
 
 And in such varying creeds there is ever 
 
 some uniform good, 
 A portion we can well excuse, or partially 
 
 commend : 
 Wise and true men will be found in each 
 
 and every class, 
 All taking as it were their tints, from spe- 
 cialties in mind and body: 
 Therefore it is vain with those diversities, to 
 
 hope for similarity of creed, 
 Though Chrysostcm persuade, or Torque- 
 
 mada force it ; 
 And tolerant wisdom is content, to suffer all 
 
 phases of opinion, 
 For shrewd experience of men seeth infinite 
 
 variety in character. 
 
Of Creeds* 219 
 
 Yea ; trumpet out what creed thou wilt, and 
 
 that with Athanasian precision, 
 Be thy logic of the Trinity the strictest, thy 
 
 learning in the fathers of the deepest, 
 Yet, if thy life be wicked, even Athanasius 
 
 being judge, 
 Thou that doest evil, thy wages are the fires 
 
 everlasting. 
 And, if in all good conscience, though warped 
 
 by men and things, 
 Thou holdest some extraordinary creed, 
 
 fanatical and foolish, 
 Yet, while thy life is righteous, the times of 
 
 this ignorance are winked at, 
 Thou that workest good, thy heart and thy 
 
 rest are with the blessed. 
 
220 Of Creeds. 
 
 Belief is a deep strong root, and a true creed 
 
 beareth fruits of life, 
 And a false creed, followed out in practice, 
 
 yieldeth only poisonberries ; 
 But the true creed solely in the head, and 
 
 the false creed noways in the heart, 
 Maketh good neutral in the first, maketh 
 
 evil neutral in the second. 
 Forms and liturgies and articles may screen 
 
 Truth or display her, 
 They be helps and they be governments, 
 
 measures sieves and gauges, 
 Finger-posts to show the way, and props to 
 
 aid the weak ; 
 For the outer Church is but a scaffolding to 
 
 build up living stones ; 
 The Heavenly Jerusalem is veiled, by no 
 
 such human structure. 
 
Of Creeds. 221 
 
 They that win many to happiness, be they 
 
 priests or lay, 
 Such true preachers are to shine, as the stars 
 
 for ever and ever : 
 The good priest here may have his speci- 
 alties, but here too they shall cease ; 
 Hereafter, equally with him, his flock are 
 
 priests and kings : 
 Woe to "him if he win not souls; glory to 
 
 him if he win them ; 
 But less to the priest than to the man, for 
 
 his vocation is not carried thitherward. 
 Offices forms and creeds are nought, except 
 
 as means to ends, 
 They all are things of earth, to perish in the 
 
 using : 
 And be thy superstition what it may, if it 
 
 tendeth to good works, 
 
222 Of Creeds. 
 
 The love of God and man, with earnest 
 
 prayer and penitence, 
 This is enough for happiness : as one of our 
 
 own poets hath said, — 
 Let bigots fight for creeds, the good man 
 
 hath the right one. 
 
( 22 3 ) 
 
 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 There is needed a gospel for the brute, a 
 preacher for the pariahs of creation, 
 
 A voice to vindicate the justice, the wisdom 
 and the mercy of their Maker ; 
 
 His justice, ordering righteously ; His wis- 
 dom, working not in vain ; 
 
 His mercy, loving all His works, from the 
 highest even to the humblest. 
 
 There is lacking, through the selfishness of 
 man, who voteth himself the centre, 
 
 A word for the wide circumference, and the 
 rays, and the tangents of his circle : 
 
224 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 He hath set himself up for judge, deter- 
 mining in his narrowness 
 That God made laws for him alone, and 
 
 took no thought for oxen ; 
 That He who pitied Nineveh, noways 
 
 heedeth its much cattle, 
 And hath not heart, nor mind, nor will, to 
 
 care alike for all things. 
 He forgetteth that there is a Spirit, equally 
 
 in man and brute, 
 One tending upward if it may be, the other 
 
 grovelling downward, 
 Like in kind, but differing in degree, as 
 
 humbler souls and higher; 
 The brute limited both ways, for evil as for 
 
 good: 
 For while man's loftier spirit can sink to 
 
 uttermost depths, 
 
Of the future of Animals. 225 
 
 The brute, if less capable of rising, also is 
 
 less liable to fall ; 
 Evil example in its master may vitiate his 
 
 imitative dog, 
 Though this may be nurtured to be nobler 
 
 than are many of the tribes of man ; 
 But in no case can it be so base, as the 
 
 town-bred scoundrel of society, 
 Nor change to so vile a savage as the Anda- 
 man or the Makariro : 
 With all, education will do much, and the 
 
 company of worse or better, 
 High instinct over-treading the heels of 
 
 lowest reason ; 
 Yet the dumb beast may not reach our 
 
 human degradations, 
 
 Drunkenness, dishonesty, and cruelty, are 
 
 not the brute's achievements : 
 
 <2 
 
226 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 Grant that it cannot worship God, it will 
 
 idolize His image Man, 
 Even to dying of grief, even to self-sacrifice 
 
 to save him; 
 Grant that it rise not to the Spiritual, — how 
 
 few men rise to this ! — 
 The dumb beast hath affections, loving and 
 
 remembering, and thinking; 
 It hath a sort of reason, and is not a mere 
 
 machine ; 
 It showeth a kind of moral sense, more than 
 
 the Bushman or Fuegian : 
 Unreckoning, it is generous and unselfish ; 
 
 with a conscience both of evil and of 
 
 good, 
 Sensitive to praise and blame, and full of 
 
 shrewdness and attachment : 
 Nature standeth as its all in all for law, 
 
 neither doth it sin against her ; 
 
Of the future of Animals, 227 
 
 And the God of nature will in no wise 
 destroy it for obedience. 
 
 We may but touch analogies ; we dare not 
 clench this doctrine with a dogma ; 
 
 Our wisdom is to watch the hints, dropt in- 
 cidentally by Scripture ; 
 
 Proof is noways possible, and difficult ob- 
 jections will abound, 
 
 Prejudice crushing reason, and novelty 
 showing as a falsehood ; 
 
 And some may fancy that we claim an 
 equal inheritance for all, 
 
 Forgetting grades of being, and infinite 
 diversities of state ; 
 
 And other some will feel that for The 
 Christ, to have ransomed man alone, 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 Is a selfish consolation to themselves, a closer 
 and particular Redemption ; 
 
 While the more magnificent Salvation of all 
 man's fallen world 
 
 In their view looketh little worthy, of a 
 love more select than universal : 
 
 The idea of soul-saved brutes will shock 
 conceited men ; 
 
 Catholic favour is an insult to elected and 
 predestinated favourites. 
 
 Therefore frequent are the gainsayers, and 
 few the generous advocates, 
 
 And much contention shall arise, for there 
 be many adversaries : 
 
 Nevertheless we will be bold to claim for 
 the meanest of creation 
 
 All its Creator's love, infinite eternal uni- 
 versal : 
 
Of the future of Animals. 229 
 
 God hath loved the world ; the Gospel is 
 
 for every creature ; 
 The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and 
 
 the wilderness shall blossom as the rose ; 
 The lion, with its ravenous nature changed, 
 
 yet shall eat straw like the ox, 
 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and 
 
 the leopard lie down with the kid ; 
 All sin and death and pain extinct, happi- 
 ness and progress in communion 
 Shall lead each creature to its best, migrating 
 
 toward perfection : 
 They shall not hurt nor destroy in all His 
 
 holy mountain, 
 The denizens of Earth in her millennium 
 
 shall find that happy future ; 
 Not only men and women, but all the 
 
 creation of God 
 
2 3° Of the future of Animals. 
 
 Shall glorify His goodness, in their new- 
 recovered Eden. 
 
 Man is not alone for love, for memory, 
 shrewdness, honour, 
 
 Many of his lower servants shame their 
 master here. 
 
 The soft domestic cat, affectionately pur- 
 ring, 
 
 That findeth home again from far, through 
 some mysterious sense ; 
 
 The kind-eyed noble-hearted dog, defend- 
 ing thee so bravely, 
 
 Forgiving oft and loving much, and ever 
 full of gratitude; 
 
 The generous highbred horse, with his fine 
 sensitive feelings, 
 
Of the future of Animals. 231 
 
 Vicious against the foul-mouthed groom, 
 but gentle toward his mistress, 
 
 The wise and wary elephant, the parrot, 
 and the camel, and the reindeer, 
 
 And all our other humbler friends, our mute 
 slaves and companions, — 
 
 These have climbed, through education, to 
 higher grades of mind 
 
 Than whole savage families of men have 
 won through countless ages ; 
 
 These have not outraged the moralities, these 
 have not stupified intelligence, 
 
 Like half our rustics, half our workmen, at 
 some race or fair ; 
 
 These show kinder evidence of soul, in con- 
 science affection and devotion, 
 
 Than all the gypsies of our downs, the out- 
 casts in our streets : 
 
232 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 Look from the high-mettled racer, to the 
 shrivelled mean blasphemer on his 
 back, — 
 
 Which of these should win an immortality ? 
 which of them hath earned annihilation? 
 
 True ; the brute's limit now is earthward ; 
 
 but all have limits here, 
 All are cramped and prisoned in these 
 
 charnel walls of sense ; 
 Yet, wherefore should not brutes expand, as 
 
 well as man hereafter ? 
 Why not grow to some advancement, some 
 
 perfection in their kind ? 
 The life which God hath given, should His 
 
 grace repent it, — 
 Unmaking creatures He hath made, as if 
 
 His thought had failed ? 
 
Of the future of Animals. 233 
 
 All are wonderful and exquisite, miracles of 
 varied excellence, 
 
 From nature's rational lord, to his least and 
 lowest serf: 
 
 Why should a so-called instinct, the heaven- 
 tutored mind of brutes, 
 
 Be clean wiped out for ever, as in blank an- 
 nihilation, — 
 
 Nor rather still teach angels, wondering to 
 see the spider spin, 
 
 Praising in brighter skies the jewelled bosom 
 of the humming-bird, 
 
 Exhilarated even in their hymns by the 
 skylark's whirl of song, 
 
 Delighted with creature comeliness, and 
 yearning over animal affection ? 
 
 It were a dull flat world, a creation of less 
 interest than ours, 
 
234 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 If indeed man's future home possess no 
 lower inmates ; 
 
 If there be no gradations, no humbler tribe 
 than we, — 
 
 All of one royal race, earth-kings, — but 
 with no subjects, — ■ 
 
 Lacking this elaborated order, upholding and 
 depending, 
 
 To prove the Maker's attributes and mag- 
 nify His wisdom ; 
 
 With no multitudinous links in nature's 
 coat of chain 
 
 To show how strong she standeth, a pano- 
 plied Minerva ; 
 
 Only one tame dead level, incomplicate and 
 shorn of mysteries, 
 
 A world of one idea, and void of varied 
 genius. 
 
Of the future of Animals. 235 
 
 This is but a life of introductions, beginnings 
 
 seeds and eggs, 
 All to fructify hereafter, germinating humbly 
 
 here ; 
 A drop-scene of foreshadowings, on passing 
 
 clouds that vanish, 
 Photographs of circumstance and character, 
 
 the substance whereof is yet to come. 
 Therefore it is wise and well to see new 
 
 friends and places, 
 To gain, even at the end of life, elements of 
 
 new knowledge, 
 Hereafter to be carried freely forward, that 
 
 when we fail for time 
 Such seeming-mammon friends may receive 
 
 us in eternal habitations : 
 Here we touch the clues that lead us on to 
 
 ever-blooming gardens, 
 
2 3 6 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 Here, mysterious truth, we plant our seeds 
 of being. 
 
 Everything that hath been and that is, and 
 all things that yet may have to be, 
 
 Here but in type and show, shall be repro- 
 duced in antitype hereafter : 
 
 " Resurgam " is the solemn word inscribed 
 on every fact, 
 
 The feeblest thing that ever was shall have 
 its resurrection. 
 
 We gain part-alphabets of knowledge, in 
 nature art and science, 
 
 Like children at their infant school, conning 
 primer lessons; 
 
 But all, that here is so incipient, shall grow 
 to its perfection ; 
 
Of the future of Animals. 237 
 
 No creature shall be wasted, or despised, or 
 
 cast away. 
 Why should it only be for men, that mighty 
 
 restoration ? 
 Annihilation of His works were not The 
 
 Maker's glory. 
 Man, his own historian, celebrateth only 
 
 man, 
 Claiming redemption for himself, all else in 
 
 condemnation ; 
 The sinner alone, forsooth, the King is to 
 
 be saved, 
 But the whole of his innocent serf-kingdom 
 
 to be quenched and annulled for ever ! 
 
 -Not so ! all God's pensioners, animal, 
 vegetal, mineral, 
 
2 3 8 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 Every note that hath resounded on the 
 
 timbrels of His Providence, 
 Every thought and deed, every passion and 
 
 fancy, 
 Every idle word, and every sinful act, 
 Every sparrow in its fall, as every Christian 
 
 in his death, 
 All shall live again, and have immortal 
 
 sequence, — 
 The trail of each creature in its progress; 
 
 for all things have their seeming 
 
 souls, 
 Recorded at least on spirits' memories, if not 
 
 themselves pure spirit. 
 He that believeth Resurrection must carry 
 
 it out unto the end ; 
 Nothing perisheth utterly, soul or mind or 
 
 matter : 
 
Of the future of Animals. 239 
 
 Nothing continueth in one stay, moving 
 
 ever onward \ 
 Progress is the common law, toward infinite 
 
 good or evil. 
 The fashion of this world fadeth, but its 
 
 recollections live for ever ; 
 None may obliterate the thought, that once 
 
 hath stood a thing : 
 And it is a weakness in the argument to 
 
 claim immortality for man, 
 Refusing to all humbler life a future grade 
 
 of being. 
 Creation is one whole, glorifying God 
 
 throughout, 
 From suns to microscopic monads, all are 
 
 linked together ; 
 All, the archangel, — and the worm, — shall 
 
 progress to perfection in their kind, 
 
240 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 All shall praise the Maker in their season at 
 their best. 
 
 Behold yon dying saint, with heaven shin- 
 ing on his face, 
 A merchant-prince in every sense, and rich 
 
 for either world ; 
 As he lieth dying, he calleth for his dear 
 
 old dog, 
 Faithful companion of his walks, when he 
 
 went about doing good ; 
 And as, in love and grief, the poor dumb 
 
 creature whining, 
 Licketh his wasted cheek, and the thin 
 
 hand hanging by the bedside, 
 Hearken to this dreary lamentation : — Alas ! 
 
 my noble friend, 
 
Of the future of Animals. 241 
 
 There is no future hfe for thee, — farewell 
 
 for ever and ever ! — 
 Did not the Christian in that word confirm 
 
 the falsehood of the infidel, 
 The dark dread hope of wickedness, his lie, 
 
 annihilation ? 
 And shall we not judge that the poor Indian 
 
 who looked for his faithful dog 
 Still to be found with him in bliss, on the 
 
 happy shores of the departed, 
 Truly was wiser than the poet, whose rhyme 
 
 hath immortalized that ignorance, 
 And, all untutored as he was, taught the 
 
 philosopher a lesson ? 
 
 Our spirits live and die not ; our bodies live 
 awhile and die, 
 
 R 
 
242 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 Rising for reunion with those spirits, to live 
 anew whole creatures : 
 
 Shall there be for such fair tabernacles, where- 
 with we shall soon be clothed-upon, 
 
 No hangings and no furnitures, no thrones 
 nor harps nor crowns, 
 
 No palms, and no white raiment, no jewels, 
 incense, flowers, 
 
 No birds nor butterflies nor crystals, no 
 wonders and no beauties, 
 
 No better remembrancers of earth, our pil- 
 grimage of trial, 
 
 No chariots and no horses, no friends of our 
 old hearths ? 
 
 Verily, beautified and glorified, all such 
 shall live again; 
 
 The whole creation groaneth, travailing for 
 that life : 
 
Of the future of Animals. 243 
 
 Yet shall there be a Restitution, a resurrec- 
 tion real for all things, 
 
 Creatures, circumstances, pageants, deeds and 
 words and thoughts ; 
 
 All have been figured on the light, all are 
 waved upon the air, 
 
 All have been fixed in unalterable fact, 
 all were the beginnings of unendings. 
 
 Nothing can escape its future; for every- 
 thing is a seed, 
 
 Germinating for the vast hereafter, and to 
 flower in its season. 
 
 It is false and weak and foolish to confine 
 the resurrection unto man, 
 
 A plot of human vanity, but not the plan 
 of God: 
 
 Man is but one among the meshes, of the 
 
 knitted raiment of needlework, 
 
 R 2 
 
244 Of th e f u t ure °f Animals. 
 
 Wherewith the King of kings is pleased to 
 clothe Himself, 
 
 The one whole vesture of creation, woven 
 from the top throughout, 
 
 Wherein His attributes are seen, braided in 
 many patterns ; 
 
 And if one loop thereof be dropt, a rent is 
 made in glory, 
 
 The beautiful mosaic of His cosmos hath its 
 pavement incomplete. 
 
 None of His works were lightly made, nor 
 meant to be repented ; 
 
 He is the Builder and the Maker, never de- 
 signing a destruction. 
 
 That which is shall ever be, ripening to per- 
 fection in its kind, 
 
 Or haply, through mysteries of evil, rotting 
 to corruption everlasting : 
 
Of the future of Animals, 245 
 
 For, all that God hath made shall live in 
 
 His own life, 
 Shall live according to its works, for glory 
 
 or for shame, 
 Henceforth, if grace prevail, rejoicing in His 
 
 mercy, 
 Henceforth, if evil overcome, contending 
 
 with His justice ! 
 
 Thou objectest, Life for any time is gain ; 
 
 and to brutes annihilation were no loss, 
 If it pleaseth the Great Architect of all to 
 
 be wasteful of His skill : 
 Be that life ephemeral as a May-fly's, or a 
 
 hundred years as of a raven, 
 Thou sayest, it is the creature's gain, and so 
 
 its Maker's grace. 
 
246 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 True, if that life be full of pleasure ; but 
 
 what if it be little else than pain ? 
 Hath the creature then no controversy, with 
 
 its Maker, being innocent ? 
 And would the Great Just Judge wait for 
 
 some eloquent advocate, 
 And not be Himself that counsel, arguing 
 
 for justice to his prisoner ? 
 If brutes have no hereafter, what an unequal 
 
 lot 
 Between the pampered lapdog, and the 
 
 starving hound, — 
 The flayed Abyssinian bull, moaning beside 
 
 his banquetters, 
 And happy kine afield, lazily cropping in 
 
 the sunshine : 
 With us, futurity will compensate, and 
 
 Lazarus leceive his mercies, 
 
Of the future of Animals. 247 
 
 But wherein is there justice to the dogs who 
 
 licked his sores ? 
 Wherein, for the hideous live dissections, 
 
 victims of a Spallanzani's scalpel ? 
 Wherein, for the maimed and tortured, all 
 
 cruelly entreated innocents, — 
 If He, who pleased to make them, made 
 
 them only for their woes, 
 And, sinless as they stand, destined for them 
 
 nought but suffering ? 
 
 If brutes have no hereafter, where are the 
 accusers of the cruel, — 
 
 The gambler's screaming cock, live-roasted 
 from the main ; 
 
 The worn-out war-horse at his last, tor- 
 mented day after day 
 
248 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 By cold-blooded surgical fiends, agonising 
 
 all its life-strings ; 
 The starved, the skinned, the battered, — 
 
 the bulldog maimed before he fought, 
 Wretched victims of the vice, the hateful- 
 
 ness and sins of man ? 
 Shall none of these arise to judgment ? will 
 
 none bear witness on the guilty ? 
 Must cruelties to all beneath them be utterly 
 
 excused to men ? 
 If sheer annihilation be their fate, — what 
 
 mattereth ? — for there be no accusers ; 
 And so, the worst monsters of mankind 
 
 unjustly miss their punishment : 
 But, great Justice liveth; eternal Justice 
 
 liveth ! 
 Guilt shall not go scatheless, Innocence 
 
 shall not be unavenged. 
 
Of the future oj Animals. 249 
 
 The whole creation groaneth, travailing in 
 
 pain together, 
 Waiting till the sons of God, through 
 
 Christ, are raised to glory : 
 And the creature was made subject unto 
 
 death, not by its own default, 
 But as following the fortunes of its lord, 
 
 and subjected alike in hope : 
 For the creature itself shall be delivered ; 
 
 to the humblest, from the bondage ox 
 
 corruption; 
 Into that liberty and glory, the children of 
 
 God made free. 
 
 O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the 
 Lord, — praise Him and magnify Him 
 for ever ! 
 
250 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 Men and things and elements, and beasts 
 
 and feathered fowls ! 
 Let none be missing from the feast for 
 
 Earth and all her children ; 
 But let whatever hath had being, praise 
 
 Him and magnify Him for ever ! 
 He is not the God of the dead, nor hath 
 
 made any covenant with destruction, 
 Nor worketh capriciously for time, but with 
 
 solid resolution for eternity : 
 Life is His glory, and not death ; happiness 
 
 and not annihilation ; 
 Complacent satisfaction in His creature, and 
 
 no caprice or change. 
 It shineth out a good great truth, that the 
 
 regeneration of the world 
 Through Christ's grand sacrifice for all, not 
 
 only men but things, 
 
Of the future of Animals. 25 1 
 
 Shall demonstrate the Maker's mercy, eter- 
 nal, without stint, 
 To every creature of His skill, preserved in 
 
 man's redemption. 
 Earth's thousand years of days of years, its 
 
 manifold millennium, 
 Its Sabbath-life of holy-day, its holiday 
 
 from sin, 
 Shall gladden all creation in our expanded 
 
 globe 
 Grown to be a spiritual orb, lighter, 
 
 brighter, vaster ; 
 Thus shall it be filled for evermore with its 
 
 own regenerate creatures, 
 The home for all its pensioners that here 
 
 received their life ; 
 And so, dear Mother Earth, full of our 
 
 childhood's memories, 
 
252 Of the future of Animals. 
 
 Will then stand one of many stars whereto 
 
 we men may speed 
 Freely at our innate power and will, coming 
 
 and going everywhere, 
 As the angels of Jacob's ladder, linking 
 
 world with world, 
 No longer chained to one by grovelling 
 
 gravitation, 
 But in a spiritual liberty made freemen of 
 
 them all : 
 Yet, oftenest revisiting dear Earth, and lin- 
 gering there among her creatures, 
 In her grand apotheosis for all Nature, not 
 
 only men and women, 
 But humblest things as highest, insects 
 
 beasts and fishes, 
 The briar and the rose, the lion and the ox, 
 
 and trees and flowers of the field, 
 
Of the future of Animals. 253 
 
 All, with evil flung aside, and death and sin 
 forgotten, 
 
 Praising the Lord who made them and mag- 
 nifying Him for ever ! 
 
( 2 54 ) 
 
 Of Happiness together or alone. 
 
 In Paradise before the fall God instituted 
 
 marriage, 
 And Jesus first wrought miracle to bless a 
 
 wedding feast. 
 With God Himself in Eden for His young 
 
 unguilty creatures 
 Verily, like all things else, was wedlock very 
 
 good; 
 And, if once more the Present God work 
 
 signs and wonders for it, 
 Again it must be very good, as nothing else 
 
 on earth. 
 
Of Happiness together or alone. 255 
 
 But, woe for fallen mortals ! their best estate 
 
 is banned, 
 Though flatteries and falsehoods are in 
 
 league to hail it blessed ; 
 And youth is ever full of hope, but age hath 
 
 left off hoping ; 
 While truths are told by neither, as enjoined 
 
 from social fraud : 
 Romance falsifieth one view, conventional 
 
 morality the other, 
 And gallantries and compliments combine 
 
 to hide stern facts. 
 
 But, — so many miserable mistakes, and all 
 
 without a cure ! 
 The wrong sort idly won, the right sort left 
 
 unwooed ; 
 
256 Of Happiness together or alone. 
 
 That fatal vow once taken, thenceforward 
 
 hope is over ; 
 Mated opposites contend, unmated concords 
 
 pine. 
 So often total wreck, with no space given for 
 
 repentance, 
 Mezentian marriage chaining fast the living 
 
 to the dead, 
 Hot-hearted youth with frozen age, or purity 
 
 with baseness, 
 And so to dwell together, as a pair, through 
 
 love or hate : 
 Alas! for it is but a single chance, once 
 
 thrown for first and last, 
 The gambler's desperate only cast, though 
 
 flung away so lightly ; 
 A cruelty on raw rash youth, hedged round 
 
 with gay deceptions, 
 
Of Happiness together or alone. 257 
 
 The cards are packed, the dice are weighted, 
 — what chance of any escape ? 
 
 So without cure and without end that lot is 
 cast for life 
 
 Which many know for misery, and none 
 acknowledge perfect. 
 
 Mutual hate should stand enough for ab- 
 solute release, 
 
 Or noted wrongs on either side, with equit- 
 able adjustments : 
 
 A bond with no redemption clauses is not 
 just to man, 
 
 In spite of all that Church can preach, or 
 State enact to force it. 
 
 Crime, insanity, sterility, these should break 
 the bands ; 
 
 And distortions of the spirit, as of body, 
 sin against first principles in marriage. 
 
258 Of Happiness together or alone. 
 
 O differences wide and deep, O contrasts 
 
 infinitely varied 
 Between those twain extremes, the happy 
 
 and the miserable marriage ! 
 Charity faith and hope, purity economy 
 
 religion, 
 These be the six Isaiah-wings to fledge that 
 
 angel-home 
 Where Love is found an inmate still with 
 
 Hymen growing old, 
 And two consenting creatures are as one for 
 
 soul and body : 
 But for their frequent harder fate whose 
 
 wedlock is a chain 
 Only to gall and shame and fret, and not 
 
 that band of roses, 
 
Of Happiness together or alone. 259 
 
 Enmity extravagance contempt, wrath strife 
 
 envy opposition, 
 These be the seven devils possessing that hot 
 
 hearth. 
 
 Ye many wicked wives, whose tempers blast 
 your homes 
 
 From nurseries for good to breeding-schools 
 for evil, 
 
 Woe for the misery and crime an aggra- 
 vating tongue can cause, 
 
 Woe for the comfort and content destroyed 
 by your bitter provocations. 
 
 Alas! how hard for the artizan, returned at 
 even from his labour 
 
 Weary of body and ill at ease in mind, and 
 only craving rest, 
 
 S 2 
 
260 Of Happiness together or alone. 
 
 To be driven from his threshold by conten- 
 tions, worried at each humble meal, 
 
 And cheated of his needful sleep by wed- 
 lock's clamouring tongue, 
 
 Haply edged with jealousies, or petty spites 
 and irritations, 
 
 Now kith and kin maligned, and now some 
 best friend slandered : 
 
 And so his home is blighted ; he must court 
 peace elsewhere, 
 
 Closeshielded against clamour in a rancorous 
 reserve : 
 
 And children watch and wonder, taking 
 warning from their parents, 
 
 No refuge for the best but prayer, nor for 
 the worst but flight ; 
 
 The sons rebellious and selfwilled, as that 
 usurping wife, 
 
Of Happiness together or alone. 261 
 
 The daughters, like her husband, sadly- 
 beaten down to silence. 
 
 O bitter lie of law, O falsest dogma of 
 society, 
 
 That woman is controlled by man, and sub- 
 ject to his will : 
 
 Custom maketh Vashti stronger than her 
 lord ; 
 
 His hands are bound, his mouth is stopped ; 
 how can he force obedience ? 
 
 And you, O many vicious husbands, hypo- 
 crites in much sin, 
 
 With whom the haply kinder wives are 
 patient in your homesteads, 
 
 Ye drunken and low revellers, — or you of 
 higher grade 
 
262 Of Happiness together or alone. 
 
 Still profligate, though elders, and still 
 
 shameless as in youth, 
 Alas, how hard for women to be mated 
 
 with such men, 
 What martyrdom for gentle wives once 
 
 married to such husbands ! 
 Would that there could be just exchanges, 
 
 the good to be consorted with the good, 
 The wicked shackled to the wicked, as both 
 
 shall be hereafter ; 
 Would that some general gaol-delivery were 
 
 given to the galley-slaves of marriage, 
 Some amnesty for innocents who writhe 
 
 beneath its yoke, 
 Some second chance to cure the one great 
 
 error made in life, 
 Some nobler choice whereby the future 
 
 should redeem the past ! 
 
Of Happiness together or alone, 263 
 
 — Yet are there brighter phases ; that eclipse 
 
 is not for all ; 
 Some happy pairs go hand in hand along 
 
 the vale of life, 
 And see their children's children, and are 
 
 blessed in old age, 
 And only find in wedded love the avenue 
 
 to heaven. 
 And for the common sort, content, dull 
 
 feeling, custom, 
 Give average men their average peace, and 
 
 such are counted happy ; 
 But, sorrowful truth to say, the griefs no 
 
 laws can cure 
 Grow rankly in that search in vain for 
 
 happiness together. 
 
264 Of Happiness together or alone. 
 
 Then, what of single life,- — so often guilty 
 freedom, — 
 
 Doth it secure an average share of blessed- 
 ness to man ? 
 
 Our half sphere of the West, fast bound to 
 stringent marriage, 
 
 Is peopling fast with more unmated than 
 are mated pairs : 
 
 Are these happier in their lot ? — Many 
 doubtless must be, 
 
 FuH of charities and faith, sensible and 
 contented : 
 
 So they live beloved, so they die be- 
 wailed, 
 
 And their works do follow those good sis- 
 ters and good brothers : 
 
Of Happiness together or alone. 265 
 
 But for the multitude whose hope is selfish 
 
 worldly happiness, 
 Such fare not better singly, than those who 
 
 missed it doubly. 
 
 How many unwritten tragedies are round 
 
 us everywhere, — 
 What broken hearts, and starving souls, and 
 
 unrecorded sorrows ! 
 Little thou wottest of the trials that have 
 
 made these what they are, 
 With disappointment and delay for daily 
 
 meat and drink. 
 Behold some desolate old man, whose life 
 
 is drained of love, 
 No one nigh to care for him, and none that 
 
 he can care for ; 
 
266 Of Happiness together or alone. 
 
 He, for all his hardness now, was full of 
 
 soft affections, 
 Until bereavement tore away the best half 
 
 of his heart; 
 There was guiltiness in too much grief; but 
 
 of thy charity consider 
 How fond a lover once was yonder crabbed 
 
 harsh old man. 
 And lo, this withered sister, with her youth 
 
 and beauty gone, 
 Who gave away her heart, — but vainly, — 
 
 long long years ago ; 
 "What ? wilt thou taunt her with a jibe, or 
 
 mock her by hard names, 
 Where all thy sympathies should yearn on 
 
 one of love's true martyrs ? 
 Canst thou not guess how full of grief those 
 
 long years must have passed, 
 
Of Happiness together or alone. 267 
 
 Which dried away from woman's heart the 
 lover wife and mother ? 
 
 Shall nature's wounds be healed, or her 
 quick feelings seared 
 
 Without a thousand secret pangs and exqui- 
 site regrets ? 
 
 Hath it been no heart-ordeal, to have 
 watched the bloom of beauty 
 
 Faded from the unflattering glass, as middle 
 age crept on, 
 
 And still no lover at her feet, — though she 
 hath loved so fondly, — 
 
 No intimate to share and charm life's soli- 
 tude away ? 
 
 How loosely common friendships fill that 
 hollow of the heart, — 
 
 How coldly can the warmest compare with 
 love and marriage ! 
 
268 Of Happiness together or alone. 
 
 And in the coming day of sickness, the 
 
 hour of inevitable death, 
 To be lonely, husbandless and childless, un- 
 loved, unmissed, uncared for, — 
 Who will not pity, will not love, that 
 
 solitary soul, 
 With all its yearnings bruised, its milk of 
 
 kindness soured ? 
 There be vanities, there be follies; and 
 
 much waste and wear of good ; 
 Fancies overclouding life, and darkening 
 
 half its sunshine : 
 Often thus hath generous youth, aflame with 
 
 early passion, 
 Cruelly cheated of his idol, been withered to 
 
 that desolate old age ; 
 Often the fair young maid, who set her first 
 
 fond love 
 
Of Happiness together or alone. 269 
 
 On yon insensate soul, unconscious or un- 
 worthy, 
 
 Hath changed to be soured from her sweet- 
 ness, by living all alone, 
 
 And come to be the wreck of love thou hast 
 not seldom seen. 
 
 And what then is the moral of it all ? why 
 
 these bitter words, 
 Where most are found to say smooth 
 
 things and prophesy deceits ? 
 — Because of those deceptions, those flatteries 
 
 and false speeches, 
 Because the truth is rarely told, and never 
 
 laid to heart, 
 Because for human life the Preacher's text 
 
 is Vanity, 
 
270 Of Happiness together or alone. 
 
 And no one would be envied if his whole 
 estate were known. 
 
 Saving for that trinity of good, religion, 
 
 health, and diligence, 
 Wherewith in wedded state or single, none 
 
 can live unhappy, 
 All conditions of man's life, balanced on an 
 
 equal scale, 
 Are — some few pleasures, many pains, and 
 
 much of care and vanity. 
 
( 2 7 I ) 
 
 A National Hymn for Harvest. 
 
 I. 
 
 O bless the God of harvest, praise Him 
 through the land, 
 
 Thank Him for his precious gifts, His help, 
 and liberal love ; 
 
 Praise Him for the fields that have ren- 
 dered up their riches, 
 
 And, drest in sunny stubbles, take their 
 Sabbath after toil ; 
 
 Praise Him for the close-shorn plains, and 
 uplands lying bare, 
 
 And meadows, where the sweet-breathed hay 
 was stacked in early summer ; 
 
272 A National Hymn for Harvest, 
 
 Praise Him for the wheat-sheaves, gathered 
 safely into barn, 
 
 And scattering now their golden drops be- 
 neath the sounding flail ; 
 
 Praise Him for the barley-mow, a little hill 
 
 of sweetness, 
 
 Praise Him for the clustering hop, to add 
 its fragrant bitter; 
 
 Praise Him for the wholesome root, that 
 fattened in the furrow; 
 
 Praise Him for the mellow fruits, that bend 
 the groaning bough : 
 
 For blessings on thy basket, and for bless- 
 ings on thy store, 
 
 For skill and labour prospered well by 
 gracious suns and showers, 
 
 For mercies on the home, and for comforts 
 on the hearth, 
 
A National Hymn for Harvest, 273 
 
 O happy heart of this broad land, praise the 
 God of harvest ! 
 
 II. 
 
 All ye that have no tongue to praise, we 
 
 will praise Him for you, 
 And offer on our kindling souls the tribute 
 
 of your thanks : 
 Trees and shrubs, and the multitude of herbs, 
 
 gladdening the eyes with verdure, 
 For all your leaves and flowers and fruits 
 
 we praise the God of harvest ! 
 Birds, and beetles in the dust, and insects 
 
 flitting on the air, 
 And ye that swim the waters in your scaly 
 
 coats of mail, 
 
 And steers, resting after labour, and timorous 
 
 flocks afold, 
 
 T 
 
 J 
 
274 -A National Hymn for Harvest. 
 
 And generous horses, yoked in teams to 
 draw the creaking wains, 
 
 For all your lives, and every pleasure so- 
 lacing that lot, 
 
 Your sleep, and food, and animal peace, we 
 praise the God of harvest ! 
 
 in. 
 
 And ye, O some who never prayed, and 
 therefore cannot praise ; 
 
 Poor darkling sons of care and toil and un- 
 illumined night, 
 
 Who rose betimes, but did not ask a bless- 
 ing on your work, 
 
 Who lay down late, but rendered no thank- 
 offering for that blessing 
 
 Which all unsought He sent, and all un- 
 known ye gathered, — 
 
A National Hymn for Harvest. 275 
 
 Alas ! for you and in your stead, we praise 
 the God of harvest ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 O ye famine-stricken glens, whose children 
 
 shrieked for bread, 
 And noisome alleys of the town, where 
 
 fever fed on hunger, 
 O ye children of despair, bitterly bewailing 
 
 Erin, 
 Come and join my cheerful praise, for God 
 
 hath answered prayer: 
 Praise him for the better hopes, and signs of 
 
 better times, 
 Unity gratitude contentment, industry peace 
 
 and plenty; 
 Bless Him that His chastening rod is now 
 
 the sceptre of forgiveness, 
 
 T 2 
 
276 A National Hymn for Harvest, 
 
 And in your joy remember well to praise 
 the God of harvest ! 
 
 v. 
 
 Come, gladly come along with me, and 
 
 swell this grateful song, 
 Ye nobler hearts, old England's own, her 
 
 children of the soil : 
 All ye that sowed the seed in faith, with 
 
 those who reaped in joy, 
 And he that drove the plough afield, with 
 
 all the scattered gleaners, 
 And maids who milk the lowing kine, and 
 
 boys that tend the sheep, 
 And men that load the sluggish wain, or 
 
 neatly thatch the rick, — 
 Shout and sing for happiness of heart, nor 
 
 stint your thrilling cheers, 
 
A National Hymn for Harvest. 277 
 
 But make the merry farmer's hall resound 
 
 with glad rejoicings, 
 And let him spread the hearty feast for joy 
 
 at harvest home, 
 And join this cheerful song of praise, — to 
 
 bless the God of harvest ! 
 
( *78 ) 
 
 A National Dirge in Trouble. 
 
 I. 
 
 We have sinned, we have sinned with our 
 fathers — O Judge and Saviour! we 
 have sinned ; 
 
 We had forgotten our God, and His judge- 
 ments lie heavily upon us : 
 
 We went aside and did great wickedness, 
 we have transgressed His command- 
 ments, 
 
 There is no health in our bones, we are 
 punished according to our sins : 
 
 Yet would we return to Thee O Lord, ac- 
 knowledging the guilt of our iniquities, 
 
A National Dirge in Trouble. 279 
 
 And flinging off the burden of it all, if 
 haply Thou wilt bless us with repent- 
 ance: 
 
 Hear us, O Merciful and Mighty, hear and 
 forgive us in Thy pity, 
 
 Help Thy people, O Lord, for the sake of 
 our Redeemer Thine anointed. 
 
 II. 
 
 Alas ! for our transgressions have been multi- 
 plied, and therefore Thine anger is 
 upon us ; 
 
 Through grace we would confess them, in 
 sure hope of Thy forgiveness: 
 
 Our cities are foul with sin, evil goeth 
 shameless in our streets, 
 
 Our lanes have lost their innocence, our 
 fields are full of violence ; 
 
280 A National Dirge in 7 "rouble. 
 
 The strong oppress the weak, and the weak 
 defraud the strong, 
 
 And all alike forget their Maker and Pre- 
 server ; 
 
 Blasphemy shouteth in the mine, cruelty 
 smiteth on the highway, 
 
 Meanness cheateth at the workshop, tyranny 
 tormenteth in the factory : 
 
 Our rich have rioted in luxury, feasting 
 themselves without fear, 
 
 Our poor in bitterness and hate rebel against 
 their poverty ; 
 
 Our prophets have taught lies, our lawgivers 
 thrive upon corruption, 
 
 Our rulers have not ruled in righteous- 
 ness, nor the people been obedient in 
 godliness, 
 
A National Dirge in Trouble. 281 
 
 Rights are humbled to the dust, while 
 wrongs are throned upon high places, 
 
 Good hath perished from among us, and no 
 man layeth it to heart. 
 
 III. 
 
 Therefore the wrath of the Almighty is 
 
 hot against His people, 
 Therefore He blesseth our enemies, and goeth 
 
 not forth with our armies : 
 Therefore our flocks and herds have perished 
 
 in their pastures by ten thousands, 
 Therefore pestilence and famine have heaped 
 
 our thresholds with the dead ; 
 Our harvests were not gathered, the elements 
 
 fought against us ; 
 Disease and want and misery are dwellers in 
 
 our homes ; 
 
282 A National Dirge in Trouble. 
 
 Our light is turned to darkness, our name is 
 
 shamed among the nations, 
 The glory of Britannia is departed, the 
 
 honour of old England is brought 
 
 low. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Yet, — Holy Lord our God, arise ! pity and 
 
 forgive Thy people 
 Put not away Thy mercies, for we will put 
 
 aside our sins : 
 The hireling shall no longer be oppressed, 
 
 the right of the poor shall be avenged, 
 Thy Sabbaths shall be sanctified, Thy tithes 
 
 and offerings paid; 
 Thy temples shall be full of worshippers, 
 
 Thy ministers be honoured through 
 
 the land, 
 
A National Dirge in 7 'rouble. 283 
 
 Our prayers and our alms shall go up, ac- 
 ceptably through Jesus unto Thee ; 
 
 We will take no wicked thing in hand, our 
 hearts shall be set against all evil, 
 
 Sin shall not revel in our streets, nor drunk- 
 enness pollute our villages; 
 
 We will return and repent, the Lord our 
 God preventing us, 
 
 We will call Thee Our Father, and Thou 
 shalt be gracious to Thy children : 
 
 Yea, consider our adversity, withhold not 
 mercy from us ; 
 
 Art Thou not our Father ? Are we not 
 Thy children ? 
 
 Yea ; we will magnify Thy mercy, or ever 
 we have risen from our knees, — 
 
284 A National Dirge in Trouble. 
 
 Thou dost forgive and love us, Thou yet 
 
 wilt help and save us, — 
 The plague our iniquities deserved Thy 
 
 pitifulness will scatter, 
 The flaming sword of punishment shall yet 
 
 be sheathed in mercy : 
 Therefore unto Thee will we give thanks, 
 
 even in this time of trouble ; 
 With humiliation on our heads, yet will we 
 
 rejoice in our hearts : 
 Thou shalt go forth with our armies, Thy 
 
 blessing shall shine on our homes, 
 Thou wilt give increase to our flocks, and 
 
 fill our barns with harvest, 
 Thou shalt favour our England, the Zion 
 
 of these latter days, 
 And keep her chief among the nations, as 
 
 she ever was of old ; 
 
A National Dirge in Trouble. 285 
 
 For happy are the people, even in the midst 
 of sore distresses, 
 
 Who turn to the Lord their Maker, and 
 trust in Him for mercy and deliver- 
 ance! 
 
( 286 ) 
 
 A National Psalm of Victory, 
 
 Blessed be the God of our Israel, praised 
 
 be the Lord of our Zion, 
 Jehovah hath gone forth with our hosts, 
 
 and hath given to us victory in the 
 
 battle ! 
 He is our helper and defender, the rock of 
 
 our strength and our fortress, 
 He hath delivered us in trouble, and saved 
 
 us from the wrath of our enemies ; 
 By Him have we overcome the proud, by 
 
 Him have we escaped the terrible, 
 
A National Psalm of Victory. 287 
 
 He sent forth His arrows and scattered them, 
 He shot out His lightnings and de- 
 stroyed them; 
 
 He gave us the shield of His salvation, and 
 armed us with the spear of victory, 
 
 He girded us with valour for the fight, and 
 subdued the mighty under us ; 
 
 We will thank Him among the nations, 
 His name will we exalt among the 
 heathen, 
 
 Blessed be the God of our Israel, praised be 
 the Lord of our Zion ! 
 
 11. 
 
 Awake, awake, utter a song; for God is 
 
 our sword and buckler ; 
 There were thunders from the Lord out of 
 
 heaven, hailstones and coals of fire ; 
 
288 A National Psalm of Victory. 
 
 Then did the standard-bearers faint, then 
 were the horsehoofs broken, 
 
 There brake He the arrow and bow, and 
 burned their chariots in the fire : 
 
 He breathed on them and they were con- 
 sumed, He poured on them the blast of 
 His displeasure, 
 
 He brought down their honour to the dust, 
 and made them flee before us : 
 
 Who is God, except the Lord ? Who hath 
 any strength but our God ? 
 
 Great deliverance hath He given, and 
 shown great mercy to His people; 
 
 He alone is to be praised, and unto Him 
 will we pour thank-offerings, — 
 
 Blessed be the Rock of our strength, let the 
 God of our salvation be exalted ! 
 
A National Psalm of Victory, 289 
 
 in. 
 
 Praise ye the Lord for avenging our Israel, 
 
 all ye sons of war, 
 Praise Him, all ye sons of peace, who 
 
 offered yourselves so willingly ; 
 Praise Him, nobles of the land, with peace 
 
 restored to your possessions ; 
 Praise him, all ye people, with plenty 
 
 returning to your homes : 
 And thou, chief Mother in Israel, give 
 
 thanks among thy children, 
 That wars have ceased in all the earth, and 
 
 those who delight in them are scattered ; 
 Give thanks that the right is set on high, give 
 
 thanks that the wrong is trodden down, 
 That the teeth of the ungodly have been 
 
 broken, and the faces of the righteous 
 
 been made glad ; 
 
290 A National Psalm of Victory. 
 
 That England, the Israel of God, is head 
 and chief among the Gentiles, 
 
 Rejoice, O Queen and people, and magnify 
 the Rock of our salvation. 
 
 IV. 
 
 And ye, O many sorrowing widows, O 
 thousands of bereaved mothers, 
 
 O fathers mourning for your sons, O friends 
 bewailing friends, 
 
 In the midst of your earthly desolation, re- 
 member ye how honourably they died, 
 
 As duty bade and noble thoughts and 
 country's love and heaven : 
 
 Give thanks, for your dear ones are vic- 
 torious, victorious for either world, 
 
 With names of glory here, and crowns of 
 immortality hereafter ; 
 
A National Psalm of Victory. 291 
 
 Give thanks in hope and faith, in charity, 
 
 strength and patience, 
 And add your wailing minor to our swelling 
 
 psalm of praise ; 
 May all help freely for your needs, pour 
 
 balm upon your sorrows, 
 And make you rich in sympathies, and alms 
 
 and pensioned praise. 
 
 v. 
 
 And, O thou Zoar of the plains, O thou 
 
 Goshen in this Egypt, 
 Island city of refuge for the nations of the 
 
 Earth, 
 England, happy shore, hill where the true 
 
 light shineth, 
 Home of real religion, freedom, tolerance, 
 
 and truth, 
 
 u 2 
 

 292 A National Psalm of Victory. 
 
 Rejoice and shout the hymn of praise 
 
 through all the countries round, 
 From sea to sea, from land to land, where'er 
 
 thy flag is flying, 
 Let cannon roar thy thankfulness, and bells 
 
 clang out thy joy, 
 And prayer and praise and alms go up, as 
 
 incense to High Heaven ; 
 For God hath blest us every way, at home, 
 
 by sea, by land, 
 And we will thank Him evermore, in 
 
 prayers and alms and praises. 
 
( 2 93 ) 
 
 The Seven Sayings. 
 
 Seven tones in music, seven shades in light, 
 Seven deadly sins, and seven cardinal 
 
 virtues, 
 Seven angels, seven trumpets, seven seals 
 
 and vials, 
 Seven thunders, seven plagues, seven spirits 
 
 of God, 
 Seven stars and seven churches, seven days 
 
 and nights, 
 
 And seven thousand years for earth, and 
 
 man with seven ages, 
 And seven sages of old Greece, with seven 
 
 famous proverbs, 
 
294 The Seven Sayings. 
 
 And seven words of mercy dropped by 
 
 Christ upon His cross. 
 Keen is the worldly wisdom in those 
 
 maxims of the sages, 
 And deep the spiritual love in Jesu's seven 
 
 sayings ; 
 Awhile then, friend, aside with me, to step 
 
 within the Porch, 
 And after, linger near that Cross for comfort 
 
 and for counsel. 
 
 First, with Athenian Solon, " Know thy- 
 self," O man ! 
 
 A humbling lesson and a strange, an thou 
 learn it truly ; 
 
 Pass by the secrets of creation, till thou hast 
 mastered this, 
 
The Seven Sayings. 295 
 
 And heed thy good and evil, thy powers 
 
 and thy duties : 
 Next, with the Spartan Chilo, — whose full 
 
 heart burst for joy 
 When his good son had triumphed in the 
 
 great Olympian games, — 
 " Look to the end of life," an end, worth 
 
 all its midway running, 
 So thou be crowned like that good son, a 
 
 conqueror in the race : 
 Watch well with Lesbian Pittacus, who 
 
 flung his net so shrewdly, 
 To " Seize occasion " ere it pass, and so thy 
 
 chance be gone; 
 Occasion for thy tongue to speak, as for thy 
 
 hand to strike, 
 Occasion to thy neighbours' help, and in 
 
 thine own behalf; 
 
296 The Seven Sayings. 
 
 Let frank and honest Bias tell out bluntly 
 
 sad experience, 
 "The most of men are evil," — none are 
 
 righteous — no, not one ; 
 AmbracianPeriandersayeth, "Industry is all," 
 That diligence must win each prize, and 
 
 conquer every foe ; 
 The graceful Cleobulus prayed well for 
 
 moderation, 
 Nothing too much, " The mean is best," the 
 
 happy golden mean ; 
 And cautious Thales filled the sum, with 
 
 " Haste if thou wouldst fail ;" 
 For well he knew that evil haste could never 
 
 make good speed : 
 So, this was the best flowering of the 
 
 wisdom of the wise, 
 They served their generation well, those 
 
 seven Grecian sages. 
 
The Seven Sayings. 297 
 
 Now, let us stand on Calvary beside that 
 
 sorrowing Mother, 
 And listen to these nobler seven utterances 
 
 of Jesus. 
 It was the sixth hour, yet blackness hung 
 
 over all the land, 
 Nature put on mourning for her King, and 
 
 the eye of day was darkened ; 
 And there upon that bitter Cross the 
 
 Sacrifice is nailed, 
 Heavily hanging in weakness, racked and 
 
 torn and bleeding; 
 For three long hours hath He hung, agonized 
 
 in soul and body, 
 That blessed Christ, embracing all the world 
 
 with out-stretched arms, 
 
298 The Seven Sayings. 
 
 Lifted between earth and heaven, as if out- 
 cast from them both, 
 
 But drawing all men unto him, in love and 
 adoration. 
 
 There, without one moan, one murmur, 
 grandly patient, 
 
 The Lamb endured the uttermost wrath 
 of God against all sin, 
 
 And ever as the weary hours dragged on in 
 ceaseless torture, 
 
 At seven throes of pain He dropped His 
 seven precious sayings. 
 
 First, when they reared Him on the nails, 
 and racked Him in the raising, 
 
 How did He greet their cruelty, how re- 
 quite His murderers ? 
 
The Seven Sayings. 299 
 
 His thought was infinite compassion, to put 
 away the greatness of their sin, 
 
 " Father, forgive them, Our Father ! for 
 they know not what they do." 
 
 Lo, what a triumph over self, what a con- 
 quering of agony and vengeance, 
 
 How worthy of the suffering Man in whom 
 the Godhead dwelt ! 
 
 Ay, and that prayer was answered, — The 
 Father did forgive ; 
 
 Those who nailed Him to the cross were 
 martyred for the Christ ; 
 
 So for all time He teacheth us, to forgive as 
 we hope to be forgiven, 
 
 Evermore He preacheth intercession, even 
 for the cruellest of foes. 
 
300 The Seven Sayings, 
 
 Beside Him hung on either hand that pair 
 
 of common thieves, 
 For ever famous as His comrades in that 
 
 darkest hour. 
 And as the one contendeth — Save thyself 
 
 and us, 
 And as the other upbraideth, — Dost not 
 
 thou fear God ? 
 Hearken to the gracious word in answer to 
 
 that prayer, 
 Remember me, O Lord, when Thou comest 
 
 in Thy Kingdom, — 
 "To-day shalt thou be with me in the 
 
 paradise of God P 
 For in faith He asserted even then, in the 
 
 lowest pit of all those depths, 
 His right to redeem and to reward, as the 
 
 Judge while the Victim of Mankind. 
 
The Seven Sayings. 301 
 
 The next " Ah why hast Thou forsaken 
 
 me, why hast Thou forsaken me, my 
 
 God?" 
 Our type for prayer in sorrow, when God 
 
 seemeth so far off. 
 Yet, hath He forsaken His Anointed ? Is 
 
 He not with Him in trouble, 
 Though dwelling in the darkness, and with 
 
 clouds around His throne ? 
 The Sacrifice was heaped with sin, and 
 
 judgment crushed its victim, 
 Therefore in momentary gloom God's eye 
 
 was turned away : 
 But the great Antitype of David followed 
 
 on that psalm, 
 And ended, ere its close, with praise for a 
 
 ransomed universe. 
 
302 The Seven Sayings. 
 
 And now, O weeping mother, O sorrowing 
 
 dear disciple, 
 Ye twain whom Jesus loved, and who loved 
 
 Him to the end, 
 " Behold thy mother, O son, O son behold 
 
 thy mother," — 
 The richest of bequests to both, that dying 
 
 Friend could leave. 
 In deep considerate carefulness and self-for- 
 getting grace 
 He taught us kindly to provide for those 
 
 we leave behind. 
 This world is bleak for them, though stars 
 
 be opening bright for us ; 
 Let no man's pious hope elsewhere ignore 
 
 their state on earth : 
 
The Seven Sayings. 303 
 
 Here is this fourth word's lesson, remember 
 
 thine own kindred, 
 And in the very throes of death, be generous 
 
 and be just. 
 
 Then, did He gasp, " I thirst:" He willed 
 
 fulfilment of the Scripture, 
 Humbled down to human wants, parched 
 
 in the dust of death : 
 As with the woman of Samaria, when he 
 
 fainted in the tropical mid-day, 
 Here His tongue was cleaving, dry to the 
 
 roof of His mouth, — 
 Therefore gasped He in His agony, — and 
 
 Heaven heard The Maker 
 Asking for a drop of water, sent to cool his 
 
 tongue ! 
 
304 The Seven Sayings. 
 
 And the tender mercies of the cruel have 
 
 their potion ready, 
 Wine and myrrh to deaden pain, and so 
 
 prolong panged life ; 
 But He will not drink an anodyne ; and so, 
 
 I thirst, I thirst, 
 Went up as a holy aspiration, conquering 
 
 the weakness of the flesh : 
 I thirst to do Thy will ; I thirst to win for 
 
 them salvation ; 
 I thirst, — my soul is athirst to save the 
 
 world for God ! 
 
 Next, as a Son with His own Father, com- 
 mendeth He His human spirit 
 
 Manfully and faithfully to God, — yea, 
 " into Thine own hands." 
 
The Seven Sayings. 305 
 
 Lo, what a pattern unto us, going down 
 into that dark valley — 
 
 Lo, what encouragement and comfort, in 
 commending our own souls thither- 
 ward : 
 
 For He trusted His God and our God, His 
 Father and our Father, 
 
 And by His great example we will bravely 
 live or die. 
 
 Now lastly, note of triumph, like a blast 
 
 upon the trumpet, 
 Exultingly with loud last voice, proclaimed 
 
 He " It is finished ! " 
 O word of deepest comfort to the doubting 
 
 fearing soul, 
 O talisman of power to still the storm of 
 
 conscience ! 
 
 x 
 
306 The Seven Sayings. 
 
 The happy angels on their harps rejoiced in 
 
 It is finished, 
 And evil ones heard It is finished, echoed 
 
 on their thunders : 
 It is finished ; Justice hath been satisfied in 
 
 full; 
 It is finished ; Heaven is free, and open to 
 
 the lost ; 
 It is finished ; Death is dead, and Sin clean 
 
 washed away, 
 The watchword of salvation was that 
 
 seventh It is finished. 
 
3°7 
 
 Final. 
 
 — ♦ — 
 
 Who can hope for any ends, in this life- 
 cycle of beginnings ? 
 
 There is no end to mind or thoughts, or 
 making many books. 
 
 Where is an end to arts, or sciences, or 
 mysteries of nature, 
 
 And how should immortal spirits accom- 
 plish full development in time ? 
 
 None can work perfection to the uttermost 
 of his thought, 
 
 The painter, sculptor, author, have no truly 
 
 finishing touches: 
 
 X 2 
 
308 Final. 
 
 Nature is perfect but not Art ; in time we 
 
 only can begin ; 
 Eternity must deal with ends, and close up 
 
 all hereafter : 
 Yea, through the ages everlasting, we all 
 
 shall live and grow, 
 For good or ill, for joy or woe, for endless 
 
 shame or glory. 
 
 Again, I have written at my best, according 
 
 to the mercies given me ; 
 And speak of deeper themes than some I 
 
 touched in earlier days. 
 Hath thy dog a spirit? hath my soul its 
 
 angel ? 
 Is this world so very old? are all creeds 
 
 mere outworks ? 
 
Final. 309 
 
 Is everything here but a beginning, whose 
 end must rise again ? 
 
 Is each circumstance a consequence, abso- 
 lutely everywhere at all times ? 
 
 Can some spirits come again, and haunt 
 their earthly homes ? 
 
 Are the stars those many mansions for the 
 saints of God ? 
 
 Is morality the end, and even the Gospel 
 but a mean ? 
 
 Shall not purity of heart be after all a neces- 
 sary heaven ? 
 
 Are all facts so probable, didst thou know 
 their causes, 
 
 That one might haply prophesy the future 
 from the past ? 
 
 These be among my many speculations, 
 these and scores beyond, 
 
3 1 o Final. 
 
 And some shall meet with scorn, and some 
 with disputation. . 
 
 And many themes beside must challenge 
 
 special anger ; 
 Why turn and rend the jackals, like a 
 
 leopard brought to bay ? 
 Why hint that human life, its double state 
 
 or single, 
 Is either way a failure, and not blessedness 
 
 at all ? 
 How durst he speak so boldly, and so 
 
 savagely tell truths ? 
 We hate a prosing Mentor in the gardens 
 
 of Calypso : 
 Wherefore should he steal old texts from 
 
 Deborah and Barak, 
 
Final. 311 
 
 Presumptuously to lead the hymn of Britain 
 
 in her victories ? 
 Why for times of trouble pilfer, chiefly out 
 
 of David, 
 Bald phrases fit for Hebrew timbrels, not 
 
 for English choirs ? """"* 
 
 And so throughout, O foes, — why this, and 
 
 why not that ? 
 There is no end of questions, — which shall 
 
 therefore have no answers. 
 
 And yet for you, O friends, with kinder 
 
 eyes than others, 
 Whose generous love I cherish as a happier 
 
 prize than fame, 
 My answers — are they needed ? — may be 
 
 read on these past pages, 
 
312 Final. 
 
 With all their reasons writ out plain, in 
 
 honest Roman hand ; 
 Still, not all writ, but hinted ; less is uttered 
 
 than was thought ; 
 My spirit going forth with yours in charity 
 
 and frankness : 
 And courage hath its honour ; and not to 
 
 fear for fame, — 
 But, following conscience with high heart, 
 
 serenely to forget it : 
 And so, farewell, — in brief, farewell; we 
 
 part, but not for ever ; 
 If not again to meet on earth, in some bright 
 
 star hereafter. 
 
 Yea, for that the End is near at hand ; the 
 issue of that great experiment 
 
Final. 313 
 
 Wherein, to the teaching of the universe, 
 
 God hath tested man • 
 For the first time giving to the creature full 
 
 freedom of the will, 
 That he might tempt, six thousand years, the 
 
 patience of his Maker. 
 Now all the prophecies are closed ; Now 
 
 is the cycle finished ; 
 The fields are white with harvest, and the 
 
 world well-ripe for judgment ; 
 Verily, the Christ is nigh to come; His 
 
 chariot is made ready, 
 The sign of the Son of Man in heaven shall 
 
 soon be seen, — His Cross upon the 
 
 skies ; 
 And then all enigmas shall be solved, true 
 
 justice must be rendered, 
 
314 Final. 
 
 The churches and the kingdoms and the 
 
 antichrists, the saints, the world, the 
 
 martyrs, 
 All shall be shown to have achieved the 
 
 ends of their existence, 
 And Providence be proved throughout the 
 
 sister-twin of Grace. 
 
 END. 
 
 J. Swift, Regent Press, 55, King Street, W. 
 
By MARTIN F. TUPPER, D.C.L., F.R.S. 
 
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