L

Do we indecd desire the dead
Should still be near us at our side 1
Is there no baseness we would hide?

No inner vileness that we dread Î

Shall he for whose applause I strove,
I had such reverence for his blame,
Sce with clear eye some hidden shame

And I be lessen'd in his love?

I wrong the grave with fears untrue:
Shall love be blamed for want of faith?

There must be wisdom with great Death:

The dead shall look me thro' and thro'.

Bc near us when we climb or fall :
Yc watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours,

To make allowance for us all.

‘Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,
The Spirit of true love replied;
“Thou canst not move me from thy side,

Nor human frailty do me wrong.

‘What keeps a spirit wholly true
To that ideal which he bears 1
What record 1 not the sinless years

That breathed beneath the Syrian blue :

“So fret not, like an idle girl,
That life is dash'd with flecks of sin.
Abide : thy wealth is gather'd in,

When Time hath sunder'd shell from pearl.'

LII.

How many a father have I seen,
A sober man, among his boys,
Whose youth was full of foolish noise,

Who wears his manhood hale and green :

And dare we to this fancy give,
That had the wild oat not been sown,
The soil, left barren, scarce had grown

The grain by which a man may live?

Oh, if we held the doctrine sound
For life outliving heats of youth,
Yet who would preach it as a truth

To those that eddy round and round !

Hold thou the good : define it well:
For fear divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be

Procuress to the Lords of Hell.

Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,

When God hath made the pile complete;

i

, I1; That not a worm is cloven in vain;

j.:

That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring.

The baby new to earth and sky,

What time his tender palm is prest

Against the cirele of the breast, Has never thought that»this is I:' » j

But as he grows he gathers much,

And learns the use of ' I,' and 'me,' , V'

And finds ' I am not what I see, 1 ij

And other than the things I touch.'

So rounds he to a separate mind

From whence clear memory may begin,
As thro' the frame that binds him in

His isolation grows dotltiod.

This use may lie in blood and breath,

Which else wore fruitless of their due,
Had man to learn himself anew

Beyond the second birth of Death.