IV. AGAINST PRIDE OF INTELLECT. PROUD Poet, think'st thou that the mass of men, Low as they seem beneath thy fancied height, Have yet no other sources of delight, No poesy, save that of thy poor pen? Little as distance makes them to thy ken, Haply that self-same distance, to their sight, Makes thee as little seem, and with more right, Who deem'st thyself not of them, and art then, And just for this, beneath them. Is yon Sun, Rising in glory, not far better, pray, Than thy description of it? the lark's lay Itself, than all thy verses on it? one Sweet flower more than all that thou canst say, And far beyond thy best comparison? V. A PRIVILEGE WORTH A HARD EARNING. It is the hardest task, the highest end, Beyond its own intrinsic magnitude, As mountains cast their shadows far, and brood At distance, and their own real bulk transcend. "T is hard to school the heart to be, in spite Of injury and envy, generous still; In seeing Good alone to take delight, And to forget, or to forgive, the Ill: And he who can do this, has still a right To think godlike of man, and must, and will. VI. A MUSIC YET UNKNOWN, REMAINING TO BE EARTH. HEARD ON THE music of the days which are to come To the grand concert of the spheres above. Which tells me that there must be yet some string Untouched, which God intended Man to hear. EGERTON WEBBE. TO A FOG.* HAIL to thee, Fog! most reverend, worthy Fog! Of true respectability. The rogue That calls thee names (a fellow I could flog) As deem thy solemn company no clog. To pounce on latent lamp-posts, or to clutch Pass afternoons; but while through thee I jog, That never mixed his grog Over a sea-coal fire a day like this, And bid thee scowl thy worst, and found it bliss, And to himself said, "Yes, Italia's skies are fair, her fields are sunny, This is the sonnet with the coda (or tail) alluded to in the Introductory Essay, page 60. The gap in the last line is left to be RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES, LORD HOUGHTON. I. HAPPINESS. A SPLENDOR amid glooms, a sunny thread Woven into a tapestry of cloud, A merry child a-playing with the shroud Trembling and weeping while her troth is vowed, For which our nature fits us. More and less From Earth it is enough to glimpse at Heaven. filled up by the readers, according to their respective notions of what is fittest for the nonce, or properest to be read aloud. The word "Yes," though an allowable rhyme to bliss and this, especially on a comic occasion, may also, if the reader pleases, be emphatically pronounced "yis." It is a license often taken by conversers in England; and I remember saying so to my friend, when I first read the verses. I think he said that he intended to imply the license in the rhyme; but at all events I am sure he agreed with me, and laughed heartily; and we read it so accordingly on the spot. |