?68 CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR

HO is the happy Warrior?

WHO

Who is he

That every man in arms should wish to be?

It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:
Whose high endeavors are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright:
Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,
But makes his moral being his prime care;
Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;

In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest dower;
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives;
By objects, which might force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;
Is placable-because occasions rise.

So often that demand such sacrifice;

More skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also more alive to tenderness.
'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends

Upon that law as on the best of friends;

Whence, in a state where men are tempted still
To evil for a guard against worse ill,

And what in quality or act is best

Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,
He labors good on good to fix, and owes
To virtue every triumph that he knows;
Who, if he rise to station of command,
Rises by open means; and there will stand
On honorable terms, or else retire,
And in himself possess his own desire;
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;

And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth or honors, or for worldly state;

Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall,
Like showers of manna, if they come at all:
Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,

A constant influence, a peculiar grace;

But who, if he be called upon to face

Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind,

Is happy as a lover; and attired

With sudden brightness, like a man inspired;
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;
Or if an unexpected call succeed,

Come when it will, is equal to the need:
He who, though thus endued as with a sense
And faculty for storm and turbulence,

Is yet a soul whose master-bias leans
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;
Sweet images! which, wheresoe'er he be,
Are at his heart; and such fidelity

It is his darling passion to approve;

More brave for this that he hath much to love:

'Tis, finally, the man, who, lifted high,

Conspicuous object in a nation's eye,
Or left unthought-of in obscurity,-
Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not,
Plays, in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won:
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpassed:
Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must fall to sleep without his fame,
And leave a dead unprofitable name,

Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;

And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
This is the happy Warrior; this is he

Whom every man in arms should wish to be.

William Wordsworth

269 THE WISE MAN'S PRIVILEGE1

SWEET

WEET, when the great sea's water is stirred to his depths by the storm-winds,

Standing ashore to descry one afar-off mightily struggling:
Not that a neighbor's sorrow to you yields dulcet enjoyment;
But that the sight hath a sweetness, of ills ourselves are exempt
from.

Sweet 'tis to behold, on a broad plain mustering, war-hosts

1 From the second book of the De Rerum Natura. The translation is by Charles Stuart Calverley, and is reprinted with the permission of Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.

Arm them for some great battle, one's self unscathed by the danger:

Yet still happier this:-To possess, impregnably guarded, Those calm heights of the sages, which have for an origin Wisdom;

Thence to survey our fellows, observe them this way and that

way

Wander amidst Life's paths, poor stragglers seeking a highway: Watch mind battle with mind, and escutcheon rival escutcheon; Gaze on that untold strife, which is waged 'neath the sun and the starlight,

Up as they toil on the surface whereon rest Riches and Empire.

Lucretius

270

THE RIDDLE OF THE WORLD1

NOW then thyself, presume not God to scan,

K The proper study of mankind is man.

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;

1 From the Essay on Man. With this passage may be compared certain "Thoughts" of Pascal. See Prose, pp. 307 ff., passim.

71

Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Alexander Pope

THE TWO DESERTS1

NOT

To learn that we may spy

Five thousand firmaments beyond our own.

The best that's known

Of the heavenly bodies does them credit small.

Viewed close, the Moon's fair ball

Is of ill objects worst,

A corpse in Night's highway, naked, fire-scarred, accurst;

And now they tell

That the Sun is plainly seen to boil and burst

Too horribly for Hell.

So, judging from these two,

As we must do,

The Universe, outside our living Earth,

Was all conceived in the Creator's mirth,

Forecasting at the time Man's spirit deep,

To make dirt cheap.

Put by the Telescope!

Better without it man may see,

Stretched awful in the hushed midnight,

The ghost of his eternity.

Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eye

The things which near us lie,

Till Science rapturously hails,
In the minutest water-drop,

1 Reprinted with the permission of Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.