Still blind, he called them to the use of sight, Remained there to retard its exercise With clogging incrustations. Close to heaven, They see, for mysteries, through the open doors, Vague puffs of smoke from pots of earthenware; And fain would enter, when their time shall come, With quite a different body than St. Paul Has promised,—husk and chaff, the whole barley-corn, Or where’s the resurrection?’ ‘Thus it is,’ I sighed. And he resumed with mournful face. ‘Beginning so, and filling up with clay The wards of this great key, the natural world, And fumbling vainly therefore at the lock Of the spiritual,—we feel ourselves shut in With all the wild-beast roar of struggling life, The terrors and compunctions of our souls, As saints with lions,—we who are not saints, And have no heavenly lordship in our stare To awe them backward! Ay, we are forced, so pent, To judge the whole too partially, ... confound Conclusions. Is there any common phrase Significant, when the adverb’s heard alone, The verb being absent, and the pronoun out? But we, distracted in the roar of life, Still insolently at God’s adverb snatch, And bruit against Him that his thought is void, His meaning hopeless;—cry, that everywhere The government is slipping from his hand, Unless some other Christ ... say Romney Leigh ... Come up, and toil and moil, and change the world, For which the First has proved inadequate, However we talk bigly of His work And piously of His person. We blaspheme At last, to finish that doxology, Despairing on the earth for which He died.’ ‘So now,’ I asked, ‘you have more hope of men?’ ‘I hope,’ he answered: ‘I am come to think That God will have his work done, as you said, And that we need not be disturbed too much For Romney Leigh or others having failed With this or that quack nostrum,—recipes For keeping summits by annulling depths, For learning wrestling with long lounging sleeves, And perfect heroism without a scratch. We fail,—what, then? Aurora, if I smiled To see you, in your lovely morning-pride, Try on the poet’s wreath which suits the noon,— (Sweet cousin, walls must get the weather-stain Before they grow the ivy!) certainly I stood myself there worthier of contempt, Self-rated, in disastrous arrogance, As competent to sorrow for mankind And even their odds. A man may well despair, Who counts himself so needful to success. I failed. I throw the remedy back on God, And sit down here beside you, in good hope.’