Can make good things from ill things, best from worst, As men plant tulips upon dunghills when They wish them finest?’ ‘True. A death-heat is The same as life-heat, to be accurate; And in all nature is no death at all, As men account of death, as long as God Stands witnessing for life perpetually, By being just God. That’s abstract truth, I know, Philosophy, or sympathy with God: But I, I sympathise with man, not God, I think I was a man for chiefly this; And when I stand beside a dying bed, It’s death to me. Observe,—it had not much Consoled the race of mastodons to know Before they went to fossil, that anon Their place should quicken with the elephant; They were not elephants but mastodons: And I, a man, as men are now, and not As men may be hereafter, feel with men In the agonising present.’ ‘Is it so,’ I said, ‘my cousin? is the world so bad, While I hear nothing of it through the trees? The world was always evil,—but so bad?’ ‘So bad, Aurora. Dear, my soul is grey With poring over the long sum of ill; So much for vice, so much for discontent, So much for the necessities of power, So much for the connivances of fear,— Coherent in statistical despairs With such a total of distracted life, ... To see it down in figures on a page, Plain, silent, clear ... as God sees through the earth The sense of all the graves!... that’s terrible For one who is not God, and cannot right The wrong he looks on. May I choose indeed But vow away my years, my means, my aims, Among the helpers, if there’s any help In such a social strait? The common blood That swings along my veins, is strong enough To draw me to this duty.’ Then I spoke. ‘I have not stood long on the strand of life, And these salt waters have had scarcely time To creep so high up as to wet my feet. I cannot judge these tides—I shall, perhaps. A woman’s always younger than a man At equal years, because she is disallowed Maturing by the outdoor sun and air, And kept in long-clothes past the age to walk. Ah well, I know you men judge otherwise! You think a woman ripens as a peach,—In the cheeks, chiefly. Pass it to me now; I’m young in age, and younger still, I think, As a woman. But a child may say amen To a bishop’s prayer and see the way it goes; And I, incapable to loose the knot Of social questions, can approve, applaud August compassion, christian thoughts that shoot Beyond the vulgar white of personal aims. Accept my reverence.’ There he glowed on me With all his face and eyes. ‘No other help?’ Said he—‘no more than so?’ ‘What help?’ I asked. ‘You’d scorn my help,—as Nature’s self, you say,