“To rest, to wait,” I said to this; “and if Such ends displaced were, would there not remain The work that forms our earthly heritage?” “And may not God,” rejoin’d he, “grant us more Than that which we inherit?” “He may grant His rest,” I said. “Yet rest, the Paradise Of work, is yet the Purgatory, too, Of indolence.” “The soul’s true Paradise Is nothing earn’d,” he said. “It is a gift. With Eden lost, insolvent made by sin, Work, as I view it, is a loan from Hope With which man pays the debt of Memory. But if I reckon right, a pauper still, He scarce can earn enough to pay them both. And so our rest, I take it, is a gift That crowns our strife, yet is not won by it; Which, as we live not conscious how ’tis earn’d, We live not conscious how it may be lost. Things out of consciousness are out of care. We rest not as in death that furthers naught; We rest as in a dream, in sleep,—a state Wherein God watches while the soul regales. We rest not from the healthful stir of work, But from the slavery proportioning Our pleasure to our pain—a law for serfs, But not for sons. Our rest is peaceful, hush’d, The very church of choice, as different From other joy as prayer may be from sport.” “And does not choice,” I ask’d, “feel often moved To spurn a lesser for a greater good? For greater good, too, may not Love on high Unseat some idol of our ignorance?”— L.