Nature, again, is called in to teach us the secret of successful labour. Her forces are incessantly at work, and in that work they are entirely concentrated-- Bounded by themselves, and unregardful In what state God's other works may be, In their own tasks all their powers pouring, These attain the mighty life you see. But those who had the happiness of knowing Arnold in the flesh will feel that they never so clearly recognize his natural voice as when, by his criticism of life, he is inculcating the great law of Love. Even in the swirl of Revolution he clings to his fixed idea of love as duty. After discussing the rise and fall of dynasties, the crimes of diplomacy, the characteristic defects of rival nations, and all the stirring topics of the time, he abruptly concludes his criticism with an appeal to Love. "Be kind to the neighbours--'this is all we can.'" And as in his prose, so in his poetry. Love, even in arrest of formal justice, is the motive of _The Sick King in Bokhara_; love, that wipes out sin, of _Saint Brandan_-- That germ of kindness, in the womb Of mercy caught, did not expire; Outlives my guilt, outlives my doom, And friends me in the pit of fire. _The Neckan_ and _The Forsaken Merman_ tell the tale of contemptuous unkindness and its enduring poison. _A Picture at Newstead_ depicts the inexpiable evils wrought by violent wrong. _Poor Matthias_ tells in a parable the cruelty, not less real because unconscious, of imperfect sympathy-- Human longings, human fears, Miss our eyes and miss our ears. Little helping, wounding much, Dull of heart, and hard of touch, Brother man's despairing sign Who may trust us to divine? In _Geist's Grave_, the "loving heart," the "patient soul" of the dog-friend are made to "read their homily to man"; and the theme of the homily is still the same: the preciousness of the love which outlives the grave. But nowhere perhaps is his doctrine about the true divinity of love so exquisitely expressed as in _The Good Shepherd with the Kid_-- _He saves the sheep, the goats He doth not save._ So rang Tertullian's sentence . . . . . . . . But she sigh'd, The infant Church! Of love she felt the tide Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave. And then she smiled; and in the Catacombs, With eye suffused but heart inspired true, On those walls subterranean, where she hid Her head 'mid ignominy, death, and tombs, She the Good Shepherd's hasty image drew-- And on His shoulders not a lamb, a kid.