4. I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander and steal; I know it, and smile a hard-set smile, like a stoic, or like A wiser epicurean, and let the world have its way: For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal; The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd by the shrike, And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey. 5. We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower; Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game That pushes us off from the board, and others ever succeed? Ah yet, we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour; We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother's shame; However we brave it out, we men are a little breed. 6. A monstrous eft was of old the Lord and Master of Earth, For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran, And he felt himself in his force to be Nature's crowning race. As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth, So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man: He now is first, but is he the last? is he not too base? 7. The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain, An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor; The passionate heart of the poet is whirl'd into folly and vice. I would not marvel at either, but keep a temperate brain; For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it, were more Than to walk all day like the sultan of old in a garden of spice. 8. For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil. Who knows the ways of the world, how God will bring them about? Our planet is one, the suns are many, the world is wide. Shall I weep if a Poland fall? shall I shriek if a Hungary fail? Or an infant civilisation be ruled with rod or with knout? I have not made the world, and He that made it will guide. 9. Be mine a philosopher's life in the quiet woodland ways, Where if I cannot be gay let a passionless peace be my lot, Far-off from the clamour of liars belied in the hubbub of lies; From the long-neck'd geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise Because their natures are little, and, whether he heed it or not, Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies. 10. And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love, The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill. Ah Maud, you milkwhite fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife. Your mother is mute in her grave as her image in marble above; Your father is ever in London, you wander about at your will; You have but fed on the roses, and lain in the lilies of life. V.