The argument of music, I heard thy plea, O friend; Who might debate with thee? Heart was a little child, cried for the moon, Brain was a man, said, nay. Science is big, and Time is a-throb, Hold thy heart, Heart. Wan Silence lying lip on ground, An outcast Angel from the Heaven of sound, Prone and desolate By the shut Gate. A poet is a perpetual Adam: events pass before him, like the animals in the creation, and he names them. "The Improvement of the Ground is the most Natural Obtaining of Riches: For it is our Great Mother's Blessing, the Earth: But it is slow." [_Poems on Agriculture_] How could I injure thee, Thou art All and I am nought, What harm, what harm could e'er be wrought On thee by me? Lo, he that hath helped me to do right (save by mere information upon which I act or not, as I please) he hath not done me a favor: he hath covertly hurt me: he hath insidiously deflowered the virginity of my will; I am thenceforth not a pure Me: I am partly another. Each union of self and self is, once for all, incest and adultery and every other crime. Let me alone. God made me so, a man, individual, unit, whole, fully-appointed in myself. Again I cry to thee, O friend, let me alone. The church having become fashionable is now grown crowded, and the Age will have to get up from its pew and go outside soon, if only for a little fresh air. You wish me to argue whether Paul had a revelation: I do not care greatly; I have had none, but roses, trees, music, and a running stream, and Sirius. [_Credo, and Other Poems_] The sleep of each night is a confession of God. By whose will is it that my heart beat, my lung rose and fell, my blood went with freight and returned empty these eight hours? Not mine, not mine. Like to the grasshopper in the tall grass, That sings to the mate he cannot see yet while, I sing to thee, dear World; For thou art my Mate, and peradventure thou wilt come; I wish to see thee. Like to the lover under the window of his Love, I serenade thee, dear World; For thou art asleep and thou art my Love, And perhaps thou wilt awake and show me thine eyes And the beauty of thy face out of the window of thy house of Time. So large, so blue is Harry's eye, I think to that blue Heaven the souls do go Of honest violets when they die. Says Epictetus, at the close of his Chapter on Præcognitions: "I must speak in this way; excuse me, as you would excuse lovers: I am not my own master: I am mad." [_Credo, and Other Poems_]