May be by man effaced; man can control To pain, to death, the bent of his own days. Know thou the worst! So much, not more, he _can_.” TO A REPUBLICAN FRIEND, 1848. God knows it, I am with you. If to prize Those virtues, prized and practised by too few, But prized, but loved, but eminent in you, Man’s fundamental life; if to despise The barren optimistic sophistries Of comfortable moles, whom what they do Teaches the limit of the just and true (And for such doing they require not eyes); If sadness at the long heart-wasting show Wherein earth’s great ones are disquieted; If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow The armies of the homeless and unfed,-- If these are yours, if this is what you are, Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share. CONTINUED. Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem Rather to patience prompted, than that proud Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud,-- France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme; Seeing this vale, this earth, whereon we dream, Is on all sides o’ershadowed by the high Uno’erleaped mountains of necessity, Sparing us narrower margin than we deem. Nor will that day dawn at a human nod, When, bursting through the network superposed By selfish occupation,--plot and plan, Lust, avarice, envy,--liberated man, All difference with his fellow-mortal closed, Shall be left standing face to face with God. RELIGIOUS ISOLATION. TO THE SAME FRIEND. Children (as such forgive them) have I known, Ever in their own eager pastime bent To make the incurious bystander, intent On his own swarming thoughts, an interest own,-- Too fearful or too fond to play alone. Do thou, whom light in thine own inmost soul (Not less thy boast) illuminates, control Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown. What though the holy secret, which moulds thee, Moulds not the solid earth? though never winds Have whispered it to the complaining sea, Nature’s great law, and law of all men’s minds? To its own impulse every creature stirs: Live by thy light, and earth will live by hers! MYCERINUS.[2] “Not by the justice that my father spurned, Not for the thousands whom my father slew, Altars unfed and temples overturned, Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks are due; Fell this dread voice from lips that cannot lie, Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny. “I will unfold my sentence and my crime. My crime,--that, rapt in reverential awe, I sate obedient, in the fiery prime Of youth, self-governed, at the feet of Law; Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings, By contemplation of diviner things.