_Di._ To herd with people that one owns no care for; Friend it with strangers that one sees but once; To drain the heart with endless complaisance; To warp the unfinished diction on the lip, And twist one’s mouth to counterfeit; enforce Reluctant looks to falsehood; base-alloy The ingenuous golden frankness of the past; To calculate and plot; be rough and smooth, Forward and silent, deferential, cool, Not by one’s humour, which is the safe truth, But on consideration. _Sp._ That is, act On a dispassionate judgment of the fact; Look all the data fairly in the face, And rule your judgment simply by the case. _Di._ On vile consideration. At the best, With pallid hotbed courtesies to forestall The green and vernal spontaneity, And waste the priceless moments of the man In regulating manner. Whether these things Be right, I do not know: I only know ’tis To lose one’s youth too early. Oh, not yet— Not yet I make the sacrifice. _Sp._ _Du tout!_ To give up nature’s just what would not do. By all means keep your sweet ingenuous graces, And use them at the proper times and places. For work, for play, for business, talk and love, I own as wisdom truly from above, That scripture of the serpent and the dove; Nor’s aught so perfect for the world’s affairs As the old parable of wheat and tares; What we all love is good touched up with evil— Religion’s self must have a spice of devil. _Di._ Let it be enough, That in our needful mixture with the world, On each new morning with the rising sun, Our rising heart, fresh from the seas of sleep, Scarce o’er the level lifts his purer orb Ere lost and sullied with polluting smoke— A noon-day coppery disk. Lo, scarce come forth, Some vagrant miscreant meets, and with a look Transmutes me his, and for a whole sick day Lepers me. _Sp._ Just the one thing, I assure you, From which good company can’t but secure you. About the individual’s not so clear, But who can doubt the general atmosphere? _Di._ Ay truly, who at first? but in a while——