_Sp._ Don’t be the least afraid; There’s not the slightest reason for alarm; I only meant by a perhaps rough shake To rouse you from a dreamy, unhealthy sleep. Up, then—up, and be going: the large world, The thronged life waits us. Come, my pretty boy, You have been making mows to the blank sky Quite long enough for good. We’ll put you up Into the higher form. ’Tis time you learn The Second Reverence, for things around. Up, then, and go amongst them; don’t be timid; Look at them quietly a bit: by-and-by Respect will come, and healthy appetite. So let us go. How now! not yet awake? Oh, you will sleep yet, will you! Oh, you shirk, You try and slink away! You cannot, eh? Nay now, what folly’s this? Why will you fool yourself? Why will you walk about thus with your eyes shut? Treating for facts the self-made hues that flash On tight-pressed pupils, which you know are not facts. To use the undistorted light of the sun Is not a crime; to look straight out upon The big plain things that stare one in the face Does not contaminate; to see pollutes not What one must feel if one won’t see, what _is_, And will be too, howe’er we blink, and must One way or other make itself observed. Free walking’s better than being led about; and What will the blind man do, I wonder, if Some one should cut the string of his dog? Just think! What could you do, if I should go away? Oh, you have paths of your own before you, have you? What shall it take to? literature, no doubt? Novels, reviews? or poems! if you please! The strong fresh gale of life will feel, no doubt, The influx of your mouthful of soft air. Well, make the most of that small stock of knowledge You’ve condescended to receive from me; That’s your best chance. Oh, you despise that! Oh. Prate then of passions you have known in dreams, Of huge experience gathered by the eye; Be large of aspiration, pure in hope, Sweet in fond longings, but in all things vague; Breathe out your dreamy scepticism, relieved By snatches of old songs. People will like that, doubtless. Or will you write about philosophy? For a waste far-off _maybe_ overlooking The fruitful _is_ close by, live in metaphysic, With transcendental logic fill your stomach, Schematise joy, effigiate meat and drink; Or, let me see, a mighty work, a volume, The Complemental of the inferior Kant, The Critic of Pure Practice, based upon The Antinomies of the Moral Sense: for, look you, We cannot act without assuming _x_, And at the same time _y_, its contradictory; Ergo, to act. People will buy that, doubtless. Or you’ll perhaps teach youth (I do not question Some downward turn you may find, some evasion Of the broad highway’s glaring white ascent); Teach youth, in a small way, that is, always, So as to have much time left you for yourself;