Will she return? or did she die? I searched Newspaper columns through to find a trace Of some poor corpse discovered in the Thames, Weltering in filth or stranded on the shoals. ‘You called me Pleasure once, I now am Guilt.’ Is that her voice?— ‘Once Pleasure and now Guilt—and after this Guilt evermore.’ I hear her voice again. ‘Once Guilt, but now’—I know not what it says;— Some word in some strange language, that my ears Have never heard, yet seem to long to know. ‘Once Pleasure and now Guilt, and after this’— What does she say?—... POEMS ON LIFE AND DUTY. _DUTY._ Duty—that’s to say, complying With whate’er’s expected here; On your unknown cousin’s dying, Straight be ready with the tear; Upon etiquette relying, Unto usage nought denying, Lend your waist to be embraced, Blush not even, never fear; Claims of kith and kin connection, Claims of manners honour still, Ready money of affection Pay, whoever drew the bill. With the form conforming duly, Senseless what it meaneth truly, Go to church—the world require you, To balls—the world require you too, And marry—papa and mamma desire you, And your sisters and schoolfellows do. Duty—’tis to take on trust What things are good, and right, and just; And whether indeed they be or be not, Try not, test not, feel not, see not: ’Tis walk and dance, sit down and rise By leading, opening ne’er your eyes; Stunt sturdy limbs that Nature gave, And be drawn in a Bath chair along to the grave. ’Tis the stern and prompt suppressing As an obvious deadly sin, All the questing and the guessing Of the soul’s own soul within: ’Tis the coward acquiescence In a destiny’s behest, To a shade by terror made, Sacrificing, aye, the essence Of all that’s truest, noblest, best: ’Tis the blind non-recognition Or of goodness, truth, or beauty, Save by precept and submission; Moral blank, and moral void, Life at very birth destroyed. Atrophy, exinanition! Duty! Yea, by duty’s prime condition Pure nonentity of duty! _LIFE IS STRUGGLE._ To wear out heart, and nerves, and brain, And give oneself a world of pain; Be eager, angry, fierce, and hot, Imperious, supple—God knows what, For what’s all one to have or not; O false, unwise, absurd, and vain! For ’tis not joy, it is not gain, It is not in itself a bliss, Only it is precisely this That keeps us all alive. To say we truly feel the pain, And quite are sinking with the strain;— Entirely, simply, undeceived, Believe, and say we ne’er believed The object, e’en were it achieved, A thing we e’er had cared to keep; With heart and soul to hold it cheap, And then to go and try it again; O false, unwise, absurd, and vain! O, ’tis not joy, and ’tis not bliss, Only it is precisely this That keeps us still alive.