If after all we should mistake, And so renounce life for the sake Of death and nothing else? You hear Our friends we jeered at, send the jeer Back to ourselves with good effect— “There were my beetles to collect! “My box—a trifle, I confess, “But here I hold it, ne’ertheless!” Poor idiots, (let us pluck up heart And answer) we, the better part Have chosen, though ’twere only hope,— Nor envy moles like you that grope Amid your veritable muck, More than the grasshoppers would truck, For yours, their passionate life away, That spends itself in leaps all day To reach the sun, you want the eyes To see, as they the wings to rise And match the noble hearts of them! Thus the contemner we contemn,— And, when doubt strikes us, thus we ward Its stroke off, caught upon our guard, —Not struck enough to overturn Our faith, but shake it—make us learn What I began with, and, I wis, End, having proved,—how hard it is To be a Christian! His friend now reproaches him with the thanklessness of the task he is undertaking, in trying to so little purpose to disturb the peace of a man who has no such high-flown views of duty; whereupon he relates to him a wonderful experience he had on Easter-morn three years before:— XIV. I commence By trying to inform you, whence It comes that every Easter-night As now, I sit up, watch, till light, Upon those chimney-stacks and roofs, Give, through my window-pane, grey proofs That Easter-day is breaking slow. On such a night three years ago, It chanced that I had cause to cross The common, where the chapel was, Our friend spoke of, the other day— You’ve not forgotten, I dare say. I fell to musing of the time So close, the blessed matin-prime All hearts leap up at, in some guise— One could not well do otherwise. Insensibly my thoughts were bent Toward the main point; I overwent Much the same ground of reasoning As you and I just now. One thing Remained, however—one that tasked My soul to answer; and I asked, Fairly and frankly, what might be That History, that Faith, to me —Me there—not me in some domain Built up and peopled by my brain, Weighing its merits as one weighs Mere theories for blame or praise, —The kingcraft of the Lucumons, Or Fourier’s scheme, its pros and cons,— But my faith there, or none at all. “How were my case, now, did I fall “Dead here, this minute—should I lie “Faithful or faithless?” To this solemn question a friendly answer seems to come from Common Sense, assuring him that all would be right; for, though his ship might not sail very grandly into the eternal haven, it was enough if, in whatever state of wreck, it arrived at all; which leads him to utter the deepest wish and expectation of his heart:—