Yet once more, saith the fool, yet once, and is it not a little one? Spare me this folly yet an hour, for what is one among so many? And he blindeth his conscience with lies, and stupifieth his heart with doubts;-- Whom shall I harm in this matter? and a little ill breedeth much good; My thoughts, are they not mine own? and they leave no mark behind them; And if God so pardoneth crime, how should these petty sins affect Him?-- So he transgresseth yet again, and falleth by little and little, Till the ground crumble beneath him, and he sinketh in the gulf despairing. For there is nothing in the earth so small that it may not produce great things, And no swerving from a right line, that may not lead eternally astray. A landmark tree was once a seed; and the dust in the balance maketh a difference; And the cairn is heaped high by each one flinging a pebble: The dangerous bar in the harbour's mouth is only grains of sand; And the shoal that hath wrecked a navy is the work of a colony of worms: Yea, and a despicable gnat may madden the mighty elephant; And the living rock is worn by the diligent flow of the brook. Little art thou, O man, and in trifles thou contendest with thine equals, For atoms must crowd upon atoms, ere crime groweth to be a giant. What, is thy servant a dog?--not yet wilt thou grasp the dagger, Not yet wilt thou laugh with the scoffers, not yet betray the innocent; But, if thou nourish in thy heart the reveries of injury or passion, And travel in mental heat the mazy labyrinths of guilt, And then conceive it possible, and then reflect on it as done, And use, by little and little, thyself to regard thyself a villain, Not long will crime be absent from the voice that doth invoke him to thy heart, And bitterly wilt thou grieve, that the buds have ripened into poison.