A frequent similar effect argueth a constant cause: Yet who hath counted the links that bind an omen to its issue? Who hath expounded the law that rendereth calamities gregarious, Pressing down with yet more woes the heavy-laden mourner? Who knoweth wherefore a monsoon should swell the sails of the prosperous, Blithely speeding on their course the children of good luck? Who hath companied a vision from the horn or ivory gate? Or met another's mind in his, and explained its presence? There is a secret somewhat in antipathies; and love is more than fancy; Yea, and a palpable notice warneth of an instant danger; For the soul hath its feelers, cobwebs floating on the wind, That catch events in their approach with sure and apt presentiment; So that some halo of attraction heraldeth a coming friend, Investing in his likeness the stranger that passed on before; And while the word is in thy mouth, behold thy word fulfilled, And he of whom we spake can answer for himself. O man, little hast thou learnt of truth in things most true, How therefore shall thy blindness wot of truth in things most false? Thou hast not yet perceived the causes of life or motion, How then canst thou define the subtle sympathies of mind? For the spirit, sharpest and strongest when disease hath rent the body, Hath welcomed kindred spirits in nightly visitations, Or learnt from restless ghosts dark secrets of the living, And helped slow justice to her prey by the dreadful teaching of a dream. Verily, there is nothing so true, that the damps of error have not warped it; Verily, there is nothing so false, that a sparkle of truth is not in it. For the enemy, the father of lies, the giant Upas of creation, Whose deadly shade hath blasted this once green garden of the Lord, Can but pervert the good, but may not create the evil; He destroyeth, but cannot build; for he is not antagonist deity: Mighty is his stolen power, yet is he a creature and a subject; Not a maker of abstract wrong, but a spoiler of concrete right: The fiend hath not a royal crown; he is but a prowling robber, Suffered, for some mysterious end, to haunt the King's highway; And the keen sword he beareth, once was a simple ploughshare; Yea, and his panoply of error is but a distortion of the truth: The sickle that once reaped righteousness, beaten from its useful curve, With axe, and spike, and bar, headeth the marauder's halbert. Seek not further, O man, to solve the dark riddle of sin; Suffice it, that thine own bad heart is to thee thine origin of evil. [Illustration] OF ANTICIPATION.