Thus we will ride beside a friend alone, And show to him our money without fear, Because we know the motives--love for us, Honor, and horror of disgraceful crime-- Are stronger with him than cupidity. But with a stranger we would feel unsafe; Nor would we trust our friend, were we alone Upon an island, wrecked, and without food, And saw his eye with hunger glare, and heard The famished motive whispering to him, “Kill!” If he were free, would we feel slightest fear? For all his soul would shudder from the deed, And never motive could impel such crime. Upon this principal all law is made; For were man free he could not be controlled, And all compliance would be his caprice. But since he is the tyrant-motive’s slave, The law to govern motive only seeks And builds its sanction on the base of pain, As motive strongest in the human heart. It only falls below perfection’s height, Because there are exceptions to the rule; When hate and passion, lust and greed of gold, Prove stronger than the fear of distant pain. And could the law know fully every heart, And vary sanction, there would be no crime. But law itself, and the obeying world, Are proofs against the grosser form of Fate: That all is preordained, nor can be changed. All human life is vacillating life; We make our plans each day, then alter them. We form resolves one hour that break the next, And no one dares assert that he will act, Upon the morrow, in a certain way; But cries, it all depends on circumstance. And this is strange, that while we cannot change Our lives one tittle by our own free will, We help, each day, to change our neighbor’s course; And he assists the motives changing ours. For all relations to our fellow-men, Are powers that form our lives, in spite of us. But we may change our motives, often do, By changing place, or circumstance of life, By hearing, reading, or reflective thought; Yet are these very things from motives done, And motives mocking all our vain commands. One motive made the object of an act, Another rises subject of the act; And to the final motive we can never reach.