Sorrow and Joy, Beauty and Ugliness, Virtue and Vice, the Larger and the Less, All qualities, in fine, recorded here, Might be but modes of Time and this one sphere, Urgent on these, but not of force to bind Eternity, as Time--as Matter--Mind, If Mind, Eternity, should choose assert Their attributes within a Life: thus girt With circumstance, next change beholds them cinct Quite otherwise--with Good and Ill distinct, Joys, sorrows, tending to a like result-- Contrived to render easy, difficult, This or the other course of ... what new bond In place of flesh may stop their flight beyond Its new sphere, as that course does harm or good To its arrangements. Once this understood, As suddenly he felt himself alone, Quite out of Time and this world: all was known. What made the secret of his past despair? --Most imminent when he seemed most aware Of his own self-sufficiency; made mad By craving to expand the power he had, And not new power to be expanded?--just This made it; Soul on Matter being thrust, Joy comes when so much Soul is wreaked in Time On Matter,--let the Soul's attempt sublime Matter beyond the scheme and so prevent By more or less that deed's accomplishment, And Sorrow follows: Sorrow how avoid? Let the employer match the thing employed, Fit to the finite his infinity. And thus proceed forever, in degree [Sidenote: And with new conditions of success,] Changed but in kind the same, still limited To the appointed circumstance and dead To all beyond. A sphere is but a sphere; Small, Great, are merely terms we bandy here; Since to the spirit's absoluteness all Are like. Now, of the present sphere we call Life, are conditions; take but this among Many; the body was to be so long Youthful, no longer: but, since no control Tied to that body's purposes his soul, She chose to understand the body's trade More than the body's self--had fain conveyed Her boundless, to the body's bounded lot. Hence, the soul permanent, the body not,-- Scarcely its minute for enjoying here,-- The soul must needs instruct her weak compeer, Run o'er its capabilities and wring A joy thence, she held worth experiencing: Which, far from half discovered even,--lo, The minute gone, the body's power let go Apportioned to that joy's acquirement! Broke [Sidenote: Nor such as, in this, produce failure.] Morning o'er earth, he yearned for all it woke-- From the volcano's vapor-flag, winds hoist Black o'er the spread of sea,--down to the moist Dale's silken barley-spikes sullied with rain, Swayed earthwards, heavily to rise again-- The Small, a sphere as perfect as the Great To the soul's absoluteness. Meditate Too long on such a morning's cluster-chord And the whole music it was framed afford,--