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+Project Gutenberg's The Angel in the Cloud, by Edwin W. (Wiley) Fuller

+

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license

+

+

+Title: The Angel in the Cloud

+

+Author: Edwin W. (Wiley) Fuller

+

+Release Date: July 14, 2018 [EBook #57504]

+

+Language: English

+

+Character set encoding: UTF-8

+

+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANGEL IN THE CLOUD ***

+

+

+

+

+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed

+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

+produced from images available at The Internet Archive)

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+                               THE ANGEL

+                             IN THE CLOUD

+

+                                  BY

+

+                            EDWIN W. FULLER

+

+                           PRIVATELY PRINTED

+                                MCMVII

+

+

+

+

+                           _Copyright, 1907

+                         Sumner Fuller Parham_

+

+

+

+

+                                TO THE

+

+                     HALLOWED MEMORY OF MY FATHER,

+

+                                 WHO,

+

+             EVEN WHILE I WAS GAZING UPON THE GOLDEN CITY

+

+                       PASSED WITHIN ITS WALLS,

+

+                   THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS INSCRIBED,

+

+                              WITH TEARS.

+

+

+

+

+PREFACE

+

+

+To those who may favor these pages with perusal, I make this earnest

+request: that, if they commence, they will read all. Knowing that the

+best mode of dealing with doubts is to state and refute, successively, I

+regret that the plan of the present work forces a separation of the

+statement and refutation. To read one without the other were to defeat

+the object in view; hence my request.

+

+Many of the subjects of thought are worn smooth with the touch of ages,

+so that hope for originality is as slender as the bridge of Al Sirat;

+but in the bulrush ark of self-confidence, pitched with Faith, I commit

+my first-born to the Nile of public opinion; whether to perish by

+crocodile critics, or bask in the palace of favor, the Future, alone,

+must determine. May Pharaoh’s daughter find it!

+

+                                                      E. W. F.

+

+LOUISBURG, Jan. 17th, 1871.

+

+

+

+

+A NOTE

+

+

+_First published more than thirty-five years ago, in the lifetime of the

+poet, THE ANGEL IN THE CLOUD has long since passed not only out of print

+but out of the memory of most living men. Of the copies of the original

+edition, only few are known to exist. Upon his surviving family is

+imposed the obligation, and to them comes the privilege, of rescuing

+from the realm of forgotten things these evidences of a graceful and

+genuine poetic gift in one whose memory they revere and whose genius

+they are unwilling to have die. It is therefore with the sense of

+performing a grateful duty that they have caused to be printed this new

+edition of Edwin Fuller’s poems, in the hope and belief that others,

+like themselves, will value it both as friends of the gentle poet and as

+disinterested lovers of good literature._

+

+August, 1907.

+

+

+

+

+              THE ANGEL IN THE CLOUD

+

+

+    ’Twas noon in August, and the sultry heat

+    Had driven me from sunny balcony

+    Into the shaded hall, where spacious doors

+    Stood open wide, and lofty windows held

+    Their sashes up, to woo the breeze, in vain.

+    The filmy lace that curtained them was still,

+    And every silken tassel hung a-plumb.

+    The maps and unframed pictures o’er the wall

+    Gave not a rustle; only now and then

+    Was heard the jingling sound of melting ice,

+    Deep in a massive urn, whose silver sides

+    With trickling dewbeads ran. The little birds,

+    Up in their cages, perched with open beaks,

+    And throbbing throats, upon the swaying rings,

+    Or plashed the tepid water in their cups

+    With eager breast. My favorite pointer lay,

+    With lolling tongue, and rapid panting sides,

+    Beside my chair, upon the matted floor.

+    All things spoke heat, oppressive heat intense,

+    Save swallows twittering up the chimney-flue,

+    Whose hollow flutterings sounded cool alone.

+    To find relief I seized my hat and book,

+    And fled into the park. Along a path

+    Of smoothest gravel, oval, curving white,

+    Between two rows of closely shaven hedge,

+    I passed towards a latticed summer-house;

+    A fairy bower, built in Eastern style,

+    With spires, and balls, and fancy trellis-work,

+    O’er which was spread the jasmine’s leafy net,

+    To snare the straying winds. Within I fell

+    Upon a seat of woven cane, and fanned

+    My streaming face in vain. The very winds

+    Seemed to have fled, and left alone the heat

+    To rise from parchèd lawn and scorching fields,

+    Like trembling incense to the blazing god.

+    The leaves upon the wan and yellow trees

+    Hung motionless, as if of rigid steel;

+    And e’en the feath’ry pendula of spray,

+    With faintest oscillation, dared not wave.

+    The withered flowers shed a hot perfume,

+    That sickened with its fragrance; and the bees

+    Worked lazily, as if they longed to kick

+    The yellow burdens from their patient thighs,

+    And rest beneath the ivy parasols.

+    The butterflies refrained from aimless flight,

+    And poised on blooms with gaudy, gasping wings.

+    The fountain scarcely raised its languid jet

+    An inch above its tube; the basin deigned

+    A feeble ripple for its tinkling fall,

+    And rolled the little waves with noiseless beat

+    Against the marble side. The bright-scaled fish

+    All huddled ’neath the jutting ledge’s shade,

+    Where, burnished like their magnet toy types,

+    They rose and fell as if inanimate;

+    Or, with a restless stroke of tinted fin,

+    Turned in their places pettishly around;

+    While, with each move, the tiny whirlpools spun

+    Like crystal dimples on the water’s face.

+    The sculptured lions crouched upon the edge,

+    With gaping jaws, and stony, fixèd eyes,

+    That ever on the pool glared thirstily.

+    Deep in the park, beneath the trees, were grouped

+    The deer, their noses lowered to the earth,

+    To snuff a cooler air; their slender feet

+    Impatient stamping at the teasing flies;

+    While o’er their heads the branching antlers spread,

+    A mocking skeleton of shade! A fawn,

+    Proud of his dappled coat, played here and there,

+    Regardless of repose; the silver bell,

+    That tinkled from a band of broidered silk,

+    Proclaiming him a petted favorite.

+    Save him alone, all things in view sought rest,

+    And wearied Nature seemed to yield the strife,

+    And smold’ring wait her speedy sacrifice.

+

+    The heat grew hotter as I watched its work,

+    And with its fervor overcome, I rose,

+    And through the grounds, towards an orchard bent

+    My faltering steps in full despair of ease.

+    Down through the lengthened rows of laden trees,

+    Whose golden-freighted boughs o’erlapped the way,

+    I hurried till I reached the last confines.

+    Here stood a gnarléd veteran, now too old

+    To bear much fruit, but weaving with its leaves

+    So dense a shade, the smallest fleck of sun

+    Could not creep through. Beneath it spread a couch

+    Of velvet moss, fit for the slumbers of a king.

+    Here prone I fell, at last amid a scene

+    That promised refuge from the glaring heat.

+    Beyond me stretched the orchard’s canopy

+    Of thick, rank foliage, almost drooping down

+    Upon the green plush carpet underneath.

+    Close at my feet a crystal spring burst forth,

+    And rolled its gurgling waters down the glade

+    Now spreading in a rilling silver sheet

+    O’er some broad rock, then gath’ring at its base

+    Into a foamy pool that churned the sand,

+    And mingling sparks of shining isinglass,

+    It danced away o’er gleamy, pebbly bed,

+    Where, midst the grassy nooks and fibrous roots,

+    The darting minnows played at hide and seek,

+    Oft fluttering upwards, to the top, to spit

+    A tiny bubble out, or slyly snap

+    Th’ unwary little insect hov’ring near;

+    Till, by its tributes widened to a brook,

+    It poured its limpid waters undefiled

+    In to the river’s dun and dirty waves,--

+    A type of childhood’s guileless purity,

+    That mingling with the sordid world is lost.

+

+    Far in the distance, lofty mountains loomed,

+    Their blue sides trembling in the sultry haze.

+    From me to them spread varicultured fields,

+    That formed a patchwork landscape, which deserved

+    The pencil of a Rembrandt and his skill;

+    The hardy yellow stubble smoothly shaved,

+    With boldness lying ’neath the scorching sun;

+    The suffering corn, with tasselled heads all bowed,

+    And twisted arms appealing, raised to Heaven;

+    The meadows faded by the constant blaze;

+    The cattle lying in the hedge’s shade;

+    Across the landscape drawn a glitt’ring band,

+    Where winds the river, like a giant snake,

+    The ripples flashing like his polished scales.

+    Above the scene a lonely vulture wheeled,

+    Turning with every curve from side to side,

+    As if the fierce rays broiled his dusky wings;

+    And circling onwards, dwindled to a speck,

+    And in the distance vanished out of sight!

+    Complete repose was stamped on everything,

+    Save where a tireless ant tugged at a crumb,

+    To drag it o’er th’ impeding spires of moss;

+    And one poor robin, with her breast all pale

+    And feather-scarce, hopped wearily along

+    The streamlet’s edge, with plaintive clock-like chirp,

+    And searching, found and bore the curling worm,

+    Up to the yellow-throated brood o’erhead.

+    Behind the mountains reared the copper clouds

+    Of summer skies, that whitened as they rose,

+    Till bleached to snow, they drifted dreamily,

+    Like gleaming icebergs, through the blue sublime.

+    And as they, one by one, sailed far away,

+    Methought they were as ships from Earth to Heaven,

+    Thus slowly floating to the Eternal Port.

+    The Thunder’s muttered growl my reverie broke,

+    And looking toward the West, I saw a storm,

+    With gloomy wrath, had thrown its dark-blue line

+    Of breastworks, quiv’ring with each grand discharge

+    Of its own ordnance, o’er th’ horizon’s verge.

+    Some time it stood to gloat upon its prey,

+    Then, girding up its strength, began its march.

+    Extending far its black gigantic arms,

+    It grimly clambered up the tranquil sky;

+    Till, half-way up the arch, its shaggy brows

+    Scowled down in rage upon the frightened earth;

+    While through its wind-cleft portals sped the darts,

+    That brightly hurtled through the sultry air.

+    And down the mountain-sides the shadow crept,

+    A dark veil spreading over field and wood,

+    Thus adding gloom to Nature’s awful hush.

+    The fleecy racks had fled far to the East,

+    Where sporting safely in the gilding light,

+    They mocked the angry monster’s cumbrous speed.

+

+    Then, while I marked its progress, came a train,

+    Of dark and doubting thoughts into my mind,

+    And bitterly thus my reflections ran:

+    Strange is the Providence that rules the world,

+    That sets the Medean course of Nature’s laws;

+    Sometimes adapting law to circumstance,

+    But oftener making law fulfilled a curse.

+    Yon brewing storm in verdant summer comes,

+    When vegetation spreads its foliage sails,

+    That, like a full-rigged ship’s, are easier torn;

+    Why comes it not in winter, when the trees,

+    With canvas reefed by Autumn’s furling frosts,

+    Could toss in nude defiance to the blast?

+    The murd’rous wind precedes the gentle shower

+    And ere the suffering grain has quenched its thirst,

+    It bows the heavy head, alone of worth,

+    And from the ripening stalk wrings out the life,

+    While gayly nod the heads of chaff unharmed.

+    The rank miasma floats in summer-time,

+    When man must brave its poisoned breath or starve;

+    It hovers sickliest over richest fields

+    While over sterile lands the air is pure;

+    The tallest oak is by the lightning riven,

+    The hateful bramble on the ground is spared;

+    The crop man needs demands his constant work,

+    The weeds alone spring forth without the plow;

+    The sweetest flowers wear the sharpest thorns,

+    The deadliest reptiles lurk in fairest paths!

+      Wherever Nature shows her brightest smile,

+    ’Tis but a mask to hide her darkest frown.

+    The tropics seem an Eden of luscious fruits

+    And flowers, and groves of loveliest birds, and lakes

+    That mirror their gay plumage flitting o’er;

+    Where man may live in luxury of thought,

+    Without the crime of schemes, or curse of toil--

+    The tropics seem a Hell, when all with life

+    Are stifled with the foul sirocco’s breath;

+    When from the green-robed mountain’s volcan top,

+    A fire-fountain spouts its blazing jet

+    Far up against the starry dome of Heaven;

+    Returning in its vast umbrella shape,

+    Leaps in red cataracts adown the slope,

+    Shaves clean the mountain of its emerald hair,

+    And leaves it bald with ashes on its head.

+    Below, the valley is a crimson sea,

+    Whose glowing billows break to white-hot foam;

+    And as they surge amid the towering trees,

+    They, tottering, bow forever to the waves;

+    The leaves and branches, crackling into flame,

+    Leave only clotted cinders floating there;

+    The darting birds, their gaudy plumage singed,

+    Fall fluttering in, with little puffs of smoke.

+    The fleeing beasts are lapped in, bellowing,

+    And charred to coal, drift idly with the tide.

+    The red flood, breaking through the vale, rolls on

+    Its devious way towards the sea; the glare

+    Illuminating far its winding track,

+    As if a devil flew with flaming torch,

+    Or when an earthquake gapes its black-lined jaws,

+    And, growling, gulps a city’s busy throng

+    Into its greedy bowels. Or the sea bursts forth

+    Its bands of rock, and laughing at “Thus far!”

+    Rolls wildly over peopled towns, and homes

+    In fancied safety; playing fearful pranks,

+    O’er which to chuckle in its briny bed;

+    Jeering the stones because they cannot swim,

+    And crushing like a shell all work of wood;

+    Docking the laden ships upon the hills,

+    And tossing lighter craft about like weeds;

+    Till, wearied with the spoiling, sinks to rest.

+

+    Thus Nature to herself is but half kind,

+    But over man holds fullest tyranny;

+    And man, a creature who cannot prevent

+    His own existence! Why not happy made?

+    For surely ’twere as easy to create

+    Man in a state of happiness and good,

+    And keep him there, as to create at all.

+    If misery’s not deserved before his birth,

+    Then misery must from purest malice flow;

+    Yet malice none assign to Providence.

+      But some may say: Were man thus happy made,

+    He would not be a person, but a thing,

+    And lose the very seed of happiness,

+    The consciousness of merit. Grant ’tis true!

+    Then why does merit rarely meet reward?

+    And why does there appear a tendency,

+    Throughout the polity divine, to mark

+    With disapproval all the good in man,

+    And bless the evil? Through the entire world

+    Is felt this conflict: some strange power within

+    Exciting us to good, while all events

+    Proclaim its folly. Throughout Nature’s laws,

+    Through man in every station, up to God,

+    This fatal contradiction glares. The storm,

+    With ruthless breath, annihilates the cot

+    That, frail and humble, shields the widow’s head;

+    And while she reads within the use-worn Book

+    That none who trusts shall e’er be desolate,

+    The falling timbers crush the promise out,

+    And she is dead beneath her ruined home!

+    The prostrate cottage passed, the very wind

+    Now howls a rough but fawning lullaby

+    Around the marble walls, and lofty dome,

+    That shelter pride and heartless arrogance.

+

+    And when the Boaz Winter throws his skirt

+    Of purest white across the lap of Earth,

+    And decks her bare arborial hair with gems,

+    Whose feeblest flash would pale the Koh-i-noor,

+    The rich, alone, find beauty in the scene,

+    And, clad in thankless comfort, brave the cold.

+    The gliding steels flash through the feathery drifts,

+    The jingling bells proclaiming happiness;

+    Yet ’neath the furry robe the oath is heard,

+    And boisterous laughter at the ribald jest.

+    The coldest hearts beat ’neath the warmest clothes;

+    And often all the blessings wealth can give,

+    Are heaped on one, whose daily life reviles

+    The very name of Him who doth bestow.

+    While in a freezing garret, o’er the coals

+    That, bluely flickering with the feeble flame,

+    Seem cold themselves, a trusting Christian bends;

+    Her faith all mocked by cruel circumstance.

+    The cold, bare walls, the chilling air-swept floor;

+    Some broken stools, a mattress stuffed with straw,

+    Upholstering the apartment. Through the sash,

+    The wind, with jaggèd lips of broken glass,

+    Shrieks in its freezing spite. A cold-blued babe,

+    With face too thin to hold a dimple’s print,

+    With famished gums tugs at the arid breast,

+    Thrusting its bare, splotched arms, in eagerness,

+    From out the poor white blanket’s ravelled edge.

+    Beside the mother sits a little boy,

+    With one red frost-cracked hand spread out, in vain,

+    To warm above the faintly-burning coals;

+    The other pressing hardly ’gainst his teeth

+    A stale and tasteless loaf of smallest size,

+    Which lifting often to the mother’s view,

+    He offers part; she only shakes her head,

+    And sadly smiles upon the gaunt young face.

+    Yet in her basket, on a pile of work,

+    An open Bible lies with outstretched leaves,

+    Whose verses speak in keenest irony:

+    “Do good,” and “verily thou shalt be fed.”

+    And so through all the world, the righteous poor,

+    The wicked rich. Deceit, and fraud, and craft

+    Reap large rewards, while pure integrity

+    Must gnaw the bone of faith with here and there

+    A speck of flesh called consciousness of right,

+    To reach the marrow in another world.

+    But man within himself’s the greatest paradox;

+    “A little animal,” as Voltaire says,

+    And yet a greater wonder than the sun,

+    Or spangled firmament. That little one

+    Can weigh and measure all the wheeling worlds,

+    But finds within his “five feet” home, a Sphinx

+    Whose riddle he can never solve.

+                                     “Thyself,”

+    The oracles of old bade men to know,

+    As if to mock their very impotence;

+    And man, to know himself, for centuries

+    Has toiled and studied deep, in vain.--

+    Not man in flesh, for blest Hippocrates

+    Bright trimmed his lamp, and passed it down the line,

+    And each disciple adding of his oil,

+    It blazes now above the ghastly corpse,

+    Till every fibre, every thread-like vein,

+    Is known familiar as a city’s streets;

+    The little muscle twitching back the lip,

+    Rejoicing in a name that spans the page.

+    But man in mind, that is not seen nor felt,

+    But only knows he is, through consciousness.

+    He sees an outside world, with all its throng

+    Of busy people who care not for him,

+    And only few that know he does exist;

+    And yet he feels the independent world

+    Is but effect produced upon himself,

+    The Universe is packed within his mind,

+    His mind within its little house of clay.

+    What is that mind? Has it a formal shape?

+    And has it substance, color, weight, or force?

+    What are the chains that bind it to the flesh?

+    That never break except in death, though oft

+    The faculties are sent far out through space?

+    Where is it placed, in head, or hands, or feet?

+    And can it have existence without place?

+    And if a place, it must extension have,

+    And if extended, it is matter proven.

+    Poor man! he has but mind to view mind with,

+    And might as well attempt to see the eye

+    Without a mirror! True, faint consciousness

+    Holds up a little glass, wherein he sees

+    A few vague facts that cannot satisfy.

+    For these, and their attendant laws, have fought

+    The mental champions of the world till now

+    That each may deck them in his livery,

+    And claim them as his own discovery.

+

+    Hedged in, man does not know that he is paled,

+    And struggles fiercely ’gainst the boundaries,

+    And strives to get a glimpse of those far realms

+    Of thought sublime, where his short wings would sink

+    With helpless fluttering, through the vast profound.

+    Upon the coals of curiosity,

+    A writhing worm, he’s laid; and twists and turns,

+    To find, in vain, the healing salve of Truth.

+

+    But grant that mind exists in fullest play:

+    How does it work and what its modes of thought?

+    Here consciousness may act, and hold to view

+    A dim outline of powers, contraposed.

+    In such a conflict, every one may seize

+    The doctrine suits him best. Hence different creeds--

+    Desire battling reason, reason will,

+    And will the weathercock of motive’s wind;

+    Motive the cringing slave of circumstance.

+    And here Charybdis rises; no control

+    Has man o’er circumstance, but circumstance

+    Begets the motive governing the will;

+    Then how can man be free? Yet some may say,

+    Man can obey the motive, or can not.

+    He can, but only when a stronger rules.

+    That we without a motive never act,

+    I do declare, though in the face of Reid.

+    That that is strongest which impels, a child

+    Might know, although Jouffroy exclaims,

+    “You’re reasoning in a circle.” Let us place

+    An iron fragment ’twixt two magnet-bars,

+    What one attracts is thereby stronger proved.

+    Or it may be the really weaker one,

+    But yet, because of nearness to the steel,

+    Possess a relatively greater force.

+    And so of motives, howe’er trivial they,

+    The one that moves is strongest to the mind.

+    To illustrate: Suppose I pare a peach;

+    A friend near by me banteringly asserts

+    That I can not refrain from eating it.

+    Two motives now arise--the appetite,

+    And the desire to prove my self-control.

+    I hesitate awhile, then laughing say,

+    “I would not give the peach to prove you wrong.”

+    But as my teeth press on it, pride springs up,

+    And bids me show that I am not the slave

+    Of appetite, and far away I hurl

+    The tinted, fragrant sphere.

+                                 Was not each thought

+    Spontaneous? Could I control their rise?

+    How perfectly absurd to talk of choice

+    Between two motives offered to the mind!

+    As if the motive was a horse we’d choose

+    To pull our minds about. There is no choice

+    Until the motive makes it; then we choose,

+    Not ’tween the motives, but the acts.

+                                          If, then,

+    The spring of action is the motive’s power,

+    The motive being far beyond our sway,

+    Where is our freedom? But a fabled myth!

+    And man but differs from a star in this,--

+    The laws of stars are fixed and definite,

+    And every movement there can be foretold;

+    Of man, no deed can be foreseen till done.

+    At most we can but form a general guess

+    How he will act, at such a time and place.

+    Even if we knew the motives that would rise,

+    We could not prophesy unless we knew

+    Our subject’s frame of mind; for differently,

+    On different minds, same motives often act.

+    Hence, we can tell the conduct of a friend

+    More surely than a stranger’s, since we know,

+    By long acquaintance, how his motives work.

+    But should new motives rise, we cannot tell

+    Until experience gives us data new.

+    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.

+

+    The world’s a self-adjusting, vast machine,

+    Whose human comparts cannot guide themselves;

+    And each is but a puppet to the whole,

+    Yet adds its mite towards its government;

+    Here, in this motive circle, lies all Fate.

+    Our fellow-men with motives furnish us,

+    While we contribute to their motive fund.

+    The real power, hidden deep within,

+    Escapes the eye of careless consciousness;

+    Who proudly tells us we are action’s cause.

+    Upon this error men, mistaken, raise

+    The edifice of law in all its forms;

+    That yet performs its varied functions well,

+    Because it offers motives that restrain,

+    Till stronger overcome, and crime ensues.

+    The motive gibbet lifts its warning arms;

+    The pillory gapes its scolloped lips for necks;

+    The lash grows stiff with blood and shreds of flesh;

+    The treadmill yields beneath the wearied feet;

+    And Sabbath after Sabbath preachers tell

+    Of judgment, and of awful Hell, and Heaven;

+    All these, to stronger make, than lust of sin.

+    And yet, to lead my reasoning to its end,

+    I find a chaos of absurdity.

+    If I am by an unruled motive driven,

+    Why act at all? Why passive not recline

+    Upon the lap of destiny, and wait her arms?

+    Why struggle to acquire means of life,

+    When Fate must fill our mouths or let us die?

+    Why go not naked forth into the world,

+    And trust to Fate for clothes? Why spring aside

+    From falling weight, or flee a burning house,

+    Or fight with instinct strength the clasp of waves?

+    Because we cannot help it; every act

+    Behind it has a motive, whose command

+    We, willing or unwilling, must obey.

+

+    Law governs motives, motives create law;

+    Between the reflex action man is placed,

+    The helpless shuttlecock of unjust Fate!

+    Now passive driven to commit a crime,

+    Then by the driver laid upon the rack;

+    A Zeno’s slave, compelled by Fate to steal,

+    And then compelled by Fate to bear the lash!

+

+    What gross injustice is the rule of life!

+    A sentient being made without a will,

+    And placed a cat’s-paw in the hands of Fate,

+    Who rakes the moral embers for a sin,

+    That, found, must burn the helpless one alone.

+    All right and wrong, and whate’er makes man man,

+    Are gone, and language is half obsolete;

+    No need of words to tell of moral worth

+    Existing not, nor e’en conceivable;

+    No words of blame or commendation, given

+    According to the intention of a deed;

+    No words of cheer or comfort, to incite,

+    For man must act without our useless tongues;

+    No words of prayer, if Fate supplies our wants;

+    No words of prayer, if Fate locks up her store;

+    No words of love, for fondest love were loathed

+    If fanned by Fate to flame. No words of hate,

+    For all forgive a wrong when helpless done;

+    The buds that bloom upon the desert heart

+    Lose all their sweetness when they’re forced to grow;

+    All pleasure’s marred because it is not earned,

+    And pain more painful since ’tis undeserved.

+

+    Man falling from his high estate, becomes

+    A brute with keener sensibilities;

+    Endowed with mind, upon whose plastic face

+    Fate writes its batch of lies; poor man believes,

+    And prates of moral agency, and cants

+    Of good _he_ does, and evil that _he_ shuns.

+    With blind content, he rests in false belief,

+    And happy thus escapes the mental rack--

+    The consciousness of what he really is.

+

+    And yet why false belief? The world believes,

+    And acting, moves in general harmony;

+    Could harmony from such an error flow?

+    Would all believe, would not some one

+    Have doubted by his works as well as faith?

+    The veriest skeptic walks the earth to-day,

+    As if he held the seal of freest will,

+    And shapes its course, and judges all mankind

+    By freedom’s rule.

+                       Then may not that be true

+    Which most believe, and those who doubt profess

+    In every act; as that which few believe

+    And to which none conform?

+                               Two paths I see,

+    One marked Free-Will, the other Fate. The first,

+    Extending far as human thought can reach,

+    Through lovely meads with sweetest flowers, and fruits

+    Of actions clearly shown as right and wrong,

+    Because of choice ’twixt the two; of laws

+    With sanction suiting agents who are free;

+    Of courts acquitting the insane of crime,

+    Of crime made crime, alone, when done as crime,

+    Of judgment passed by public sentiment

+    On action in the ratio of liberty.

+    Delightful view; but seek an entrance there--

+    The towering bars of unruled motive stand

+    Before the path, and none can overleap.

+

+    The field of Fate lies open; nothing bars

+    Our progress there. A thousand different ways

+    The path diverges. Every by-path leads

+    To some foul pit or bottomless abyss.

+    Along each side are strewed the whitening bones

+    Of venturous pilgrims, lost amid its snares,

+    Some broken on the rocks of gross decree,

+    Who hold an unchanged destiny from birth;

+    Who will not take a medicine if sick,

+    Who cant of “To be, will be,” and the time

+    Unalterably set to each man’s life.

+    Some stranded on the finer form of Fate,

+    Who say it works by means. Hence they believe

+    In using all preventives to disease,

+    In going boating in a rubber belt,

+    In placing Franklin rods upon a house,

+    In preaching, and in praying men repent.

+    These, when one dies, cry out, “It was his time.”

+    Or if he should recover, “It was not.”

+    Their fate is always ex post facto fate,

+    And knowing not the future, they abide

+    The issue of events, and then confirm

+    Their dogged dogmas.

+                         Still another class,

+    Though fewer far in numbers, perish here.

+    These are the sophists; men who deeply dive

+    Beneath the surface of effect, and trace

+    Our actions to their source. They find that man,

+    Made in the glorious image of his God,

+    Is not an independent cause, but works

+    From motive causes out of his control.

+    They find that every mental act must flow

+    From outside source, then fearlessly ascend

+    The chain of being to a height divine,

+    And dare to fetter the Eternal mind,

+    And throw their bonds around Omnipotence.

+    As well a spider in an eagle’s nest

+    Might, from his hidden web among the twigs,

+    Attempt to throw his little gluey thread

+    Around the mottled wing, whose muscled strength

+    Beats hurried vacuums in the ocean’s spray,

+    Or circling upward, parts the thunder-cloud,

+    And bursts above; and shaking off the mists,

+    With rigid feathers bright as burnished steel,

+    Floats proudly through the tranquil air.

+                                             Which realm

+    Shall now be mine, Free-Will or Fate? The one

+    Stands open wide, but all in ruin ends;

+    The other, fair if once within the pale;

+    But how to scale the barriers none can tell.

+    Bah! all is doubt. I’ll leave the mystic paths

+    Where, on each side, are ranged the phantom shapes

+    Of disputants, alive and dead, who fight,

+    With foolish zeal, o’er myths intangible;

+    When each one cries “Eureka!” for his creed.

+    That scarcely lives a day, then yields its place.

+    A Roman ’gainst a Roman, Greek to Greek,

+    A zealous Omar with an Ali paired;

+    A saintly Pharisee in hot dispute

+    With Sadducees. Along th’ illustrious rows

+    Of lesser lights, who advocate the creeds

+    Of their respective masters, we descend

+    To later days and see Titanic minds

+    Exert their giant strength to reach the truth,

+    And, baffled, fall. Locke, ever elsewhere clear,

+    Here mystified Spinoza’s dizzy wing

+    O’erweighted by his strange “imperium;”

+    Hobbes, with his new intrinsic liberty;

+    And Belsham’s quaint reduction too absurd;

+    “Sufficient reason,” reared in Leibnitz’s strength;

+    Reid, Collins, Edwards, Tappan, Priestley, Clarke,

+    All push each other from the door of Truth.

+

+    None ever have, nor ever will, on earth,

+    Reach truth of theory concerning Fate.

+    It stands as whole from every touch of man

+    As ocean’s broad blue scroll, whose rubber waves

+    Erase the furrows of the plowing keels.

+

+    Then, careless whether man be king or slave,

+    I’ll take his actions, whether free or not,

+    And trace them to their sources. Deep the dive,

+    But, throwing off the buoys of Charity

+    And Faith, and all the prejudice of life,

+    I grasp the lead of Doubt, and downward sink

+    Into the cesspool of the human heart,

+    To find the fount, that to the surface casts

+    A thousand bubbles of such varied hues:

+    The pale white bubble of hypocrisy,

+    The murky bubble of revenge and hate,

+    The frail gilt bubble of ambition’s hope,

+    The rainbow bubble of sweet love in youth,

+    The dull slime bubble of a sensual lust,

+    The crystal bubble of true charity!

+    Instead of analyzing every fact

+    Of moral nature, searching for its source,

+    I’ll name a source most probable, and try

+    The facts upon it; if they fit, confirm,

+    If not, reject. With Hobbes and Paley then

+    I join; and here avow that all mankind

+    Have but one source of action--Love of self--

+    Yet not self-love as understands the world,

+    For that’s a name for error shown by few;

+    But natural instinct that impels all men

+    To give self pleasure, and to save it pain;

+    For pain and pleasure are Life’s only modes--

+    No neutral state--we suffer, or enjoy;

+    And every action’s linked with one of these.

+    We cannot act without a consciousness,

+    A consciousness of pleasure or of pain,

+    The very automatic workings of our frames

+    Are pleasures, unmarked from their constancy;

+    But if impeded, they produce a pain.

+    This instinct, teaching us to pleasure seek,

+    And pain avoid, none ever disobey;

+    For be their conduct what it may, a crime

+    Or virtue, greed or pure benevolence,

+    To find the greatest pleasure is their aim.

+    Nay, start not, critic, but attend the proofs.

+    A man exists within himself alone,

+    Himself, or he would lose identity.

+    To him the world exists but by effects

+    Upon himself. His actions toward it then

+    Bear reference to himself. He cannot act

+    Without affecting self. His nature’s law

+    Demands that self be dealt with pleasantly.

+

+    There is no pain or pleasure in the world,

+    But as he feels th’ reality in self,

+    Or fancies it by signs in other men.

+    This fancied pain is never _real_ pain,

+    But yields a _real_ reflex. Others’ pain

+    Is never pain to us, unless we know

+    It does exist. Within a hundred yards

+    A neighbor dies, in agony intense,

+    And yet we feel no slightest trace of pain,

+    Unless informed thereof. ’Tis only when we know,

+    And therefore are affected, that we feel.

+

+    The modes of pain and pleasure are then two,

+    A real and a fancied one. The first acute,

+    In ratio of our sensibilities;

+    The last in ratio of our image-power.

+    These gifts in different men unequal are,

+    And hence life’s varied phases. One may deem

+    A real pain far greater than a pain

+    In fancy formed, from others’ sufferings;

+    He eats alone, and drives the starving off.

+    Another’s fancy paints more vividly,

+    And he endures keen hunger to supply

+    The poor with food. And so of pleasure too,--

+    And this moves all to shun the greatest pain,

+    And find the greatest pleasure.

+                                    Different minds,

+    And each at different times of life, possess

+    A different standard of this highest good.

+    The swaddled infant wails for its own food,

+    Because its highest pleasure is alone in sense;

+    The child will from its playmate hide a cake

+    Until it learns that praise for sharing it

+    Gives greater pleasure than the sweetened taste;

+    One boy at school proves insubordinate,

+    His schoolmates’ praise he deems his highest good;

+    Another studies well, because he values more

+    A parent’s smile. The murderer with his knife,

+    The maiden praying in her purity,

+    The miser dying over hoards of gold,

+    The widow casting thither her two mites,

+    A white-veil bending o’er the dying couch,

+    A stained beauty floating through the waltz,

+    The preacher’s zeal, the gambler’s eager zest;

+    All have one motive, greatest good to self!

+

+    The tender stop their ears, and cry aloud:

+    “What! do you dare assert the gambler seeks

+    With hellish zeal the faintest shade of good?

+    That he is holy as the Man of God?”

+    By no means, yet he seeks his good the same.

+    Not good as you’ve been taught to apprehend,

+    But good, the greatest to his frame of mind.

+    Do not exclaim that good is always good,

+    And never differs from itself. Anon

+    We’ll speak of abstract truths, if such there be

+    That good and pleasure are synonymous

+    At times of action, is most surely plain;

+    For pleasure’s but the consciousness of good,

+    Or satisfaction of our tendencies.

+    If all the gambler’s soul is bent on gain,

+    Then at the moment gain is greatest good;

+    But should you reason with him, and explain

+    Another life, and make it really seem

+    To him the best, he straight would change his course.

+

+    “But,” cries my friend, “the preacher, if he’s true,

+    Must labor, not for self, but others’ good;

+    And in proportion as the self’s forgot,

+    And others cared for, does his conduct rise.”

+

+    But he can not, if conscious, forget self,

+    For everything he does is felt within;

+    But deeds for others’ good a pleasure give;

+    If done in pain to self, the pleasure’s more.

+    To gain the pleasure, self is put to pain,

+    Just as a vesication brings relief.

+    If he refused to undergo the pain

+    Remorse would double it.

+                             Among his flock

+    Some one is sick; to visit him is right,

+    And done, affords a pleasure. Sweeter far

+    That pleasure, if he walks through snow and ice,

+    At duty’s call!

+

+                    Sublime self-sacrifice,

+    Of which men prate, is nothing more nor less

+    Than base self-worship. Little pain endured

+    T’ avoid a great; a smaller pleasure lost

+    To gain a larger!

+

+                      All the preacher’s words,

+    That burn or die upon the stolid ear,

+    Are spoken from this motive, good to self.

+    You stare; but it is true. Why does he preach?

+    To save men’s souls?--Why does he try to save?

+    Because he loves his fellow-men? Not so.

+    His love for them but to the pleasure adds,

+    Which duty done confers; but all his work

+    Must be with reference to himself alone,

+    Though cunning self the real motive hides,

+    And leaves his broad philanthropy and love

+    To claim the merit. Let a score of men,

+    The blackest sinners, die. He knows it not,

+    And feels no pang; but if he is informed,

+    He suffers reflex pain. And if his charge,

+    Remorseful tortures for unfaithfulness.

+    And only is the state of souls to him

+    Of interest, as they are known. When known,

+    It is a source of pleasure or of pain

+    Which all his labor is to gain or shun.

+

+    “This difference then,” says one, “between men’s lives;

+    Some live for present, some for future good.

+    The sensual care for self on earth alone,

+    The mystic cares for self beyond the grave.”

+

+    Both love a present self, in present time.

+    They differ in their notions of its good.

+    The stern ascetic, with his shirt of hair,

+    His bleeding penitential knees, his fasts

+    To almost death, his soul-exhausting prayers,

+    Is seeking, cries the world, good after death.

+    And yet his course of life is that alone

+    Which could yield pleasure in his state of mind.

+    He suffers, it is true, but hope of Heaven

+    Thus rendered sure, as much a present good

+    Is, as the food that feasts the epicure.

+    The contemplation of his future home,

+    Which he is thus securing, is a balm

+    That heals his stripes, and sweetens all their pain.

+    The penance blows upon his blood-wealed breast

+    Are bliss compared to lashes of remorse.

+    So for the greater good, the hope of Heaven,

+    He undergoes “the trivial pain of flesh.”

+    The epicure cares not a fig for Heaven,

+    But finds his greatest good in pleasing sense.

+    And so the man who gives his wealth away

+    Is just as selfish as the money-slave

+    Who grinds out life amid his dusty bags.

+    They both seek happiness with equal zest:

+    The one finds pleasure in the many thanks

+    Of those receiving, or the public’s praise,

+    Or if concealed, in consciousness of right;

+    The other in the consciousness of wealth.

+

+    If all men act from motives just the same,

+    Where is the right and wrong? In the effect?

+    The quality of actions must be judged

+    From their intent, and not their consequence.

+    If two men matches light for their cigars,

+    And from one careless dropped, a house is burned,

+    Is he that dropped it guiltier of crime

+    Than he whose match went out? Most surely no!

+    Then is the miser blameless, though he turn

+    The helpless orphan freezing from his door;

+    And Dives should not be commended more,

+    Though all his goods to feed the poor he gives.

+

+    How then shall we determine quality

+    Of actions, when their sources are the same,

+    And their effects possess no quality?

+    Two dead men lie in blood beside the way,

+    The one shot by a friend, an accident;

+    The other murdered for his gold. ’Tis plain

+    No wrong lies in th’ effects, for both are ’like;

+    And of the agents, he of accident

+    Had no intent, and therefore did no wrong.

+    The other killed to satisfy the self,

+    A motive founding all the Christian work,

+    And right if that is right. The wrong

+    Then lies between the motive and effect,

+    And must exist in the effecting means.

+    Yet how within the means is wrong proved wrong?

+    Jouffroy would say, because a disregard

+    Of others’ rights; for here he places good,

+    When classifying Nature’s moral facts.

+    He makes the child first serve flesh self,

+    Then moral self, and last to others’ good

+    Ascend, and general order. What a myth!

+    As if man thought of others, save effect

+    From them upon himself. But order gives

+    A greater good to self; therefore he joins

+    His strength to others, creates laws that bind

+    Himself and them, and produce harmony.

+    He thus surrenders minor good of self,

+    To gain a greater. This is all the need

+    He has of order, though Jouffroy asserts

+    That order universal is the Good.

+    Yet still he says that private good of each

+    Is but a fragment of the absolute,

+    And that regard for every being’s rights

+    Is binding as the universal law!

+

+    Regard for others’ rights indeed, when men

+    Unharmed agree to hang a man for crime!

+    Not for the crime--that’s past; but to prevent

+    A second crime, which crime alone exists

+    In apprehensive fancy. Thus for wrong

+    That’s but forethought, they do a real wrong.

+    To save their rights from harm they fear may come.

+    They strip a fellow-man of actual right,

+    And highest, right of life; then dare to call

+    Their action pure, divinely just, and good,

+    And all the farce of empty names.

+                                      They make

+    Of gross injustice individual,

+    A flimsy justice, for mankind at large,

+    And cry, Let it be done, though Heaven fall!

+    As if a whole could differ from its parts,

+    Or right be made from wrong. Yet some may say

+    That one is sacrificed for many’s good,

+    Or hung that many may avoid his fate;

+    And that his crime deserved what he received.

+

+    But law must value every man alike,

+    And cannot save one man, or thousand men,

+    From future evil, only possible,

+    By greatest evil to another man,

+    In its own view of justice. Nor can crime

+    Meet punishment, at mortal hands, by right,

+    For murder’s murder, done by one or twelve,

+    And legal murder’s done in colder blood,

+    Whose stains are chalked by vain authority.

+    Authority! the child of numbers and self-love!

+    Regard for rights of things, indeed, when beasts

+    And birds must yield their right of life that man

+    May please his right of taste. When, during Lent,

+    The holy-days of fasting and of prayer,

+    The scaly victims crowd the Bishop’s board,

+    Their flesh unfleshed by Conscience’ pliant rule,

+    Our palates must be for a moment pleased,

+    Though costing something agonies of death;

+    And worse than robbers, what we cannot give,

+    We dare to take.

+                     They have no souls, say you?

+    Nor after death exist?

+                           That nothing’s lost,

+    Philosophy maintains as axiom truth.

+    An object disappears, but somewhere lives

+    In other form. The water-pool to mist

+    Is changed, the powder into flame and smoke.

+    My pointer dies, his body, decomposed,

+    The air, the soil, and vegetation feeds;

+    Yet still exists, although disintegrate.

+    For there was something, while the pointer lived,

+    That was not body, but that governed it,

+    A spirit, essence, call it what you will,

+    A something seen but through phenomena,

+    And by them proved most clearly to exist.

+    A something, not the feet that made them run,

+    A something, not the eyes, but knew they saw,

+    A something, without which the eyes could see

+    As much as glasses can without the eye,

+    The something, “Carlo” named, that knew the name.

+    The pointer dies, and we dissect the flesh.

+    All there, none missing, to the tiniest nerve;

+    Yet something’s gone, the more important part,

+    And can you say that it has ceased to be,

+    When th’ flesh, inferior to it, still exists?

+    The spirit, if existent, must be whole,

+    Nor can be parted till material proven.

+    That Carlo lives, seems plain as I shall live;

+    He lived for self, and so did I; we fare

+    Alike in after-life, we differ here

+    In consciousness of immortality.

+    But I digress.

+                   Where is the right and wrong?

+    This is the Gordian knot no sword can cut,

+    All sages of the world, with wisdom-teeth,

+    Have gnawed this file without the least effect.

+    The thousand savants of old Greece and Rome

+    Proclaimed a thousand theories of good,

+    That each, successive, proud devoid of truth.

+    A myriad moderns have advanced their views,

+    Each gained a few disciples, who avowed their truth,

+    And each, by some one else, been proven wrong.

+    A Bentham marches out utility,

+    A moral test from benefit or harm.

+    As if the good depended on effect,

+    And good would not be good, though universe

+    In all its phases found no use! And Price

+    Parades his “reason,” with its simple good;

+    Who’d rather give the question up, than err,

+    And so declares it cannot be defined.

+    Then Wollaston declares that good is truth,

+    Which no one doubts, far as it goes; it goes

+    Toward good, as far as truth, its attribute;

+    Beyond, it cannot reach. And Montesquieu

+    And Clarke, relation’s order preach; a rule

+    That makes the growing grain, or falling shower,

+    A moral agent, capable of good.

+    Then Wolf and Malebranche perfection see,

+    And therefore good, in God; but their sight fails,

+    And God may mirror good, but man’s weak eyes

+    Ne’er see it. Adam Smith, with “sentiment”

+    Proceeds to dress a thought, and call it, good;

+    And makes the abstract of a Universe

+    Arise from puling human sympathy.

+    The largest concourse follow Hutcheson,

+    Although the greater part ne’er heard of him.

+    The world at large believes in moral sense;

+    They call it conscience! Oh the precious word!

+    Though stretched and warped, they almost deify,

+    And term it man’s tribunal in his breast,

+    Where he may judge his actions, right or wrong.

+    What nonsense! Conscience is but consciousness

+    Of soul, and idea of its good. We form

+    This idea from regard of fellow-men,

+    Association, and from thought. We find

+    Sometimes the good of soul conflicts with flesh,

+    And when we know the soul above the flesh,

+    We yield to that the preference. Hence arise

+    The foolish notions of self disregard.

+    The savage does not know he has a soul,

+    And therefore has no conscience. He can steal

+    Without remorse. But when he learns of soul,

+    He finds it has a good, and by this test

+    Tries moral actions, are they good for soul?

+    And this is conscience.

+                            Yet is conscience changed

+    By circumstance. The Hindoo mother tears

+    The helpless infant from her trickling breast,

+    To feed the crocodile, and save her soul;

+    She’s happier in its conscience-murdered wail

+    Than in its gleeful prattle on her knee.

+    And daily we see one commit a deed

+    Without a pang, another dare not do.

+    If conscience may be warped but one degree

+    By plain Sorites, it may be reversed,

+    And only prove an interested thought.

+

+    To abstract good no man has found the key,

+    Though in the various forms of concrete good

+    We see the similars, and from these frame

+    A good that serves the purposes of life.

+    We pass it as we do the concept, “Man,”

+    But never ope to count the attributes.

+    Our purest right is but approximate

+    To this vague abstract idea, how obtained,

+    We know not. Plato says ’tis memory

+    Of previous life. Perhaps! ’Tis very dim

+    In this; and yet it rocks the cradle world

+    As strongly as the baby man can bear

+    And so of truth, or aught abstract, we know

+    Of such existence somewhere, that is all.

+    “But we,” cries one, “do hold some abstract truth,

+    In perfect form. The truth of science’ laws,

+    The truths of numbers, each are perfect truths.”

+    The truths of science are hypotheses,

+    And only true as far as they explain.

+    But perfect truth must save all facts,

+    That ever rose or possibly can rise.

+    “The priest of Nature” thought he held the truth

+    When throughout space he tracked the motes of light,

+    And ground the sunbeams into dazzling dust.

+    Our quivering waves through subtle ether flash,

+    And drown Sir Isaac’s atoms in a flood

+    Of glorious truth; till some new fact shall rise

+    To give our truth the lie, and cause a change

+    Of theory.

+               Our numbers no truth have,

+    Or but a shadow, cast on Earth by truth

+    Existent in some unknown world. We make

+    Our little numbers fit the shadow’s line

+    As best they can, and boast eternal truth!

+    Yet take a simple form of numbers, “two,”

+    We cannot have a perfect thought of this,

+    Because the mind directly asks, two what?

+    ’Tis not enough chameleon to feed

+    On empty air. Two units, we reply

+    Then what is meant by unity? An “One,”--

+    The mind can only cognize o-n-e,

+    Which makes three units and not one.

+                                         The mind

+    Must have a concrete object to adjust

+    The abstract on, before it comprehends.

+    But two concretes are never two, because

+    They never can be proved exactly ’like.

+    To illustrate: suppose two ivory balls,

+    Of finest mold, and equal weight, precise

+    As hair-hung scales, arranged most delicate,

+    Can prove; yet they can not be shown

+    To differ, not the trillionth of a grain;

+    Or if they could, they may in density

+    Be unlike; then to equal weight, one must

+    Be larger by the trillionth of an inch.

+    Even if alike in density and weight,

+    No one will dare assert that they possess

+    A perfect similarity in all.

+    The abstract two is twice as much as one,

+    But our two balls unlike, perforce must be

+    Greater or less than two of either one;

+    But two of one, the same can never be

+    On poor, imperfect Earth. Thus all our twos

+    Fall, in some measure, short of concept two.

+    And if we paint the concept to the eye,

+    The figure 2 of finest stereotype,

+    Beneath the microscope imperfect shows.

+    And so our perfect numbers, wisdom’s boast,

+    Are faint, uncertain shadows in the mind,

+    That we can never picture to the eye,

+    Nor truthfully apply to anything.

+    We use a ragged, ill-drawn substitute,

+    That answers all the purposes of life.

+    The truths of mathematics, so sublime,

+    Are never true to us, concretely known;

+    And in the abstract so concealed are they,

+    No man can swear he has their perfect form.

+    We can’t conceive a line without some breadth--

+    The perfect line possesses length alone;

+    Earth never saw a pure right-angle drawn,

+    Pythag’ras cannot prove his theorem,

+    The finest quadrant is but nearest truth,

+    The closest measures but approximate,

+    And all from Sanconiathon to Pierce,

+    With grandest soaring into Number’s realms,

+    Have only fluttered feebly o’er the ground,

+    Their heaven-strong wings by feebling matter tied.

+

+    Man is a pris’ner, but the prison walls

+    Are very vast; so vast the universe

+    Lies, like a mote, within their mighty scope.

+    Most are content to grovel on the earth,

+    Some rise a little way, and sink again;

+    And some, on noble wing, soar to the bounds,

+    And eager beat the bars. Beyond these walls

+    The abstract lies, and oft the straggling rays,

+    Through crevices and chinks, stray to our jail;

+    And these we fondly hug as truth.

+                                      Poor man!

+    The glimpses of the great Beyond have roused,

+    For centuries, his curious soul to flight.

+    With eagle eye fixed on the distant goal,

+    He cleaves his way, till dashed against the walls;

+    Some fall with bruiséd wing again to Earth,

+    And some cling bravely there, so eager they

+    To reach the untouched prize, and so intent

+    Their gaze upon its light, they notice not

+    The bounds, till Hamilton, with wary eye,

+    Discovers the Eternal bounding line,

+    And sadly shows its hopeless fixity.

+

+    But man on Earth I love to ridicule,

+    A little clod of sordid selfishness!

+    I’ll take his mental acts of every kind

+    And see how self originates them all;

+    I’ll follow Stewart, since he classifies

+    With shrewd discretion, though his reasoning err,

+    He places first the appetites; and these

+    Perforce are selfish, as our self alone

+    Must feel and suffer with our wants. Our food

+    Tastes good alone to us. The richest feast,

+    In others’ mouths, could never satisfy

+    Our appetite for food; self must be fed.

+    Desires are next; and that of knowledge, first,

+    Is proven selfish, by his quoted line

+    From Cicero--that “knowledge is the food

+    Of mind”--and food is ever sought for self.

+    Desire of social intercourse with men,

+    From thought that it will better self, proceeds.

+    Man’s state is friendly, not a state of war,

+    For instinct teaches him society

+    Will offer many benefits to self;

+    And only when he has a cause to fear

+    That self will suffer, does he learn to war.

+    Desire to gain esteem, is self in search

+    Of approbation; like the appetite,

+    The end pursued affects alone the self.

+    And lastly Stewart boasts posthumous fame,

+    When self, as sacrificed, can seek no good.

+    To prove the motive is a selfish good,

+    I’ll not assert enjoyment after life,

+    But say, the pleasure of the millions’ praise,

+    Anticipated in the present thought,

+    And intense consciousness of heroism,

+    Far more than compensates the pangs of death.

+    A Curtius leaping down the dread abyss,

+    Enjoys his fame enough, before he strikes,

+    To pay for every pain of mangling death.

+    Affections next adorn the moral page.

+    At that of kindred, mothers cry aloud:

+    “For shame! for shame! do you pretend to say

+    I love my child with any thought of self?

+    When I would lay my arm upon the block,

+    And have it severed for his slightest good!”

+    I’ll square your love by Reason’s rigid rule,

+    And test its source. Why do you love him so?

+    For benefit he has conferred, or may?

+    No, as the helpless babe, demanding care,

+    You love him most. Your love is instinct then,

+    And like the cow her calf, you love your child;

+    That you may care for him, before self moves.

+    Then do you love him always just the same,

+    When rude and bad as when obedient?

+    But I’ll dissect your love, and take away

+    Each part affecting self; and see what’s left.

+    He now has grown beyond your instinct love;

+    You love him, first, because he is your son,

+    And you would suffer blame, if you did not;

+    You love him, too, because he does reflect

+    A credit on yourself. You feel assured

+    That others thinking well of him, think well

+    Of you. Because it flatters all your pride

+    To think so fine a life is part of yours;

+    Because his high opinion of your worth

+    Evokes a meet return; because you look

+    Into the future, and see honors bright

+    Awaiting you through him; because you feel

+    The world is praising you for loving him,

+    And would condemn you, did you not. And last,

+    You feel the pleasure deep of self-esteem,

+    Because you fill the public’s and your own

+    Romantic ideas of a mother’s love.

+

+    Let each component part be now destroyed,

+    And see if still you love him. As a man,

+    He plunges into vice of vilest kinds;

+    His bright reflections on yourself are gone,

+    And people think the worse of you, for him;

+    You never smile, but frown, upon him now,

+    But still you love him dearly! To his vice

+    He adds a crime, a foul and blasting crime;

+    Your pride is gone, you feel a bitter shame,

+    A score of opposites to love creep in;

+    A righteous anger at his foolish sins,

+    A just contempt for nature, weak as his;

+    But yet you love him fondly, for the world

+    Is lauding you for “mother’s holy love”;

+    And you delight its clinging strength to show,

+    You gain in public credit by your woes,

+    And get the soothing martyr’s sympathy.

+    But let him still grow worse, and sink so low,

+    That people say you are disgraced through him,

+    Your warmest friends will not acquaintance own,

+    Your love for such an object’s ridiculed,

+    And gains respect from none. Your only chance

+    Is to disown him. How you loud proclaim,

+    “He’s not my child but by the accident

+    Of birth!”

+               Do yet you love him in your heart?

+    This then because you think yourself so good,

+    So heaven-like, for loving him disgraced,

+    You go to see him in the shameful jail;

+    He spits upon, and beats you from his cell,

+    And tells you that he hates your very name.

+    Now all your love is gone, except the glow

+    Of pity for him chained to dungeon floor;

+    But he’s released, and deeper goes in crime;

+    Then, lastly, Pity yields. Your heart is stone!

+

+    But love was only touched in selfish part,

+    Yet should you still deny your love is self’s;

+    Of several children, do you not love most

+    The one whose conduct pleases most yourself?

+    But love, unselfish, never could be moved

+    By anything affecting self alone.

+

+    The throbbing hearts of lovers beat for self,

+    And this I’ll prove, though Pyramus may vow

+    He has no thought but Thisbe.

+                                  Take away

+    Love’s sensual part, which is an appetite,

+    And therefore selfish, by its Nature’s law;

+    And what remains is, first, a slight conceit

+    At our discernment in the choice we’ve made,

+    And then a pride that we have won the prize;

+    A pride, that some one thinks we are the best;

+    A pleasure in her presence, too, we feel,

+    Because in every look she manifests

+    Her preference for us. This is flattering

+    Beyond all else that we have ever known.

+    A friend may raise our self-esteem, indeed,

+    By showing constantly his own esteem,

+    But never can man’s vanity receive

+    A higher tribute than a woman’s love!

+    This tribute, we, of course, reciprocate,

+    And when together, we increase self-love

+    By mutual words expressing our regard.

+    Yet when our love is deepest, if we find

+    Our Self is not so worshipped as we thought,

+    Our love grows cold; and when we are not loved

+    We cease to love. To illustrate permit:

+

+    You’re on the topmost wave of fervid love--

+    A wilder flame than poets ever sung;

+    You’ve passed the timid declaration’s bounds,

+    And revel in a full assured return.

+    There is no need for check upon your heart,

+    It has full leave to pour its gushing tide

+    Of feeling forth, and meet responsive floods.

+    You meet her in the parlor’s solitude,

+    No meddling eye to watch the sacred scene.

+    The purple curtains hang their corded folds

+    Before the tell-tale windows; closed the door,

+    And sealed with softest list. The rich divan

+    Is drawn before the ruddy grate that glows

+    With red between the bars, and blue above.

+    You sit beside The Angel of your dreams,

+    And gaze in adoration. What a form!

+    Revealed in faultless symmetry by robes

+    Of rare, exquisite elegance, and taste,

+    That fit the tap’ring waist and arching neck.

+    And how superbly flow the torrents of her hair!

+    Which she has shaken loose, because “it’s you”;

+    Her great brown eyes that gaze so dreamily

+    Upon the flowers of the vellum-screen

+    That wards the fire from her tinted cheek!

+    One hollow foot, in dainty, bronze bootee,

+    Tapping the tufted lion on the rug;

+    A snowy hand with blazing solitaire--

+    The pledge of your betrothal--nestling soft

+    Within your own.

+                     And thus you sit, and breathe

+    With tones so soft, because the ear’s so near,

+    The mutual confidence of little cares;

+    And how you longed for months to tell your love,

+    But feared a cold rebuke; and how you dared

+    To hope through all the gloom; and how you grieved

+    At every favor shown to other men;

+    How now the clouds have flown away,

+    And all is brightness, joy, and tender love.

+    Then drawing nearer, round the slender waist

+    You pass an arm; and nestling cheek to cheek,

+    Palm throbbing palm, you hush all useless words,

+    And thought meets thought, in silent love.

+    And now and then, you leave the cheek, to kiss

+    The coral lips; yet not with transient touch,

+    But with a fervid, lingering pressure there,

+    As if you longed to force the lips apart,

+    And drink the soul; while both her melting orbs

+    Are drooped beneath your burning inch-near eyes.

+    The parting hour must come. The good-night said,

+    You rise to leave; and turning, at the door,

+    You see her head drooped on the sofa’s arm,

+    You fancy she is sighing that you’re gone;

+    And stealing back on tiptoe, gently raise

+    The beauteous face, and take it ’twixt your palms;

+    And gazing on the features radiant,

+    Distorted queerly by your pressing hands,

+    You feel that life, the parting cannot bear,

+    That you must stay forever there, or die!

+    Another effort, one more nectar sip,

+    You rush from out the room, and slam the door,

+    Just on the steps, you meet your rival’s face.

+    He has an easy confidence, and walks

+    Into the house, as if it were his own.

+    Poor fellow! how you really pity him!

+    You can afford to be magnanimous,

+    And deprecate his certain, cruel fate.

+    You murmur: “Well, he brings it on himself,”

+    And turn to go. The window’s near the ground,

+    And slightly raised. Although you know it’s mean,

+    You cannot now resist, but creep up near,

+    And with a finger part the curtain’s fringe.

+    You see your darling run across the room

+    With both extended hands, and hear her say:

+    “Oh Fred! I am so very glad you’ve come,

+    I feared that stupid thing would never leave,

+    I had to let him take my hand awhile,

+    And mumble over it, to get him off.”

+

+    You grasp the iron railing for support,

+    And, faint and dizzy with the agony

+    Of love’s departure, cling till all has fled;

+    Then stagger home without a trace of love.

+    Yet only Self is touched; her beauty’s there,

+    Her sparkling wit, and her intelligence,

+    Her manner even, towards you, has not changed,

+    And, were you with her, she would be the same.

+    Love’s every motive disappeared with Self,

+    No pride of conquest, no romance of thought;

+    You meet no sympathy, but ridicule!

+

+    A mother’s love may last through injury,

+    Because it reaps the self’s reward of praise

+    For constancy, through wrong. The lover’s flame.

+    Unless supplied with fuel-self, dies out,

+    For, burning, ’twould deserve supreme contempt.

+

+    The less affairs of life are traced to Self.

+    The code of Etiquette, that Chesterfield

+    Defines “Benevolence in little things,”

+    Is but a scheme to give Self consciousness

+    Of excellence in breeding, and to keep

+    “Our Circle” sep’rate by its shibboleth.

+    The stately bow, the graceful sip of wine,

+    The useless little finger’s dainty crook

+    In lifting up the fragile Sevres cup,

+    The holding of the hat in morning calls,

+    The touch of it when passing through the streets,

+    The drawing of a glove, the use of cane--

+    Our every act is coupled with the thought

+    How well Self does all this.

+

+                                 Our very words

+    Are used to gratify the self. Men talk

+    By preference, for they judge their words

+    Will gain them more applause than listening.

+    But if attention yields more fruit to Self,

+    How patiently they hear the longest tale,

+    And laugh in glee at its insipid close!

+    If with superiors, we attend, because

+    Attention pleases more with them than words;

+    But if inferiors, we must talk the most,

+    Since their attention flatters us so much.

+    The cause of converse, Self, is oftenest food.

+    How few the talks that are not spiced with “I,”

+    What “I” can do, or did or will!

+

+                                     Sometimes,

+    The Self is held, on purpose, up for jest;

+    As when men tell a joke upon themselves.

+    But here the shame of conduct or mishap

+    Is more than balanced by the hearty laugh,

+    Which gives its pleasant witness to our wit.

+    We never tell what will present ourselves

+    In such an aspect laughter cannot heal;

+    Although it compliments our telling powers.

+

+    Attentions to the fair, but seek for Self

+    Their smiles of favor. Little deeds of love

+    To those around us, look for their reward.

+    The youth polite, who gives his chair to Age,

+    “Without a thought of Self,” is yet provoked,

+    If Age do not evince, by nod or smile,

+    His obligation to that unthought Self.

+

+    The very qualities we call innate,

+    Arise and rule through Self. Our reverence,

+    Or tendency to worship, is to gain

+    A good. Religion grows this tendency

+    Into the various Churches, all whose ends

+    Are to secure eternal good for Self.

+    And those who preach that man does sacrifice

+    Himself for fellow-men, I ask, why none

+    Will give his soul for others’? Many give

+    The paltry life on Earth for others’ good;

+    The very stones would cry “O! fool!” to him

+    Who’d yield his soul; for that is highest Self,

+    And nothing e’er can compensate its loss.

+

+    In all these things, Self stands behind the scenes,

+    And men see not the force that moves them on.

+    But in the boudoir, ’tis enthroned supreme,

+    And does not care to hide the cloven foot.

+    In every home, the marble and the log,

+    In mammoth trunks, and chests of simple pine,

+    In rosewood cases, and the pasteboard box,

+    Are crammed the slaves of Self, to poor and rich,

+    The clothes that, fine or common, feed its pride.

+    The velvets, satins, silken _robes de flamme_,

+    The worsted, calico, and homespun stripe;

+    The Guipure, Valenciennes, and Appliqué,

+    The gimp, galloon, and shallow bias frill;

+    The Talmas, Arabs, basques and paletots,

+    The coarse plaid shawl, the hood, and woollen scarf;

+    The chignons, chatelaines, and plaited braids,

+    The beaded net, and tight-screwed knot of hair;

+    The dazzling jewels, ranged in season sets,

+    The pinchbeck, gilt, and waxen trinketry;

+    The tinted boots, half-way the silken hose,

+    The shoes that tie o’er cotton blue-and-white;

+    The corset laced to hasten ready Death,

+    The leather belt, that cuts the broad, thick waist;

+    The bosom heaving only waves of wire,

+    The bosom, cotton stuffed, beyond all shape;

+    The belladonna sparkling in the eye,

+    The finger tip, and water without soap;

+    The rouge and carmine for the city cheeks,

+    The berries’ ruddy juice for rural ones;

+    The pearly powder, with its poisoned dust,

+    The cup of flour to ghastlify the face;--

+    All these, and thousand fixtures none can count,

+    Man’s vanity, and woman’s love of show,

+    Appropriate for Self.

+                          And such is Man!

+    The puzzle of the Universe! Within,

+    A giant to himself; without, a babe.

+    A giant that we cannot but despise,

+    A babe we must admire for his power.

+    His mind, Promethean spark divine, can pierce

+    The shadowy Past, and gaze in rapturous awe

+    Upon the birth of worlds, that from the Mind

+    Eternal spring to blazing entities,

+    And whirl their radiant orbs through cooling space;

+    Or place the earth beneath its curious ken,

+    And with an “Open Sesame!” descend

+    Into its rocky chambers, there unfold

+    The stone archives, and read their graven truths--

+    Earth’s history written by itself therein--

+    How age by age, a globe of liquid fire,

+    It dimmer grew, and dark and stiff,

+    And drying, took a rough, uneven face;

+    Above the wave, the mountain’s smoking top

+    Appeared, beneath it gaped the valley’s gorge;

+    But smoking still, it stood a gloomy globe,

+    Naked and without life. And how the trees

+    And herbs their robes of foliage brought; their form

+    And life adapted to their heated bed.

+    And how a stream of animation poured

+    Upon its face, when ready to sustain;

+    Great beasts who trod the cindered soil unscathed,

+    And tramped the fervid plains with unscorched soles.

+    Great fish whose hardened fins hot waters churned

+    That steamed at every stroke. How periods passed

+    And fields and forests teemed with gentler life,

+    The waters wound in rivers to the sea,

+    Then spread their vap’ry wings and fled to land.

+    The oceans tossed in bondage patiently;

+    Volcanic mountains closed their festering mouths,

+    And Earth made ready for her master, Man.

+

+    It traces Man, expelled from Paradise,

+    Along the winding track of centuries.

+    It marks his slow development, from two,

+    To families, and tribes, and nations vast.

+    It gazes on the wondrous scenes of war,

+    And peace, and battle plain, and civic game;

+    And lives through each, with all of real life,

+    Except the body’s presence there. It turns

+    From man to beasts and birds, and careless strokes

+    The lion’s mane, the humbird’s scarlet throat.

+    It tracks the mammoth to his jungle home,

+    Or creeps within the infusoria’s cell.

+    It measures Earth from pole to pole, or weighs

+    The bit of brass, that lights the battery spark.

+    Is Earth too small, it plumes its flight through space;

+    From world to world, as bird from twig to twig,

+    It flies, and furls its wing upon their discs,

+    To tell their weight, and giant size, or breathe

+    Their very air to find its gaseous parts.

+    Now bathing in pale Saturn’s misty rings,

+    Or chasing all the moons of Jupiter

+    Behind his darkened cone. The glorious sun,

+    With dazzling vapor robe, and seas of fire,

+    Whose cyclones dart the forkèd flames far out,

+    To lap so hungrily amid the stars,

+    Is but its playhouse, where it rides the storms,

+    That sweep vast trenches through the surging fire,

+    In which the little Earth could roll unseen;

+    Or bolder still, beyond our system’s bounds,

+    It soars amid the wilderness of worlds;

+    Finds one condemned to meet a doom of fire,

+    And makes its very flames inscribe their names,

+    In dusky lines, upon the spectroscope.

+    With shuddering thought to see a world consumed,

+    The fate prepared for ours, it lingers there

+    Until the lurid conflagration dies.

+    And then seeks Earth, and leaves the laggard,

+    Light,

+    To plod its journey vast.

+                              The smallest mote

+    Of dust that settles on an insect’s wing,

+    It can dissect to atoms ultimate.

+    With these, too small for sight, may Fancy deal,

+    And revel in her Lilliputian realm.

+    These atoms forming all, by Boscovitch

+    Are proved, in everything, to be alike;

+    And ultimate, since indivisible.

+    Each in its place maintained by innate force

+    And relatively far from each, as Earth

+    From Sun.

+              Suppose, then, each to be a world,

+    Peopled with busy life, a human flood,

+    As earnest in their little plans as we,

+    As grand in their opinion of themselves!

+    Oh! what a depth of contrast for the mind!

+    The finest grain of sand, upon the beach,

+    Has in its form a million perfect worlds!

+    Or take the other scale, suppose the Earth,

+    Our great and glorious Earth, to only form

+    The millionth atom of some grain of sand,

+    That shines unnoticed on an ocean’s shore,

+    Whose waves wash o’er our whirling stars and sun

+    Too insignificant to feel their surge.

+    Another step on either side, and mind,

+    In flesh, shrinks from the giant grasp.

+    Yet noble are its pinions, strong their flight;

+    Thrice, only, do they droop their baffled strength,

+    Before the Future, Infinite, Abstract!

+    The first is locked, the second out of reach,

+    The third a maze that none can penetrate.

+    The first, alone to inspiration opes;

+    The second dashed to Earth her boldest wing,

+    Spinoza’s, who essayed the idea God,

+    And grappling bravely with the grand concept,

+    So far above the utmost strength of Man,

+    Placed God’s existence in extent and thought;

+    And filled all space with God. The Universe,

+    A bud or bloom of the Eternal Mind,

+    That opens like a flower into this form,

+    And may retract Creation in Itself!

+    Alas! that effort so sublime should end

+    In mystery and doubt.

+                          A Universe,

+    How vast so ever, has its bounds somewhere,

+    But Space possesses none, and God in Space,

+    Would be so far beyond Creation’s speck,

+    He scarce would know it did exist. That part

+    Of Mind, expressed in matter, would be lost

+    Amid the Infinite domains of thought.

+

+    Yet Man in flesh, the casket of the mind,

+    Whose wondrous power I’ve told, is ever chained,

+    A grovelling worm, to Earth, and never leaves

+    The sod where he must lie. No time is his

+    But present; not a mem’ry of the past.

+    His very food, while in his mouth, alone,

+    Tastes good. He stands a dummy in the world,

+    That only acts when acted on. How great

+    The mystery of union ’tween the two!

+    A feather touches not the body, but the mind

+    Perceives it; yet the mind may live through scenes

+    The body never knew, nor can. Yet not

+    With vivid life--the sense is lacking there.

+    The memory of a banquet may be plain,

+    So that the daintest dish could be described,

+    As well as if the eye and tongue were there;

+    The eye and tongue, alone the present know,

+    And find no good in anything that’s past.

+    All thought is folly, every path is dark;

+    Truth gleaming fairly in the distant haze,

+    On near approach becomes the blackest lie.

+    Man and his soul may go, nor will I fret

+    To learn their mystic bonds. A worm I am,

+    And worm I must remain, till Death shall burst

+    The chrysalis, and free the web-wound wings.

+    Yet, oh! ’twere grand to spurn the clogging Earth

+    And cleave the air towards yonder looming cloud;

+    To stand upon its red-bound crest and dare

+    The storm-king’s wildest wrath.

+

+                                    My thoughts

+    Grew dull, my eyelids slowly closed, the scene

+    Became confused and melted into sleep.

+    And far up in the blue, as yet untouched

+    By clouds, I saw a white descending speck.

+    Methought ’twas but a feather from the breast

+    Of some migrating swan, that Earthward fell,

+    And watched to see it caught upon the wind,

+    And sail a tiny kite to fairy land.

+    But circling down, the speck became a dove,

+    A heron, then a swan, and larger still,

+    Till I could mark a pair of great white wings,

+    Between which hung its wondrous form. Still down

+    It swept, till scarce above the trees it stood,

+    Resting on quivering wings, as if it sought

+    A place to ’light. I saw then what it was,

+    A steed of matchless beauty, agile grace,

+    Combined with muscled strength; but ere I drew

+    The first long breath, that follows such surprise

+    It gently downward swooped, and at my feet,

+    With dainty hoof, the turf impatient pawed.

+    Enrapt, I gazed upon its beauteous form,

+    Its sculptured head, and countenance benign,

+    The soft sad eyes, the arrow-pointed ears,

+    The scarlet nostrils opening like two flowers,

+    The sinewed neck, curved like a swimming swan’s,

+    The splendid mane, a cataract of milk,

+    That poured its foaming torrents half to Earth,

+    The tap’ring limbs, tipped with pink-hued hoofs,

+    That touched our soil with a proud disdain;

+    The dazzling satin coat, and netting veins,

+    And last the glorious wings, whose feathers lapped

+    Like scales of creamy gold. What seemed a cloth

+    Of woven snow, with richest silver fringe,

+    Draped with its gorgeous folds the shining flanks.

+

+    It was perfection’s type, the absolute,

+    Not one defect; the tiniest hair was smooth,

+    The smallest feather’s edge unfrayed. The eyes

+    Without the slightest bloodshot fleck, or mote.

+    No fault the microscope could have revealed,

+    Though magnifying many million times.

+    So great my wonder, that I could not move,

+    But lay entranced, while he stood waiting there;

+    Till wearied with my long delay, he raised

+    His wings half-way, and eager trembled them,

+    As bluebirds do when near their mate; a neigh

+    Of trumpet tone aroused me. Then I sprang

+    Upon his back, and wildly shouted “On!”

+    A spring with gathered feet, a clash of wings,

+    That made me cling in terror, and we swept

+    From Earth into the air. Woods, plains, and streams

+    Flashed by beneath, as, up and on, we charged

+    Straight to the frowning cloud.

+                                    My very brain

+    Reeled with our lightning speed, and dizzy height,

+    And oh! how silent was the air. No sound,

+    Except the steady beat of fanning wings,

+    That hurled us on a rod at every stroke.

+    The bellowing winds were loosed and fiercely met

+    Our flight. They tossed the broad white mane across

+    My shrinking shoulders, like a scarf of silk;

+    They blew the strong-quilled feathers all awry,

+    And like a banner beat the silvered cloth;

+    But swerving not to right or left, we pressed

+    Straight onward to the goal.

+                                 At last I reined

+    My steed upon the shaggy ridge of clouds,

+    And caracoled along the beetling cliffs,

+    Up to the very summit. Then I paused.

+    Behind me lay the world with all its hum

+    Of life, the distant city’s veil of smoke,

+    The village gleaming white amid the trees;

+    The very orchard I had left, now seemed

+    A downy nest of green, and far away

+    I caught the shimmer of the sea, where sails,

+    With glidings, glittered like the snowy gulls.

+    Behind all was serene, before me seethed

+    The caldron of the tempest’s wrath.

+                                        Thick clouds,

+    Thrice tenfold blacker than the black outside

+    We see, deep in the crackling fire-crypts writhed,

+    And boiling rose and fell. A deafening blast

+    Roaring its thunder voice above the scene,

+    As if the fiends of Hell concocted there

+    The scalding beverage of the damned.

+                                         My horse

+    Had snuffed the fumes, and rearing on the brink,

+    That fearful brink, an instant pawed the air,

+    And then sprang off. A suffocating plunge,

+    Through heat and blinding smoke, while to his neck

+    Convulsively I clung! Down through the cloud,

+    Until I gasped for breath, and felt my brain

+    Was bursting with the fervid weight.

+                                         He stopped

+    Before a large pavilion, round whose walls,

+    As faithful guard, a whirlwind fierce revolved,

+    And at whose folded door, with dazzling blade,

+    The lightning stood a sentinel. My steed

+    Was passport, and I passed within, but stopped

+    Upon the threshold, dumb with awe. The walls

+    Seemed blazing mirrors, whose bright polished sides

+    “Threw back in flaming lineaments” the form

+    Of every object there,--a trembling wretch,

+    With pallid countenance, shown ghastly red,

+    Upon a horse of War’s own direful hue,

+    I saw reflected there. The floor seemed made

+    Of tesselated froth, whose bubbles burst,

+    With constant hissing, into rainbow sparks;

+    While like the sulph’rous canopy, that drapes,

+    At evening’s close, a gory battle-field,

+    The roof of crimson vapor drooped and rose,

+    With every breath and every slightest sound.

+    And in the center of the glowing room,

+    Upon a sapphire throne an Angel sat,

+    Upon whose brow Rebuke and Wisdom met.

+    He gazed upon me with such pitying look,

+    And yet withal so stern, that all my pride

+    Was gone, and humble as a conquered child,

+    I ran with trembling haste and near the throne

+    Kneeled down.

+                  “Vain man,” he said, “and hast thou dared

+    To doubt the providence of God; Behold!”

+    And, lo! one side of the pavilion rose,

+    And out before me lay Immensity.

+    The frothy floor, now crumbling from the edge,

+    Dissolved away close to my very feet,

+    The walls contracted their three sides in one,

+    And I, beside a throne I dared not grasp,

+    Stood on a narrow ledge of fragile foam,

+    That clicked its thousand little globes of air,

+    With every motion of my feet.

+                                  Far down

+    Below, the black abyss of chaos yawned,

+    So vast, I gasped while gazing, and so deep,

+    The Sun’s swift arrowy rays flash down for years,

+    And scarcely reach the dark confines, or fade

+    Amid the impenetrable gloom. Methought

+    ’Twas Hell’s wide jaws, that opened underneath

+    The Universe, to catch as crumbs the worlds

+    Condemned, and shaken from their orbit’s track.

+    And long I looked into the vast black throat,

+    To trace the murky glow of hidden fire,

+    Or catch the distant roar. But all was still;

+    No murmur broke the silence of its gloom,

+    No faintest glimmer told of lurking light,

+    No smoky volumes curdled in its depths;

+    As dark as Egypt’s plague, serenely calm,

+    Defying light, the empty hall of Space,

+    Where twinkled not a star nor blazed a sun.--

+    A grand eternal night!

+                           I shuddering turned,

+    With freezing blood to think of falling there,

+    And stretched a palsied hand to touch the throne.

+    The Angel’s eye was sterner, as he waved

+    Towards my steed, who seemed of marble carved.

+    The wings unfolded, and he leaped in air,

+    Beating from off the ledge the flakes of foam

+    That sank, with airy spirals, out of sight.

+    With slanting flight across the gulf he sheared;

+    The moveless wings were not extended straight,

+    But stood, at graceful angle, o’er his back,

+    As, swifter than a swooping kite, he flashed

+    Adown the gloom. His flowing mane broad borne

+    Out level, like another wing; his feet

+    With slow ellipses moving alternate,

+    As if he trod an unseen path. ’Twas grand

+    To see his graceful form, more snowy white

+    Against the black relief, sublimely float

+    Across the dark profound, and down its depths,

+    Pass from my view. As when an Eagle soars

+    Beyond our vision in the azure sky,

+    We wonder what he sees, or whither flies,

+    So I stood wondering if he would return,

+    And what his destination down th’ abyss.

+

+    Above, around, all was infinitude

+    Of light and harmony. The worlds moved on,

+    In mazy multitude, without a jar,

+    Star circling planet, planet sun, and suns

+    In systems, farther yet and farther still,

+    Till multiplying millions mingled formed

+    A sheet of milky hue. And far beyond

+    The last pale star, appeared a dazzling spot,

+    That flamed with brightness so ineffable

+    The eye shrank ’neath its gleam. And from its light,

+    Athwart the endless realms of space, there streamed

+    A radiance that illumed the Universe,

+    And down across the chasm of Chaos flung

+    A wavering band of purple and of gold.

+    And in that distant spot my ’wildered eyes

+    Traced out the figure of a Great White Throne,

+    Round which, in grand and solemn majesty,

+    Slow swept Creation’s boundless macrocosm.--

+    I felt too insignificant to pray,

+    But mutely waited for the Angel’s words.

+    He spoke not, but the curtains closer drew,

+    And left a narrow opening in front.

+    Then with a speed the lightning ne’er attained,

+    Our cloud pavilion swiftly whirled through space.

+    A seed that would have slain me with its haste,

+    Had not the Angel been so near.

+                                    As on the cars,

+    We dash through towns, and mark the hurrying lights,

+    Or shudder at an engine rattling by;

+    So through our door, I marked the countless worlds,

+    In clustering systems, chained by gravity,

+    Flash by an endless course. A second’s time

+    Sufficed to pass our little group of stars,

+    That waltz about our Sun, as if it lit

+    The very Universe. Then systems came,

+    Round which our system moves, and these

+    Round others, till the series grew so vast

+    I shrank from looking. Great Alcyone,

+    Our telescopic giantess, a babe

+    Amid the monsters of the starry tribe,

+    The last familiar face in Heaven’s throng,

+    Blazed by the door; an instant, out of sight!

+    And after all that we have known or named

+    On Earth were far behind, the millions came

+    In endless multitude; and on we swept,

+    Till worlds became a dull monotony,

+    And all the wonders of the Heavens were shown.

+    A planet wheels its huge proportions past,

+    Its pimpled face with red volcanoes thick,

+    That, with our speed, seem girdling bands of light;

+    A Sun, whose flame would fade our yellow spark,

+    Roars out a moment at our narrow door

+    As through its blaze we fly, then dies away,

+    Casting a weird and momentary gleam

+    Over the Angel’s unrelenting face;

+    A meteor tears its whizzing way along,

+    All showering off the scintillating sparks

+    That mark its trail. Far off, a comet runs

+    Its bended course, the mighty fan-like tail

+    Lit with a myriad globes of dancing fire,

+    That seemed like Argus’ eyes on Juno’s bird.

+    And on we sped, till one last Sun appeared,

+    A monstrous hemisphere of concave shape,

+    And brilliancy intense; it seemed to stand

+    On great Creation’s bounds, a lense of light.

+    Close by its vast red rim we shaved, and passed

+    Beyond, to empty space unoccupied.

+    No world, no sun, no object passed the door;

+    The steady blue, tinged with a brightening gold,

+    Alone was seen. Still on and on we flew,

+    Until a score of ages seemed elapsed,

+    And I had near forgotten Earth and home.

+

+    And yet the air grew brighter, till I feared

+    That we approached a sun, so infinite

+    In light, that I should sink in dazzled death.

+

+    We came to rest, the curtains fell away,

+    And lo! I stood within the light of Heaven.

+    And oh! its glorious light! No angry red,

+    Nor blinding white, nor sickly yellow glare,

+    But one vast golden flood, sublime, serene,

+    No object near, on which it could reflect,

+    It formed the very atmosphere itself,

+    An air in which the soul could bathe and breathe,

+    And ever live without its fleshly food.

+

+    No object near, for on the farthest bounds

+    Of space immense as mortal can conceive,

+    Creation hung, a group of clustering motes,

+    Where only suns were seen as tiny specks,

+    And Earth and smaller stars were out of sight.

+    No object near, for farther than the motes,

+    The walls of Heaven, in glorious grandeur loomed,

+    Yet near as flesh and blood could bear.

+                                            How grand!

+    From infinite to infinite extent

+    The glittering battlements were spread, the height

+    Above conception, built of purest gold,

+    Yet gold transparent, for I could discern

+    Though indistinctly, domes and spires beyond,

+    And all the wondrous workmanship divine,

+    That blazed with jewels, flashing varied hues

+    In perfect union; and bright happy fields,

+    That bloomed with flowers immortal, in whose midst

+    The crystal river ran. And through the scenes

+    Thronged million forms, that each sought happiness,

+    From million varied, purified desires.

+    Each face serenely bright as Evening’s star,

+    And some I thought I knew, were dear to me;

+    But as I gazed, they ever disappeared.

+

+    Along the walls, twelve gates of pearl were seen,

+    So great their breadth, and high their jewelled arch,

+    That Earth could almost trundle in untouched,

+    And in each arch was fixed a giant bell

+    Of silver, with a golden tongue that hung,

+    A pendant sun. So wide the silver lips,

+    That Chimularee plucked up by the roots,

+    And as a clapper swung within its circ,

+    Would tinkle, like a pebble, noiselessly

+    Against the rigid side. And as the saved

+    Were brought in teeming host, by Angel bands,

+    Before the gates, the bells began their swing;

+    And to and fro the ponderous tongue was hurled,

+    Till through the portals marched the shouting throng,

+    And then it fell against the bounding side.

+    And loud and long their booming thunder

+    Rends the golden air asunder,

+    While the ransomed, passing under,

+      Fall in praise beneath the bells,

+      Whose mighty throbbing welcome tells;

+    And the Angels hush their harps in wonder--

+      Bells of Heaven, glory booming bells!

+

+    Gentler now, the silver’s shiver

+    Purls the rippling waves that quiver

+    Through the ether’s tide forever,

+      Mellow as they left the bells,

+      Whose softening vibrate welcome tells;

+    And the quavers play adown the river--

+      Bells of Heaven, softly sobbing bells!

+

+    Then the dreamy cadence dying,

+    Sings as soft as zephyrs sighing;

+    Faintest echoes cease replying

+      To the murmur of the bells,

+      Whose stilling tremor welcome tells,

+    Faintly as the snow-flakes falling, lying--

+      Bells of Heaven, dreamy murmuring bells!

+

+    And in and out those Gates of Pearl, there streamed

+    A ceaseless throng of Angels, errand bound.

+    From one came forth a band of choristers,

+    With shining harps, and sweeping out through space,

+    Their long white lines bent gracefully, they sang.

+    Although so far away, that purest air

+    Brought every note exquisite to my ear.

+    ’Twas richly worth life’s toil, to catch one bar

+    Of Heavenly melody. Oh! I would give

+    My pitiful existence, once again

+    To hear the strains that floated to me then,

+    So full, so deep, so ravishingly sweet;

+    Now gentle as a mother’s lullaby,

+    They almost died away, then louder rose,

+    And rolled their volumes through the boundless realms,

+    That trembled with the diapason grand;

+    Until eternal echoes caught the strain,

+    And glory in the highest swelled sublime.

+

+    Entranced, I lay with ’wildered half-closed eyes,

+    Till from another gate, another host

+    Marched forth, the armies of the living God.

+    Beneath their thunder-tread all Heaven shook,

+    And at their head the tall Archangel strode.

+    How grandly terrible his mien! His face

+    Lit with a soul that only kneels to Three;

+    The lofty brows drawn slightly to a frown

+    The eyes that beam with vast intelligence,

+    The depths of distance piercing with their glance;

+    The chiselled lips, compressed with stern resolve,

+    Yet marked with lines and curves of tender love,

+    That ever with a sigh Wrath’s vial broke

+    Upon the doomed. His splendid form so tall,

+    That as he paused a moment in the gate

+    His dazzling crest just grazed the silver bell.

+    He wore no arms nor armor, save a sword

+    Without a sheath, that blazed as broad and bright

+    As sunset bars that shear the zenith’s blue--

+    A sword, that falling flatly on the host

+    Of Xerxes, would have crushed them as we crush

+    A swarm of ants. An edge-stroke on the Earth

+    Would gash the rocky shell to caverned fire.

+    Unfolding wings would shake a continent,

+    He floated down the depths. Behind him came

+    A million foll’wers, counterparts in all,

+    Save presence of command.

+                              I wondered not

+    That one should breathe upon the Syrian might,

+    And still the sleeping hearts, four thousand score.

+

+    And from Creation’s little corner came

+    The Guardian Angels, bearing in their arms

+    Their charges during life. As laden bees,

+    They flew to Heaven’s hive; and some passed by

+    So closely I their burdens could discern;

+    And though they came from far-off, unseen Earth,

+    The stiffened forms were borne all tenderly.

+    Some bore the dimpled babe, with soft-closed eyes,

+    As if upon its mother’s breast; its hands,

+    Unhardened yet by toil of life, its face

+    Unfurrowed yet by care’s sharp plough; and some

+    The age-bent form, with ghostly silvered hair,

+    And features gaunt in death, that would have seemed

+    A hideous sight, in any light but Heaven’s;

+    Some bore the rich, who made of Mammon friends,

+    Who wore the purple with a stainless soul;

+    Some bore the poor, who mastered poverty,

+    And broke the ashen crust beneath God’s smile;

+    Their work-worn hands now folded peacefully,

+    And passing towards the harp, the weary feet,

+    So often blistered in life’s bitter dust,

+    To tread with kings the golden streets of Heaven;

+    And some the maiden form bore lovingly,

+    So fair, they seemed twin sisters.

+                                       And I saw,

+    That, passing through the amber air, they caught

+    Its glowing dust upon them, and were changed,

+    The livid to the radiant. Then as they

+    Approached the City, all the walls were thronged,

+    And all the harps were throbbing to be swept.

+    And mid the throng there moved a dazzling Form,

+    The jewels of whose crown were shaped like thorns.

+    He stood to welcome, and the gates unclosed,

+    And passing through them, all the death sealed eyes

+    Were opened, and they lived!

+                                 And then I knew

+    What happiness could mean. To leave the Earth,

+    With all its torturing pains and ills of flesh;

+    The lingering, long disease, the wasted frame,

+    And, e’en in health, the constant dread of death,

+    That like the sword of Damocles impends,

+    And none may tell its fall.

+                                And worse than flesh,

+    The tortures of the mind in fetters bound;

+    Its chafings at its puling impotence,

+    Its longing after things beyond its reach,

+    Its craving after knowledge never given,

+    Its constant discontent with present time,

+    Its looking towards a future, that but breaks

+    To light alone in distance, never near;

+    Its maddening retrospect o’er wasted life,

+    And loss of golden opportunities;

+    Its consciousness of merit none admit,

+    Its sense of gross injustice from the world;

+    The forced reflections on the sway of self,

+    And consequent contempt for all mankind,

+    Or shameful servitude to their regard;

+    The poisoned thorns, that skirt the “Narrow Way”;

+    The sneering laugh, the tongue of calumny,

+    The envious spites and hates ’tween man and man,

+    The doubts that swarm with thought about our soul,

+    That whispers all our labor here is vain,

+    That death is but extinction, Heaven a myth!

+

+    To leave all these, and find a perfect life,

+    To know that Heaven is sure eternally,

+    That sickness ne’er again will waste our frame,

+    That death shall never come again. The mind

+    In perfect peace and happiness; the hidden

+    Spread out before its ken; a sweet content

+    Pervading every thought, because “just now”

+    Yields happiness as great as future years;

+    Because Life’s highest end is now attained.

+    The consciousness of merit, with reward

+    Surpassing far all we deserved. A Home

+    Of perfect peace, no envious spite or hate

+    Within its sacred walls, but all pure love

+    Towards our fellows, gratitude to God,

+    A gratitude that all Eternal life

+    Will not suffice to prove. ’Twere joy enough

+    To lie before the Throne, and ever cry

+    Our thanks for mercy so supreme! And oh!

+    The vast tranquillity of those who feel

+    That life on Earth is ended, Heaven gained!

+    The Angel marked my gaze of rapt delight,

+    And said, “Wouldst thou go nearer?” Swift as light

+    We moved towards the City. On the steps,

+    In dreamy ecstasy, I lay, afraid to move,

+    Lest all the panorama should dissolve.

+    I cared not that I was unfit to go,

+    I cared not that I must return to Earth;

+    I felt one moment in the Golden walls

+    Was worth a dungeon’s chains “threescore and ten.”

+    The glory of its music, and its light,

+    Grew too intense, and sense forsook my brain.

+

+    Again my eyes unclosed, and ’mid the stars,

+    Familiar faces of the telescope,

+    We sped, while on the last confines of space,

+    The City lay with golden halo girt.

+    The systems passed, we neared old homelike Earth;

+    And far enough to take a hemisphere

+    At single glance, we paused. The little globe

+    Was puffing on, like Kepler’s idea-beast,

+    With breath like tides, and echo sounds of life;

+    Thus trundling on its journey round the sun

+    While o’er its back swarmed men the parasites.

+    As rustic lad, who visits some great town,

+    Returns ashamed of humble country home,

+    So I now blushed to own the world I’d thought

+    Was once so great.

+                       The Angel pointed down,

+    And said, “Behold the vast domains of Earth!

+    Behold the wondrous works of man, that calls

+    Himself the measure of the Universe!

+    Those gleaming threads are rivers, and the pools

+    His boundless oceans. Those slow-gliding dots

+    The gallant ships, in which he braves the storms

+    The largest white one, see, is laboring now

+    Beneath a cloud, your hand from here might span;

+    What tiny tossings, like a jasmine’s bloom

+    That drifts along the ripples of a brook!

+    Now on the wave, now ’neath it, now ’tis gone;

+    The pool hath gulfed it like a flake of snow.

+    See, there are railroad lines, what works of art!

+    Thou canst not see the blackened threadlike tracks,

+    But thou mayst see the thundering train, that creeps

+    Across the landscape like a score of ants

+    Well laden, tandem, crawl across the floor.

+    ’Twill take a day to reach yon smoky patch

+    Of pebbles! ’Tis a great metropolis!

+    Where Man is proud in power and lasting strength;

+    Where Art hath budded into perfect bloom,

+    Where towering domes defy the touch of Time,

+    And rock-ribbed structures reck not of his scythe

+    On every side, proclaimed Creation’s lord,

+    Poor flattered Man the title proudly takes--

+    One little gap of Earth, and not a spire

+    Would lift its gilded vane; the very dust

+    Would never rise above the chasm’s mouth.

+    And mark yon crowd outside the city’s bounds,

+    They hail Man’s triumph over Nature’s laws;

+    He conquers gravity, and dares to fly!

+    The speck-like globe slow rises in the air,

+    While all the throng below shout, “God-like Man!”

+    How pitiful! The flag-decked car but drags

+    Its way, a finger’s breadth above their heads,

+    And falls, a few leagues off, into the sea;

+    When ships must rescue Man, the king of air!

+    “He soon will touch the stars,” enthusiasts cry;

+    His highest flights ne’er reach the mountain-top,

+    That lifts its mole-hill head above the plain.

+

+    What different views above and underneath!

+    From one, the silken pear cleaves through the cloud,

+    And floats, beyond your vision, in the blue,

+    And franchised Man no longer wears Earth’s chain;

+    The other sees him drifting o’er the ground,

+    Beneath the level of the hills around,

+    The captive still of watchful gravity.

+

+    Upon yon strip of land, two insect swarms

+    Are drawn up, front to front, in serried lines;

+    These are the armies, ’neath whose trampling tread

+    The very Earth doth tremble, now they join

+    In dreadful conflict. From the battling ranks

+    Leap tiny bits of flame, and puffs of smoke,

+    Where thundering cannon belch their carnage forth;

+    The heated missile cleaves its sparkling way,

+    The screaming shell its smoke-traced curve; the sword

+    Gleams redly with the varnish of its blood,

+    The bayonets like ripples on a lake.

+    How palsied every arm, how still each heart!

+    If one discharge of Heaven’s artillery roared

+    Above their heads--not that faint mutter thou

+    Perchance hast heard from some electric cloud,

+    But when a meteor curves immensity,

+    And bursts in glittering fragments that would dash

+    Thy world an atom from their path. But God

+    Hath thrown the blanket of His atmosphere

+    Around the Earth, and shield, it from the jar

+    Of pealing salvos, that reverberate

+    Through Heaven’s illimitable dome.

+                                       Yet thou,

+    The meanest of thy race of worms, hast dared

+    To question God’s designs. Know then that He

+    Ordains that all, His glory shall work out.

+    The coral architect beneath the wave

+    Doth magnify Him, as the burning sun

+    That lights a thousand worlds. His power directs

+    The mechanism of a Universe,

+    Whose vastness thou hast been allowed to see,

+    And yet the mottled sparrow in the hedge

+    Falls not without His notice. Magnitude

+    Is not the seal of power, though man thinks so;

+    The least brown feather of the sparrow’s wing,

+    In adaptation to its end displays

+    God’s wisdom, as the ocean. Harmony

+    Is Heaven’s watchword, key to all designs.

+    A tendency towards perfection’s end

+    Pervades Creation; to this perfect end,

+    The polity Divine is leading Earth.

+    Endowed with reason, Man, perforce, is free;

+    And God, forseeing how he’ll freely act,

+    Adjusts all circumstance accordingly.

+    The order of this sequence, Man doth learn

+    In part; adapts himself to these fixed laws;

+    And thus is formed a general harmony.

+    Although the individual may oppose,

+    His forseen freedom, acting in a net

+    Of circumstance, secures the wished-for end.

+    The bloodiest wars are sources of great good,

+    Invasive floods rouse national energies,

+    Or, mingling, form a greater people still;

+    Hume’s skepticism foils its own design,

+    And rouses lusty champions of the Truth,

+    Who build its walls far stronger than before.

+    Poor sordid Man! like all your gold-slave race,

+    You deem wealth happiness. Hence, all your doubts

+    About God’s providence are based on gold.

+    The wicked have it, and the righteous not.

+    What you assert is oftenest reversed,

+    And in a census of the world, you’d find

+    The good, in every land, the wealthiest.

+    But Earth is not the bar where Man is judged;

+    But only where free-will and circumstance

+    May join in general progress. Gold is good!

+    Then good depends on use of circumstance,

+    And not on moral merit. Well ’tis so!

+    For were the righteous only blessed, all men

+    Would righteousness pursue, from sordid aims,--

+    The most devout, who love their money best;

+    And thus good actions’ essence would be lost,

+    That they be done for good, within itself,

+    And not for benefit to be conferred.

+

+    Then for your doubts about the righteous poor;

+    A certain law is fixed for general good,--

+    Some actions yield a gain and some a loss.

+    A wicked man may use the first, and gain,

+    A righteous man may use the last, and lose;

+    The wicked does not gain by wickedness,

+    But by compliance with this natural law.

+    The righteous, still as righteous, might have gained

+    By different course of conduct, had he known;

+    But his condition now, can but be changed

+    By special miracle; but miracles,

+    In favor of the righteous, would destroy

+    All strife for good as good.

+    Their compensation in another world;

+                                         The poor may find

+    And even here, in consciousness of right,

+    In surety of Heav’n, and peace of mind.

+    And in the case you’ve stated, like all those

+    Who talk as you have done, you overdraw,

+    And color more with Fancy than with Truth.

+    You’ll find no widow, perfect in her trust,

+    As you’ve described, who is so destitute.

+    Go search the lanes and alleys; where you find

+    The greatest squalor, there is greatest crime;

+    For poverty is oftenest but a name

+    For reckless vice, and vile depravity.

+    Your case is but exception to the rule,

+    And not the rule, of Providence. To give

+    The righteous, only, wealth and worldly store

+    Would take away Man’s freedom, and all good.

+

+    But I will answer in your folly’s mode.

+    The justice, then, of Nature’s laws you doubt,

+    Forgetting they are fixed for general good,

+    And not for individual. These laws,

+    In their effects, you praise as very good;

+    Yet, in their causes, call the most unjust.

+    The fertile fields, with grain for man’s support,

+    Are nourished by a miasmatic air,

+    That, sickening but a few, feeds all the world.

+    While, were the air all pure, a few were well,

+    And millions starving. In the tropics, too,

+    The scenes you deprecate, themselves but cause

+    The very beauties you admire. Unjust,

+    You would enjoy effects without a cause.

+    The goods of Nature often take their rise

+    From what to man proves evil. For the goods,

+    He makes his mind to meet the evils; then

+    Can he complain, or think it hard to bear?

+    But Nature’s dealings towards Man are just.

+    He knows that he is free, and Nature not;

+    If he opposes Nature’s laws and falls,

+    Is Nature to be blamed? The widow’s cot

+    Is frail; the laws of general good require

+    A storm; it comes, and shattered falls the cot.

+    Should God have saved it by a miracle,

+    Then all His people could demand the same,

+    And Earth would soon become the bar of God,

+    God may exert a special providence,

+    But Man may not detect it, as the rule

+    Invariable of life, and still be free;

+    For he were thus compelled to seek the good.

+    Then Nature, over Man, holds not a tyranny,

+    But keeps the perfect pandect of her laws,

+    And Man is free to obey them, or oppose.

+

+    Like shallow-thoughted reasoners of Earth,

+    You make assertions without slightest proof,

+    Or faintest shade of truth. Your thesis, this:

+    God marks with disapproval all the good,

+    And blesses all the evil with His smile.

+    Entirely false in every case! The good

+    Are ever happiest, in peace of mind,

+    In ease of conscience, and the hope of Heaven.

+    The wicked may be even rich, but wealth

+    And happiness are far from synonyms.

+    Is happiness the child of circumstance,

+    Or is it not the offspring of the mind?

+    And if the mind be tranquil and serene,

+    Does happiness not follow everywhere?

+    The cause of doubt in you, and many more,

+    Is that the thousands who profess the good,

+    Are ever mourning their unhappy lot,

+    And sighing o’er the gloomy, narrow way;

+    The tribulation of the promise read,

+    Without its good cheer context. These are they

+    Who stamp with misery’s blackest seal, a life

+    Of righteousness. By these you cannot judge,

+    For they are not what they profess, and would

+    Be miserable in Heaven, unless changed.

+    But take the truly good, one who’s content

+    To take whate’er befalls, submissively;

+    Who feels assured that all works for the best;

+    Take him, in all conditions, rich or poor,

+    In sickness or in health, in pain or ease;

+    Compare your happy wicked, with his gold,

+    ’Twill not require a moment to decide

+    Which one is happier!

+                          Again, you ask

+    Why Man was not created happy, and kept so?

+    His very freedom and intelligence

+    Prevents a forcèd happiness. The ends

+    Of all Creation would be marred, and Man

+    Lose personality. A happiness

+    Made universal, asks morality

+    That’s universally compelled; and lost

+    Is all the scheme of virtue and reward.

+    Man, forced to action would degenerate

+    Into a listless, lifeless thing; the world

+    Lose all its fine machinery of thought

+    Combined with action. Beautiful variety

+    Could not exist, dull sameness would be life.

+    But Man is placed, with free intelligence,

+    Amid surroundings from which he may cull

+    A happiness intense, whate’er their nature be.

+    If bright, the consciousness they are deserved;

+    If gloomy, sweet reflections that they drape

+    A future all the brighter for their gloom.

+

+    But Man, within himself, your puzzle proves;

+    And not to you alone, for Angel wings

+    Have hovered o’er your globe, and Angel minds

+    Peered curiously into his soul, to learn

+    Its mysteries, in vain. The Mind Supreme

+    That formed the soul, alone can understand

+    Its wondrous depths. ’Tis not surprising then

+    That Man has tried in vain to know himself.

+    His mind, compared with his body, seems so great,

+    He deems its power unlimited. He finds

+    It weak, before the barriers of thought,

+    That gird it, mountain high, on every side.

+    No path can he pursue that’s infinite.

+    And few exist, that do not thither lead.

+    Hence all the vagaries that have obtained

+    Among your race. The doubt of everything,

+    Is only too far tracing of a thought

+    Into absurdity intense. If you

+    Deem all the world effect upon yourself,

+    A principle of fairness would demand

+    That you accord the right to other men.

+    The question then arises, who is he

+    That really does exist, and all the rest

+    His ideas? Sure your neighbor has the right

+    To claim the honor, just as well as you!

+    Hume’s foolish thought, extended to its length,

+    Will answer not a single end of life,

+    And terminates in nonsense none believe.

+

+    The conflict of the mental powers defeats

+    Your inquiries. You cannot reconcile

+    The unruled circumstance, with Man’s free-will

+    You deem the motive free, and Man its slave;

+    As if the motive, unintelligent,

+    Could have a freedom, or a slavery!

+    You make the motive to exist within the mind,

+    When it, perforce, must be without. You get

+    The unruled motive from the circumstance,

+    When this itself must act upon the mind,

+    And if _free_ motives rise within the mind,

+    They are a _part_, and therefore _mind_ is free.

+    And what you deemed a motive to the mind,

+    Was mental action, and its modes of thought.

+    The motive is confined to circumstance,

+    And mind the circumstance can oft control,

+    And even when it cannot, acts at will.

+

+    The mind may to a kingdom be compared,

+    Where Reason occupies the throne. Beneath

+    Its scepter bow, in perfect vassalage,

+    The faculties, desires, and appetites.

+    These then are acted on by motive powers,

+    And straight report the action to their king,

+    Who does impartially decide for each.

+    The unruled motive is without the mind,

+    And forms no part of it, although the parts,

+    Receiving motive action, so are called.

+    Thus when you hunger, the desire of food,

+    Confined to mind, is not a motive power;

+    But urged by motive bodily demand,

+    It tells the need to Reason, who decides.

+    Thus when you pare your peach, the tempting fruit

+    And fleshly need, move on the appetite,

+    Who begs the Reason for consent to eat;

+    Your friend’s opinion of your self-control,

+    Is motive to Desire of esteem,

+    Who begs the Reason to refuse consent.

+    The Reason, then, like righteous judge, decrees

+    In favor of that one, more strongly shown;

+    And feels a perfect freedom in its choice.

+

+    ’Tis most unfair to wait the action’s end,

+    Then cry, the mind was forced to choose this act;

+    But choice is Reason’s free decree. Sometimes

+    The Reason errs, and evil then ensues;

+    But Reason, now more conscious that ’tis free,

+    Regrets it had not acted otherwise.

+    By knowing what your reason deems the best,

+    You judge how other men will act. You learn,

+    By intercourse, what they permit to change

+    The Reason’s sentence. So, while with a friend,

+    You show your wealth, because you know he’s free,

+    And can, and will, resist impulse to crime.

+    Were he not free, you’d dare not go alone

+    With him, for, any moment, might arise

+    A motive irresistible, and he

+    Would kill and rob, because that motive’s slave.

+    Were he not free, you were no more secure,

+    In pleasant parlance, than on desert isle.

+

+    The laws are made for man, alone, as free.

+    For, otherwise, the motives they present

+    Were blind attempts so coincide with Fate.

+    They would complete the gross absurdity,

+    Of Man collective governing himself,

+    And therefore free, while individuals

+    Are helpless slaves of motives they but aid

+    To furnish.

+                Fate, as held in fullest form,

+    Yourself has proved the theory of fools;

+    For were it true, a blind passivity

+    Were Man’s perfection on the Earth. Compare

+    The two; Free-will as held, whate’er their faith,

+    By every one, in daily practices;

+    A world of harmony, for very wars

+    Yield good; a mechanism complicate,

+    That even Angels, wondering at, admire;

+    A world, whose wondrous progress is maintained

+    By practical belief in liberty.

+    And on the other hand, behold a world

+    Of universal inactivity!

+    Its millions starving for delinquent Fate;--

+    I doubt your faith would last till dinner-time,

+    A morning’s lapse would change a hungry globe

+    To firm belief in free-will work for food.

+

+    With many, God’s foreknowledge binds free-will;

+    He knows the future, how each man will act,

+    And man can never change from what God knows.

+    They reason thus, that prescience is decree,

+    And what God knows will happen, must take place.

+    That God may know the future of _free_-will

+    I prove by this. Suppose two worlds alike,

+    And governed by two Gods. Each one can see,

+    And foresee all transpires in both the worlds,

+    Yet each o’er th’ other’s world exerts no power.

+    A man in one does wrong; the other God

+    May have foreseen the action for an age,

+    Yet had not slightest power to cause or stop.

+    Does his foreknowledge qualify the act?

+    If thus you can suppose, why not believe,

+    When errors flow from opposite belief?

+    God in the future stands, and waits for man,

+    Who works the present, only gift of Time.

+    There is no future save in God’s own mind.

+    Man’s future means continued present time;

+    God’s future is but present time to Him,

+    In which He lives, not will live when it comes.

+    Man’s acts He sees as done, not to be done.

+    And God compels not more than Man does Man,

+    Who sees his fellow’s deeds, not causes them.

+    Man only knows Man’s present acts; but God

+    The future sees, as present to His mind.

+

+    To end with perfect proof, you know you’re free.

+    This all the world attests, and each believes.

+    How subtle soe’er may his reasoning be,

+    He contradicts it throughout all his life;

+    And all his plans, and all the right and wrong

+    Of self and friends he bases on free-will.

+    If disbelief no inconvenience prove,

+    Few men believe what is not understood;

+    And yet the most familiar things of life

+    Are far beyond their comprehensions’ power.

+    Who understands the turning of the food

+    To sinew, muscle, blood, and bone? yet who

+    Will starve because he knows not how ’tis done?

+    Who understands the mystery of birth,

+    And when and where the soul originates?

+    And yet a million mothers bend, to-day,

+    O’er tender babes, and know that they exist;

+    A billion people know they once were born.

+    Who understands the mystery of death,

+    And how the soul is severed from its clay?

+    Yet who has not wept o’er departed ones,

+    Received the dying clasp, the dying look,

+    And known, full well, Death’s bitter, bitter truth?

+    None comprehends the movement of a limb,

+    Yet many boast the powers of their’s might.

+    Then why doubt freedom of the will, when life,

+    In every phase, but proves its certain truth?

+    The edifice of shallow theorists

+    Before the sweeping blade of practice falls.

+

+    Your dive into the heart yields folly’s fruit;

+    The selfish theory, carried to its end,

+    Makes wrong of right, and overturns the world.

+    And strong it is in seeming; for the self,

+    In human conduct, plays important part.

+    But ’tis not action’s only source, nor dims

+    The quality of every action’s worth.

+    ’Tis true that Man exists in self alone,

+    And in himself feels pain or pleasure. True,

+    An instinct teaches to avoid the one,

+    And seek the other; true, that every act,

+    How small soe’er, gives pleasure or gives pain.

+    Yet thousand deeds are done without regard

+    To one or other, or effect on Self.

+    Howe’er an action may affect the Self,

+    If he that acts has not a thought of it,

+    The action is not selfish. You appeal

+    To Man, and so will I appeal to you.

+    You find a helpless brute, with broken limb,

+    Upon the roadside, moaning out its pain.

+    Now, though to aid will surely pleasure give,

+    And to neglect will cause remorseful pain,

+    Is there a single thought of this, when you,

+    With kindest hand, bind up the swollen bruise,

+    And hold the grateful water to its mouth?

+    Is not each thought to ease the sufferer’s pain?

+    Is not the Self first found, when on your way

+    You go, with lighter heart, for kindness done?

+    And while you think with pleasure on the deed,

+    Would you not feel despised in your own eyes,

+    If consciousness revealed ’twas done for Self?

+    But should you say that Self was thus concealed,

+    And still evoked the deed, the argument

+    The same; if Self was out of thought, the deed

+    Had other source.

+                      In all, you thus mistake

+    The deed’s effect, unthought of, for its source.

+    God, in His wisdom, hath affixed to good

+    Performed, a pleasure, and to evil, pain.

+    But selfish actions are not good, you’ve said,

+    And therefore cannot slightest pleasure yield.

+    Here, then, your system contradicts itself;

+    All actions emanate from love of Self,

+    To find the highest pleasure for that Self;

+    And yet the pleasure’s lost by very search;

+    What good soe’er apparently is sought,

+    The consciousness of selfish aims destroys.

+    And here is wisdom manifest. When Self

+    Would seek the good, for pleasure to the Self,

+    The pleasure is not found; but when it seeks

+    The good alone, true pleasure is conferred.

+    I mean the Self of soul, not Self of flesh;

+    For pleasure to the sense, to be attained

+    Is sought; these two are mingled intricate

+    (And hard to separate), in thousand ways.

+    But when Man’s higher Self would seek its good,

+    It must forget the Self. In every case

+    You instanced, Self of soul must be unthought,

+    For pleasure will not come at call of Self.

+    Your gambler none will doubt has selfish ends;

+    Not so the preacher, for his pleasure sought,

+    Would ne’er be found; it must be out of thought.

+    His burning eloquence, his pastoral care,

+    Can not proceed from any love of Self,

+    For Self would suffer, when it knew their source;

+    But as he acts from love of good as good,

+    The Self is happy. When he ascertains

+    That some have died in sin through his neglect,

+    The Self is grieved, not that it was uncared,

+    For care of Self would not allay the pain,

+    But that a duty had not been performed;

+    That good had been neglected, as a good.

+    The gambler’s object may be highest good

+    For Self, according to his estimate;

+    The preacher seeks a good, but not for Self;

+    When Self appears, the good to evil turns.

+    Nor is the mystic selfish in his cave,

+    Save that he buries talents in himself,

+    That might avail for good to other men;

+    But all his mind is bent on pleasing God,

+    His only thought of Self is for its pain;

+    And this he deems acceptable to Heaven.

+    You can not judge by your analysis,

+    But by what passes in the actor’s mind.

+    One surely then could not be selfish termed,

+    Who only lived to mortify the Self,

+    Howe’er mistaken may his conduct be.

+    Nor is the man, who gives his wealth away,

+    If from right principles he gives. ’Tis true,

+    He finds a pleasure in the deed when done,

+    But if to gain that pleasure he has given,

+    It turns to gall and wormwood in his grasp.

+    If two men matches light, and know full well,

+    If one is dropped, a house will be consumed,

+    He is the most guilty that allows its fall.

+    The miser, then, who knows he does a wrong,

+    Is by that knowledge rendered criminal.

+    “The quality of actions must be judged”

+    From their intents, that often differ wide;

+    The man who shoots his friend by accident

+    Has no intent, and therefore does no wrong;

+    But he who murders does a score of wrongs,--

+    A score of basest motives prompt the deed,

+    All centred in the Self. The Christian’s work

+    Must, from its very nature, have no Self,

+    Or it becomes unchristian. Man can judge,

+    Not from effect, but motives ascertained

+    By inference, and experience. The law

+    Is formed hereon, and modified by years.

+    Time teaches men that punishment will stop,

+    And only punishment, the spread of crime.

+    Instinct and Nature’s order teaches you

+    That pain must follow wrong. A man commits

+    A crime; if left unpunished, he repeats;

+    And others, seeing his security,

+    Will do as he has done. So all mankind

+    Would hasten on to lawlessness and ruin.

+    But law, for real wrong inflicts a wrong,

+    Which would be just did it no farther go;

+    But it is proved expedient, inasmuch

+    As it prevents continued crime. Then death

+    By law can not be murder termed, since good

+    In aim and end, without malicious thought.

+    Thus good to many flows from wrong to one

+    (If that may wrong be termed that takes the rights

+    By conduct forfeited), who should receive,

+    Though none reaped benefit. For many’s good,

+    The law is made, yet never does a wrong

+    To individuals, unless deserved.

+

+    Throughout your reas’ning, like all Earthly minds,

+    When dataless, essaying hidden truths,

+    You wander blindly in conjecture’s field,

+    And if you find the truth, it is a chance.

+    You fain would raise a stone of skepticism,

+    By granting souls immortal unto beasts;

+    You prove your pointer must possess a soul,

+    And by your argument, the trees have souls;

+    For when an oak has fallen, every twig

+    May still be there, and something, life, be gone.

+    A chair, a table, anything you see,

+    Possesses something, not of any parts,

+    But that to which the parts are said, belong,

+    Then, one by one, take all the parts away,

+    The something called the table must exist,

+    For ’twas not in a part, nor is removed.

+

+    The mind of beasts exists but through their flesh,

+    And is developed subject to its laws,

+    And flesh is the condition of their life.

+    When flesh dissolves, the mind disintegrates,

+    And ceases to exist. Man feels within,

+    The consciousness of soul, that would survive

+    Though flesh were torn to shreds upon the wheel.

+    The parts of soul that live alone through flesh,

+    Must perish with it in the hour of death.

+

+    But having postulated Self, as source

+    Of human conduct, you compel the acts

+    To fit your theory. You change effect

+    For cause. Where’er a moral pleasure’s found,

+    You judge that for its gain the deed was done;

+    As if the pleasure could be gained by search!

+    That Self does enter largely into inner life

+    Is very plain, for everything affects,

+    In some way, Self; but does the mind regard

+    Effect, or is its object something else?

+    The appetites, affections, and desires,

+    You make of selfish origin, yet know

+    That is not selfish, which alone affects;

+    But acting with a reference to effect.

+    The appetites are instincts; as you breathe,

+    You hunger, thirst, in helplessness. Not Self,

+    But food or drink, the object of your thought.

+    And even while the taste is in your mouth,

+    The mind dwells on the taste, not on the Self.

+    Desires are partly selfish in their mode;

+    Desire of knowledge, seeking honor’s meed,

+    Is selfish; led by curiosity,

+    ’Tis not more selfish than an appetite.

+    Desire of power, esteem, and wide-spread fame,

+    Is selfish, when the thought of their effect

+    On Self shapes out the conduct; when desired

+    For their own sake, unselfish.

+                                   On the list

+    Affections terminate, you falsely rail

+    The mother, and the lover; both sincere,

+    And both without a thought of selfish aim.

+    ’Tis no reproach to say the mother’s love,

+    In fervid instinct, and development,

+    Is like the cow’s, that God in wisdom gives.

+    No love so pure as that which moves the cow

+    To hover round her young, to bear the blows

+    Impatient hunger deals the udder drained,

+    To smooth with loving tongue the tender coat,

+    Or meet the playful forehead with her own;

+    With threatening horn, to guard approach of harm;

+    And watch, with ceaseless care, the charge in sleep.

+    Her careful love continues, till the calf

+    Has grown beyond her need, and ceases then.

+    A mother loves because it is her child:

+    This is the surest reason you could give.

+    Th’ affection is spontaneous in her breast,

+    But fed and strengthened by his life, if good.

+    The opposites to love you named, affect

+    Her love, by not an injury done to Self,

+    But by their evil, which her soul abhors.

+    Her son’s antagonism’s not to her,

+    But to the good she loves. Her heart withdraws

+    Its twining tendrils from unworthiness.

+    As usual, you select supposed effects,

+    And then assume their causes. Could you see

+    The mother’s heart, you’d find the loss of love

+    Caused not by wrong to her, but wrong abstract

+    Developed in the concrete deeds of crime.

+    Her love is governed by a moral sense,

+    Or idea of the good; the people’s thought

+    About herself comes in as after-part.

+    Bad treatment to herself, although it pain,

+    Deals not a fatal blow to love, except

+    As showing lack of principle in him.

+    And so your lover is not hurt in Self,

+    But moral sense. The loved one’s perfidy,

+    And not her ridicule, beheads your love;

+    Her stunning words were playful pleasantry,

+    Did they not show the baseness of the heart.

+    Indeed, to turn your reasoning on yourself,

+    Her manner even towards you has not changed,

+    And were you present, she would still seem yours;

+    Her eaves-dropped words do not affect the Self,

+    Save as they show her falsity of heart.

+    And tossing on your pillow, through the night,

+    The crushing thought of wrecked integrity

+    Gives deeper pain than all her ridicule.

+    And Self, though pained at thought of being duped,

+    Enjoys relief in thought of its escape.

+    To show that Love is built on higher grounds

+    Than paltry good for Self; that it must have,

+    As corner-stone, a percept of the good,

+    Existing in the object loved, suppose

+    You’re on the topmost height of wildest love,

+    Your arm around her, and your lingering kiss

+    Upon her lips; and Self is king of love.

+    She, nestling on your shoulder, finds ’tis wrong,

+    That love, however true, may grow too warm;

+    That every kiss, however pure, abstracts

+    Some little part from maiden modesty,

+    And steals a pebble from her honor’s wall

+    And rising with the firm resolve, says, “Cease,

+    Unwind your arm, restrain your fervid lips;

+    It may be wrong, and right is surely safe!”

+    Now though the Self is bitterly denied,

+    The rapturous clasp and tender kiss forbid,

+    Is not your love increased a thousand-fold?

+    Do not you feel intensely gratified

+    At this assurance of her moral worth?

+    And would you, for the world, breath aught to cause

+    Her pain, or least regret for her resolve?

+    How firm your trust, how sweet your confidence!

+    You know ’twas not capricious prudery,

+    For your caresses had been oft received;

+    Nor was it sly hypocrisy to win

+    Your heart, for that was long since hers. No thought,

+    But spotless purity, inspired the act;

+    And you are happy, though the Self’s denied.

+

+    The little things of life, that men account

+    Without a moral value, may be done

+    With reference to Self; but oftenest,

+    The mind regards the act, not its effect

+    Upon the Self. The code of Etiquette,

+    The small amenities of social life,

+    The converse, and the articles of dress,

+    May all belong to Self; but moral acts,

+    Those known as right or wrong, have higher source

+    Than Self in any mode.

+                           Within Man’s breast

+    There’s something, apprehending good and bad,

+    Called conscience, or the moral sense; it views,

+    Impartially, each act of his, decides

+    Its quality by rule of right and wrong;

+    All trust its judgments most implicitly.--

+    The good is found, yields greatest happiness;

+    Yet seek it for the sake of happiness,

+    And good is evil, with its misery!

+    The good must be pursued, because a good,

+    The evil shunned, because an evil. Thus,

+    The moral sense discerns these qualities

+    In others, and directs our love.

+                                     A blow

+    The deadliest to our love, would be a blow

+    Aimed at the principle of good. A love,

+    Existing through the injuries done to Self,

+    May meet the public’s praise, and feel its own;

+    But love would merit self-contempt, that loved

+    Whate’er opposed the good. The son may treat

+    The mother with unkindness, yet her love

+    Be undiminished; if he lie, or steal,

+    Her love is less; she cannot love his deed,

+    And cannot love the heart from which they flow

+    So with the youth who gives his chair to Age,

+    He does not so resent that Self’s denied

+    Its meed of thanks, as that ingratitude

+    Should thus be manifest, in little things.

+    A comrade, served the same, would anger cause.

+

+    But him who would give up the highest Self,

+    The soul, for others’ good, you deem a fool;

+    And ask why sacrifice ne’er claimed a soul?

+    Because the soul cannot be sacrificed;

+    No harm to that can others benefit.

+    But if it could, how truly grand the man

+    Who’d take eternal woe for fellow-men!

+    But God, who makes the soul the care of life,

+    Makes every soul stand for itself alone,

+    And in His wisdom hath ordained this law:

+    The greater good man gets for his own soul,

+    The greater good on others’ he confers,

+    While evil to himself, an evil gives.

+

+    Then comes the question of this abstract good,

+    That moral sense declares the end of life.

+    What is its nature? whence does it arise?

+    And whence does man derive the half-formed thought?

+    You have compared the systems that define,

+    Each in its way, the hidden theory.

+    None satisfy, though each some element

+    Sets forth in clear distinctness. Take them all,

+    Select the true of each, as Cousin does,

+    And will eclecticism satisfy?

+    And does the soul not cry for something more?

+    For something that it feels ’twill never reach,

+    The good, as known to minds unclogged with flesh?

+    Man takes the dim outlines of abstract thought,

+    And seeking to evolve their perfect form,

+    The very outlines grow more indistinct;

+    As gazing at a star will make it fade.

+    Man’s only forms of good are blent with flesh,

+    And when he seeks to take the flesh away,

+    And leave the abstract, he is thus confused,

+    As if he should withdraw the wick and oil,

+    And seek to find the flame still in the lamp.

+

+    To learn the source of ideas of the Good,

+    Trace Man collective, to his babyhood;

+    For ’mid the prejudice of full-grown thought,

+    The truth would be effectually concealed.

+    Through every people scattered o’er the globe,

+    There does prevail some idea of a God;

+    Though rude and barbarous this idea be,

+    It still, in some form, does exist. The good,

+    With all, bears reference to this thought;

+    And what this Deity approves is good,

+    And what He disapproves is bad. Men learn

+    What He approves, and what He disapproves,

+    By revelation, inference, and instinct.

+    God’s sanction then is origin of Good,

+    Though afterwards men learn the sweet effects,

+    And practise it for its own sake; and call

+    Their little effort, grandest abstract truth.

+    Developing in intellectual strength,

+    They plaster up this good in various forms,

+    Until, refined beyond all subtilty,

+    It seems to them a self-existent good.

+

+    The good is then a certain quality,

+    In actions, or existence, that assures

+    Divine approval. This vast idea, God,

+    Creation sows in every human heart;

+    All Nature’s grand designs demand a God,

+    A God intelligent. The same instinct

+    That tells His being, teaches what He loves;

+    And what He loves with every people’s good.

+    But different nations entertain ideas

+    Diverse in reference to a Deity,

+    And different notions of what pleases Him.

+    One deems the care of God’s child-gift her good;

+    Another tears the heart-strings from her babe,

+    And feeds, for good, the sacred crocodile.

+

+    The good lies in the thought of pleasing God:

+    The consciousness that God is pleased with us,

+    A pleasure yields, and good might there be sought

+    For pleasure’s sake, and prove a selfish aim;

+    But moral selfishness a pain imparts,

+    And good, for pleasure sought, defeats the search.

+

+    The good is sought, because it pleases God,

+    Not with the doer, but with what is done.

+    Good has its origin in th’ idea God,

+    And what He loves; but to continue good

+    It must retain approval in the act,

+    And not transfer it to the agent’s self.

+    The consciousness that God approves a deed,

+    Makes Man approve, and thus his mind is brought

+    In correlation with the Mind Divine.

+    The man who does an alms, if done to gain

+    God’s favor for himself, feels selfish pain;

+    But if because the act, not he, will please,

+    He finds the pleasure. Man, as time rolls on,

+    Finds general laws that please or displease God,

+    And ranging, under these, subordinates

+    Amenable to them and not to God,

+    The moral quality of lesser deeds

+    He reckons by these laws, nor does ascend

+    To God, that gives their moral quality.

+    Jouffroy, in Order, placed the Abstract Good,

+    And paused a step below the real truth,

+    The idea God, whence Order emanates.

+

+    Thus Man, progressing, good withdraws from God

+    And seems an independent entity,

+    And man denominates it, Abstract Good.

+    He can attain the Abstract but in part;

+    When mind is freed from flesh, he may attain

+    To its full grandeur. Here, at most, he grasps

+    A faint outline, and fits it on concrete.

+    No concept occupies one act of mind,

+    But opening the lettered label, he

+    May count the attributes, and by an act

+    Complex, of memory and cognition, gain

+    Some idea of his Abstract. Thus of “Man,”

+    One act can only cognize M-A-N,

+    But opening, he finds the attributes,

+    As “mammal,” “biped,” “vertebrate.” This act

+    Is complex, and he cannot unitize,

+    Save by the bundle of a word. You’ve said

+    It answers all the purposes of life,

+    Then why seek more? lest speculation vain

+    Point out dim realms, where Man can never tread,

+    These baffling thoughts are given, as peacocks’ feet,

+    To Man’s fond pride. The simplest avenue

+    Of thought, pursued, will reach absurdity,

+    To comprehension finite.

+                             Even the truth

+    Of numbers you presume to doubt. Two balls,

+    You claim, can ne’er be two unless alike.

+    You mingle quantity and number, foolishly,

+    As if a ball the size of Earth, and one,

+    A tiny mustard-seed, would not be two!

+    You deem all Mathematics wide at fault,

+    Because Man’s powers to illustrate are weak.

+    Earth has oft seen a pure right angle drawn,

+    Because Man’s sight could not detect a flaw;

+    And if to his discernment perfect made,

+    He must admit its perfect form. If life,

+    In every intricate demand, finds truth,

+    Why seek to overturn by sophistry?

+    You see and know Achilles far beyond

+    The tortoise, yet the super-wise must prove

+    That he can never pass the creeping thing,

+    Although his speed a hundred times as swift!

+    When Man commences, he may find a doubt

+    In everything; his life, his neighbor’s life,

+    The outside world, may all be but a myth;

+    Then let him so believe, but let him act

+    Consistently; but does the skeptic so?

+    He crams all Nature in his little mind,

+    Yet how he cringes to her slightest law!

+    He flees the rain, and wards the cold, or fears

+    The lightning’s glittering blow. He doubts his frame

+    Can work by mechanism so absurd,

+    Yet will not for a day refrain from food!

+

+    When Man compares his body and his mind,

+    And tries the power of each, he magnifies

+    The mind to Deity, and yet how small

+    Compared with what it has to learn! The more

+    Man knows, the more he finds he does not know;

+    And as a traveller toiling up the hill,

+    Each upward step reveals a wider view

+    Of fields of thought sublime he dares not hope

+    To ever reach in life; and wearily he sits

+    Him down upon the mountain-side, so far

+    Beneath its untrod top, and recklessly

+    Doubts everything, because beyond his grasp.

+

+    All skeptic reasoning ends, as did your own,

+    No fruit but blind bewilderment of thought!

+    And none but fools will e’er believe sincere

+    The faith that doubts alone by theory,

+    And yet approves by practice. Such is yours;

+    The stern necessities of life demand

+    A practical belief, and such is given;

+    And still, forsooth, because your narrow mind

+    Cannot contain the Truth in perfect form,

+    You dare deny it does exist. But few

+    Of skeptic minds are let to live on Earth,

+    And even these made instruments of good,

+    In calling forth defenders of the Truth,

+    Who add their strength to its Eternal Walls.

+    Then here behold God’s wisdom manifest!

+    Amid the care of countless greater orbs,

+    He watches Earth, and knows its smallest thing.

+    While Man, as individual, is free,

+    Collective Man is being surely led

+    Towards an end, but when it will be reached,

+    God knows alone. Then Man will be removed

+    Into a higher or a lower sphere,

+    As he has worthy proved. With Man ’twill be

+    A great event; his awful Judgment-day!

+    When from those far-off realms, the Son shall come

+    With Angel retinue, and through the worlds,

+    Shall lead their solemn flight, to where we stand;

+    And as the trump shall peal its clarion tones,

+    And beat away Earth’s gauze of atmosphere,

+    The millions living, and the billions dead,

+    Will leave the sod, and “caught up in the air,”

+    Shall stand before the Throne, to hear their doom.

+    Then, faces pale with fear, and trembling limbs,

+    Will be on every side, as on the air

+    They rest, with nothing solid ’neath their feet;

+    And see dismantled Earth burst into flames,

+    And reel along its track, a globe of fire,

+    The volumed smoke, a dusky envelope;

+    Its revolutions wrapping pliant flames,

+    In scarlet girdles, round its bulging waist,

+    And hurling streams of centrifugal sparks,

+    In broad red tangents, from the burning orb.

+    Upon the conflagration Man will gaze,

+    With shuddering horror; ’tis his only home,

+    The scene of all his fame, the source of wealth,

+    For which he toiled so wearily. All gone!

+    He would not touch a mountain of pure gold,

+    For ’twould be useless now! Poor, pauper Man,

+    Without his money, chiefest aim of life,

+    Stands homeless ’mid a Universe, to learn

+    If God will be his Father, or his Foe!

+    And from the blackness underneath, the swarms

+    Of Evil ones are thronged, their hideous forms

+    Half shown in lurid light, as here and there

+    They flit, like sharks, expectant of their prey.

+    Then comes the closing scene. The sentence passed,

+    The righteous breaking forth to joyous praise,

+    Shall thread Creation’s wondrous maze of life,

+    And with their Leader, sweep towards yon Heaven;

+    While down the black abyss, with cries of woe

+    That make the darkness tremble, the condemned

+    Are dragged, into its gloom,--and all is o’er--

+    Earth’s ashes float in scattered clouds through space--

+    To Man the grandest era of all Time,

+    To God, completion of Salvation’s scheme!

+

+    But Man deems Judgment too far off for thought,

+    Nor will prepare for such a distant fate;

+    Yet there is something, far more sure than aught

+    Uncertain life can offer; its decision, too,

+    Is just as final as the Judgment doom;

+    And still ’tis oftenest farthest from the thought.

+    ’Tis Death, the welcome or unwelcome guest

+    Of every man, and yet how few prepare

+    For its approach! They give all else a care;

+    Wealth, honor, fame, get all their time,

+    While certain Death’s forgotten, till disease

+    Gives warning; then with hasty penitence,

+    The knees are worn, the heart’s thick rubbish cleared;

+    But oft too late; the heart will not be cleared,

+    The stubborn knees will not consent to bend,

+    The house is set in order, while the guest,

+    In sable robes, stands at the throbbing door.

+

+    And now to close thy lesson, look through this!

+    He gave to me a strangely fashioned glass,

+    Through which, when I had looked to Earth, I saw

+    A long black wall, that towered immensely high,

+    So none might see beyond. Before its length,

+    Mankind were ranged, all weaving busily;

+    The young and old, the maiden and the man;

+    The infant hands unconscious plied the thread,

+    The aged with a feeble, listless move.

+    They wove the warp of Life, and drew its thread

+    From o’er the wall; none knew how far its end

+    Was off, nor when ’twould reach the busy hand,

+    Nor did they care, in aught by action shown,

+    But bending o’er their work, without a glance

+    Towards the thread, that still so smoothly ran,

+    They threw the shuttle back and forth again,

+    Till suddenly the ravelled end appeared,

+    Fell from the wall, and to the shuttle crept;

+    And then the weaver laid his work aside,

+    With folded hands, was wrapped within his warp,

+    To wait the Master’s sentence on his task.

+    I saw the thread, in passing through their hands,

+    Received the various colors, from their touch,

+    And tinged the different patterns that they wove.

+    And oh! how different in design! Some wove

+    A spotless fabric, whose pure simple plan

+    Was always ready for the ending thread;

+    Come when it would, no part was incomplete;

+    But what was done, could bear th’ Inspector’s eye.

+    And others wove a dark and dingy rag,

+    That bore no pattern, save its filthiness;

+    Fit garment for the fool who weaves for flames!

+    Some wove the great red woof of war,

+    With clashing swords, and crossing bayonets,

+    With ghastly bones, and famished widows’ homes,

+    With all the grim machinery of Death,

+    To gain a paltry crown, or curule chair;

+    Perchance, before the crown or chair is reached,

+    The thread gives out, the work is incomplete,

+    And in the gory cloak his hands have wrought,

+    With all its stains unwashed, the hero sleeps.

+    Some shuttles shape the gilded temple, Fame,

+    And count on thread to weave its topmost dome;

+    But ere the lowest pinnacle is touched,

+    The brittle filament is snapped. Some weave

+    The bema, with its loud applause; and some

+    The gaudy chaplet of the bacchanal,

+    And others sweated bays of honest toil.

+    But all the fabrics bear the yellow stain

+    Of gold, o’er which the sinner and the saint

+    Unseemly strive, and he seems happiest

+    Whose work is yellowest.

+                             Along the wall,

+    “A fountain filled with blood,” plays constantly,

+    Where man may cleanse the fabric as he weaves;

+    Yet few avail themselves; the waters flow,

+    While Man works on, without regard to stains,

+    Till thread worn thin arouses him to fear,

+    Or breaks before the damning dyes are cleansed.

+

+    And down the line I ran my anxious eyes,

+    To find a weaver I might recognize,

+    And saw, at last, a form by mirrors known.

+    Oh! ’twas a shameful texture that I wove,

+    So dark its hue, so little saving white,

+    Such seldom bathing in the fountain stream,

+    I could not look, but bowed my blushing face,

+    And like the publican of old, cried out,

+    “Be merciful to me a sinner!”

+                                  “Rise!”

+    The Angel said, “And worship God alone,

+    Return to Earth, enjoy an humble faith,

+    Whose simple trust shall make thee happier

+    Than all the grandeur of philosophy.

+    Should doubts arise, remember, God’s designs

+    Above a finite comprehension stand,

+    And finite doubts, about the Infinite,

+    Assume absurdity’s intensest form.

+    Man, from the stand-point of the Present, looks,

+    And disappointed, bitterly complains

+    Of what would move his deepest gratitude,

+    Could he the issue of the morrow know.

+    God sees the future, and in kindness deals

+    To every man his complement of good.

+      Remember then the weakness of thy mind,

+    Nor doubt because thou canst not understand.

+      To gather scattered jewels thou must kneel;

+    So on thy knees seek truth, and thou shalt find;

+    The nearer Earth thy face, the nearer Heaven

+    Thy heart. And now farewell!”

+                                  I sprang to clasp

+    His hand in gratitude, but with a wave

+    Of parting benediction, he was gone!

+    Then in an instant, like an aerolite,

+    With naught to bear me up, I fell to Earth,

+    Swifter and swifter, with increasing speed!

+    Now bursting through a sunlit bank of cloud,

+    And clutching, vainly, at the yielding mist,

+    Or through a cradling storm, with thunder charged,

+    Down through the open air, whose parted breath

+    Hissed death into my ears, while all below

+    Seemed rushing up to meet and mangle me.

+    I shrieked aloud, “Oh save me!”--

+                                      And awoke.

+    The day was o’er, and night had drawn her shades;

+    The twinkling eyes of Heaven shone through the leaves,

+    And lit the tiny rain-globes on the grass;

+    The cloud had passed, and on th’ horizon’s verge,

+    A monster firefly, with shimmering flash,

+    It slowly crawled behind the curve of death.

+    And evening’s silence deeper seemed than noon’s,

+    For not a sound disturbed the hush of night,

+    Save katydids, with quavering monotones,

+    Returning contradictions from the trees.

+    All drenched and chilled, with trembling limbs I rose,

+    And homeward bent my steps; and pondering

+    Upon my dream, this moral from it drew:

+    Man cannot judge the Eternal Mind by his,

+    But must accept the mysteries of Life,

+    As purposes Divine, with perfect ends.

+    And in our darkest clouds, God’s Angels stand,

+    To work Man’s present and eternal good.

+

+

+

+

+              THE VILLAGE ON THE TAR

+

+DEDICATED TO PETTIGREW COUNCIL NO 1. F. OF T.

+

+

+    A drunkard in a distant town lay dying on his bed,

+    There was lack of woman’s gentle touch about his fevered head,

+    But a comrade stood beside him, and wiped the foam away,

+    That bubbled through his frothy lips, to hear what he might say.

+    The poor inebriate faltered, as he caught that comrade’s eye,

+    And he said, “’Tis hard, far, far from home ’mid strangers thus to die.

+    Take a message and a token to my friends away so far,

+    For Louisburg’s my native place, the village on the Tar.

+

+    “Tell my brothers and companions, should they ever wish to know

+    The story of the fallen, ah! the fallen one so low,

+    That we drank the whole night deeply, and when at last ’twas o’er,

+    Full many a form lay beastly drunk along the barroom floor.

+    And there were ’mid those wretches some who had long served sin,

+    Their bloated features telling well what faithful slaves they’d been;

+    And some were young and had not on the Hell-path entered far--

+    And one was from the village, the village on the Tar.

+

+    “Tell my mother that her other sons may still some comfort prove,

+    But I, in even childhood, would scorn that mother’s love;

+    And when she called the children to lift up the evening prayer,

+    One form was always missing, there was e’er one vacant chair,

+    For my father was a drunkard, and even as a child

+    He taught my little feet to tread the road to ruin wild;

+    And when he died and left us to dispute about his will,

+    I let them take whate’er they would, but kept my father’s ‘still,’

+    And with sottish love I used it till its venomed ‘worm’ did gnaw

+    My soul, my mind, my very life, in the village on the Taw.[A]

+

+    “Tell my sister oft to weep for me with sad and drooping head,

+    When she sees the wine flow freely, that poison ruby red,

+    And to turn her back upon it, with deep and burning shame,

+    For her brother fell before it and disgraced the fam’ly name.

+    And if a drunkard seeks her love, oh! tell her, for my sake,

+    To shun the loathsome creature, as she would a deadly snake,

+    And have the old ‘still’ torn away, its fragments scattered far,

+    For the honor of the village, the village on the Tar.

+

+    “There’s another, not a sister; in the merry days of old,

+    You’d have known her by the dark blue eye, and hair of wavy gold;

+    Too gentle e’er to chide me, too devoted e’er to hate,

+    She loved me, though oft warned by all to shun the dreaded fate.

+    Tell her the last night of my life--for ere the morning dawn,

+    My body will be tenantless, my clay-chained spirit gone--

+    I dreamed I stood beside her, and in those lovely blue depths saw

+    The merry light that cheered me, in the village on the Taw.[A]

+

+    “I saw the old Tar hurrying on its bubbles to the sea,

+    As men on life’s waves e’er are swept towards eternity;

+    And the rippling waters mingled with the warbling of the birds,

+    Returned soft silvery echoes to my deep impassioned words;

+    And in those listening ears I poured the sweet tho’ time-worn story,

+    While swimming were those love-lit eyes, in all their tear-pearled glory;

+    And her little hand was closely pressed in mine so brown and braw,

+    Ah! I no more shall meet her, in the village on the Taw.”[A]

+

+    He ceased to speak, and through his frame there ran a shiver slight,

+    His blood-shot eyes rolled inward and revealed their ghastly white,

+    His swollen tongue protruded, o’er his face a pallor spread,

+    His comrade touched his pulse--’twas still--and he was with the dead.

+    The moon from her pavilion, in the blue-draped fleecy cloud,

+    Through the window o’er the corpse had thrown her pale but ghostly shroud,

+    The same moon that gazing upon that couch of straw.

+    Was bathing in a silver flood the village on the Taw.[A]

+

+[A] The Indian name of this river was _Taw_.--PUBLISHER.

+

+

+

+

+              REQUIESCAM

+

+

+    Oh! give me a grave in a lone, gloomy dell,

+      By the side of a deep, swift creek,

+    Where the ripples run like a tinkling bell,

+    Through the grassy nooks, where love so well

+      The minnows to play hide and seek!

+

+    Where in summer the thick twining foliage weaves

+      A green, arching roof upon high,

+    And the rain-drops fall from the dripping eaves,

+    Like tears of grief from the weeping leaves

+      On the face upturned to the sky!

+

+    Where the silence frightens the birds away,

+      And all is still, dreary and weird,

+    Except, perchance at the close of day,

+    The bittern’s boom or the crane’s hoarse bray,

+      Floating over the swamp, is heard.

+

+    Where the dusky wolf and the antlered deer

+      Ever shun the dark, haunted ground;

+    Where the crouching panther ventures near,

+    His tawny coat all bristling with fear,

+      At the sight of the low, red mound.

+

+    Where at twilight gray, the lone whippoorwill

+      May perch on the stake at my head,

+    And with its unearthly, tremulous trill

+    The dreary gloom of the whole place fill

+      With a requiem over the dead.

+

+    Where the greater the ruin in earth’s damp mold,

+      The greater the contrast will prove,

+    When the weary wings of my spirit I fold,

+    In heaven, and swell with a bright harp of gold,

+      The grand pealing anthem of love.

+

+    _February 9th, 1867_

+

+

+

+

+              LINES TO AN ANALYTICAL GEOMETRY

+

+            KNOWN TO THE STUDENTS AS “MISS ANNIE”

+

+        WRITTEN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, 1866

+

+

+    At “Elysium” chum and I were sitting,

+    Across our vision memories flitting,

+    Talking, smoking, often spitting

+      On the hearth, not on the floor;

+    When suddenly we heard a spluttering,

+    As of book leaves madly flutt’ring,

+    Some one there seemed slowly mutt’ring,

+      At the bookcase, not the door.

+

+    Wildly springing to my feet

+    (Chum with fright seemed tied t’ his seat),

+    Dreading, fearing I should meet

+      What so like a ghost had spoken--

+    Fellow members, if you’re able

+    To believe what seemed a fable,

+    I saw “Miss Annie” on the table,

+      With rage and anger almost choking.

+

+    Then without a bow or bend,

+    Sitting up upon one end,

+    Without preface thus began--

+      While we both in wonder stared:

+    “O ye worthless lazy scamps!

+    Talk about your midnight lamps,

+    While I’m in the bookcase crampt,

+      To what can such Sophs be compared?

+

+    “Here you’ll sit and smoke and talk,

+    To-morrow morn to black-board walk,

+    Seize your ‘ruler’ and your chalk,

+      Then I hope get badly ‘rushed.’

+    Oh! the present generation,

+    Such neglect to education,

+    Blood and scissors! thunderation!”

+      She was so mad the tears forth gushed.

+

+    Chum and I had heard enough

+    To put us both in quite a huff,

+    So just to stop her noisome stuff

+      I sprang and seized her by the collar.

+    George jumped up and grabbed the poker,

+    Shouted, “Edwin, try to choke her!

+    We’ll stop her mouth, a darned old croaker,

+      Squeeze her tight and make her ‘holloa.’”

+

+    To the fire we held her near,

+    Still she showed no signs of fear.

+    “Shall the red coals be your bier?”

+      She shook her leaves and fluttered, “No.”

+    Now my face with anger flushes,

+    Covered first with scarlet blushes,

+    I cried, “Will you again e’er ‘rush’ us?”

+      Quoth Miss Annie, “Evermore.”

+

+    “Book or fiend,” I cried, up starting,

+    “Be that word our sign of parting.”

+    Then I, in my vengeance darting,

+      Hurled her in the embers red.

+    She slightly quivered, slowly burned;

+    From the sickening sight I turned,

+    Yet from her this lesson learned,

+      Prepare before you go to bed.

+

+

+

+

+              LINES TO COUSINS C. AND E.

+

+       ON THE BIRTH OF THEIR LITTLE DAUGHTER

+

+

+    The marriage over, from the train

+    Of watching seraphs, one long strain

+        Of gratulation broke.

+    And then were still the rustling wings,

+    And fingers hushed the throbbing strings,

+        While thus an angel spoke:

+

+    “Who’ll go to earth to bless this pair

+    With angel child, beneath their care

+        Be trained for bliss or woe?”

+    He ceased, and from the throng sprang three,

+    Faith, Love, and spotless Purity.

+        These knelt, and said “We’ll go.”

+

+    Dear cousins, to you these are sent,

+    Three spirits in one being blent.

+        It is a jewel rare.

+    Oh! keep her pure as when first given,

+    Guide her faith from Earth to Heaven,

+        Guard her love with care.

+

+    _May, 1867._

+

+

+

+

+              THE DEVIL OUTDONE;

+

+                   OR,

+

+         THE GUARD OF THE SULPHUR LAKE

+

+

+To her who sent me the Valentine with the cutting irony, “Don’t I look

+pretty in church?” these lines are respectfully inscribed. Not knowing

+her name, I will call her “Taters,” as she drew her elegant and tasty

+simile from that vegetable.

+

+    The Devil was sitting one morning below,

+    And he seemed much perplexed as to what he must do,

+    For his dark brows would knit, and he’d stamp on the ground,

+    And flap his great wings till floating around

+    Were the ashes and feathers.

+                                 At last with an air

+    Of resolve he threw himself back in his chair,

+    Lit a brimstone cigar, and touched a small bell.

+    An imp appeared, bowed, and on his face fell.

+    “Cloven-foot,” said the D----, “what’s the news from the fire?”

+    “My liege, the great ape has ceased to inspire

+    The victims with terror; they fear him no more,

+    And continually crawl from the flames to the shore.”

+    “Well, Cloven-foot, I had most certainly thought

+    When from Africa’s wilds that baboon you brought,

+    He’d prove such a guard for the great Sulphur Lake

+    The wretches would ne’er cease before him to quake.

+    Now go up to earth, and search till you find

+    Something uglier far, then quick seize and bind

+    And bring it to me; and if it beats the baboon

+    I’ll reward you. Be sure to return just as soon

+    As ’tis possible, and above all things to choose

+    An object whose countenance never will lose

+    Its hideous novelty.” The imp bowed and withdrew,

+    And swiftly to earth on his errand he flew;

+    But in vain did he search where the gorillas roam,

+    Or the jungles of Bengal, the fierce tiger’s home.

+    In vain throughout Europe he searched every place;

+    Nowhere could he find the requisite face.

+    Frustrated and weary, with deep despair frantic,

+    He was skimming the waves of the tossing Atlantic.

+    A few pinion strokes, and he stood on the shore

+    Of the New World, and through it began to explore.

+    But all was in vain, till he chanced to alight

+    In a sweet little village, one smiling morn bright.

+    Disguising himself, he attended the church,

+    Not hoping to find the object of search,

+    But just for the fun.

+                          As he stood with the throng

+    That were watching the College girls marching along,

+    He caught a slight glimpse of Miss “Tater’s” sweet face;

+    He sprang to her side, clasped her in embrace,

+    And as he plunged downward he said to himself,

+    “Here’s one will compete with the African elf.”

+    He soon furled his wing on the Plutonian shore,

+    And to his dark ruler his fair burden bore.

+    As the Valentine sender came into sight

+    The Devil himself started back with affright.

+    “Whew! whew!” whistled he, “she’ll do, I declare!

+    Go bring the baboon, and let them compare.”

+    The imp disappeared, then returned with the ape,

+    A creature most frightful in feature and shape.

+    His head was oblong and perfectly bald,

+    Running back from his eyes--no forehead at all;

+    His eyeballs were white, their sockets deep red;

+    His long, glistening teeth strung with human-flesh shred,

+    The gore of his victims from his fingers’ ends flowed;

+    And round his lank limbs candescent chains glowed,

+    In front of Miss “Taters” this creature was led;

+    He gave a look, yelled, and fainted stone dead.

+    “By my tongs,” quoth the Devil, “she’s rather too hard

+    For the old fellow; she’ll make a capital guard.

+    Take her down to the fire.” The imp led the way

+    And far down they went from the clear light of day,

+    Down, down, till the air was all smoky and red,

+    Till the tumult of hell seemed bursting her head;

+    Down, down, till the piteous wails and the moans

+    Of the tortured but echoed the jeers and the groans

+    Of the fiends. Down, down, till they came to the lake

+    That scorches and scalds, but never will slake

+    The thirst of its victims. Far out on its breast

+    It would heave them anon on the red foaming crest

+    Of a billow, then plunge them far deeper beneath

+    Its boiling bosom, in torture to seethe.

+    Along the hot shore the poor creatures would crawl,

+    To pant and to rest from their terrible thrall.

+    From their bodies all smoking the lava would stream,

+    While the shriveled flesh peeled from each quiv’ring limb,

+    And their heart-piercing shrieks rose higher and higher,

+    As the tongue of each wave licked them back in the fire.

+    But as soon as Miss “Taters” had come where they were

+    Every noise was hushed, not a sound could you hear.

+    ’Twas a wonder indeed, and the wonder increased,

+    When the billows of crimson their torture surge ceased.

+    When the imp had examined more closely, he found

+    The victims had fainted, the fire gone down.

+    He hurried her back to his master and said,

+    “The fires are out, and the wretches are dead.”

+    “What, the fires extinguished! those fires of old!

+    Take her back! I begin e’en myself to feel cold!

+    She’ll ruin us all with her terrible face;

+    She’s rather hard-favored for even this place.”

+

+    _April, 1867._

+

+

+

+

+              THE SUNFLOWER

+

+     LINES SUGGESTED BY OBSERVING GEN. PETTIGREW’S NAME OMITTED IN MRS.

+     DOWNING’S “MEMORIAL FLOWERS” AND IN THE “SOUTHERN BOUQUET”

+

+

+    When poets cull memorial flowers,

+      With which our martyrs’ graves to strew,

+    They choose no one in Nature’s bowers

+            For Pettigrew.

+

+    Yet there is one, and only one,

+      Which truly represents his name;

+    A flower that revels in the sun,

+            And drinks his flame.

+

+    A flower that opens when, all red,

+      The sun hath kissed the eastern skies;

+    But westward turned, it droops its head

+            And proudly dies.

+

+    Thus when the sun of victory sheared

+      Its gory way o’er clouds of war,

+    This flower’s tow’ring crest appeared

+            A beacon star.

+

+    And in its gorgeous, glorious rays,

+      This flower basked, and only bowed

+    When coming conquest’s bloody haze

+            That sun did shroud.

+

+    Crushed flower, with thy broken stem,

+      I’ll keep thee near to typify

+    The fallen form; the hero’s fame

+            Can never die.

+

+    _June 19th, 1867._

+

+

+

+

+              AN ELEGY

+

+WRITTEN ON THE ROTUNDA STEPS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, 1868

+

+

+    The bell the knell of evening lecture tolls,

+      The thronging students pour from every door;

+    The tutor gathers up his notes and rolls,

+      And homeward wends his weary way once more.

+

+    The noisy crowd is gone, there is a pause,

+      And hushed is all the busy hum and whirl,

+    Save where from yonder room breaks loud applause

+      That welcomes some professor’s parting “curl.”

+

+    Save that from yonder plain, the lower lawn,

+      Some base-ball novice makes harsh rhyms to _psalm_,

+    Because a veteran, with his hands of horn,

+      Has “pitched” too “hot” a ball for his soft palm.

+

+    Beneath those balconies, along those rows,

+      Where sinks the wall in many a jail-like cell,

+    Each wrapped in silence now and in repose,

+      The minstrels of the “Calathump” do dwell.

+

+    The whispered call of evil-masking night,

+      The signal whistle of the well-known crew,

+    The bumping bang of “blowers” beat with might,

+      Will often rouse the “Nippers of Peru.”

+

+    For them in vain for hours their hearts will burn,

+      While busy housewives tremble at their noise,

+    And frightened children to their fathers turn,

+      Too badly scared to think of play or toys.

+

+    Oft has th’ rotunda echoed to their songs,

+      In dulcet strains that on the still air broke;

+    Oft has the lawn resounded with their gongs,

+      That roared and rattled ’neath their sturdy stroke.

+

+    Let not their victims mock th’ infernal din,

+      Coal-scuttle drums, and clarion paper trump;

+    But let them hear with a sardonic “grin,”

+      The hideous clamor of a “Calathump.”

+

+    The boast of Mozart, or Beethoven’s pride,

+      The sweetest notes Von Weber ever gave,

+    Alike would prove harsh dissonance beside

+      The gushing concord of one college stave.

+

+    To-night upon their pillows will be laid

+      Heads that are pregnant with some secret plan;

+    Hands that a “poker” often may have swayed,

+      Or waked to ecstasy an old tin pan.

+

+    In vain grave study holds before their gaze

+      Her ample page and honor’s glittering roll;

+    The fire of “frolic” in their bosom plays,

+      And warms the devilish current of their soul.

+

+    Full many a mind that might have nations hurled

+      About as toys, has hid its talents rare;

+    And many a voice that might have moved a world,

+      Has cracked in shoutings on the midnight air.

+

+    Some village Hampden here by night may bawl,

+      Some unknown Milton, but by no means mute;

+    Some David that may soothe a savage Saul,

+      As yet entirely guiltless of a lute.

+

+    The applause of gaping urchins to command,

+      The darkies’ laughter at their quaint disguise,

+    A few short words from some one to the band,

+      This is their sole reward, their hard-earned prize.

+

+    But who to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

+      Would start to nip with dry and husky throttle?

+    Whene’er they march along the Devil’s way,

+      They take his own peculiar seal, the bottle.

+

+    Amid the madding crowd that gathers thick,

+      A moving pandemonium they stray,

+    And down those much frequented walks of brick

+      They hold the noisy tenor of their way.

+

+

+              THE EPIGRAM

+

+    Here go at last, all yelling to the town,

+      A band of youths to Judson’s too well known;

+    Fair science ever met their darkest frown,

+      And foul intemperance marked them for her own.

+

+    Small is their bounty, but “a drink” they chime,

+      As round the crowded counter many jam;

+    Each gives to Judson (all he has) a dime,

+      Each gets from him (’tis all he wants) a dram.

+

+    _January, 1868._

+

+

+

+

+              FIRE EYES

+

+

+    Hast thou on summer’s eve ere marked

+      The storm on cloud wings soaring high,

+    And spreading far his pinions black,

+      Across the blue good-natured sky?

+    And hast thou seen from ’neath his brow

+      The lightning’s eye gleam fiercely bright,

+    As if to pierce a thousand foes

+      With daggers of his living light?

+    As flash the lightnings in the skies,

+    So gleam, when angry, “Fire Eyes.”

+

+    Hast thou on autumn eve e’er seen

+      The sun just nestling on his pillow,

+    While sapphire clouds were silver-fringed,

+      As seafoam crests the surging billow?

+    And hast thou seen the golden gaze

+      The sun bestows on Nature fair,

+    That dyes the gorgeous landscape o’er

+      And almost melts the amber air?

+    As beams the sun on autumn skies

+    So smile, when pleased, bright “Fire Eyes.”

+

+

+

+

+              MY DARLING’S JESSAMINE

+

+

+    ’Twas only a sprig of white jessamine,

+      That came in a letter she wrote;

+    But I value it more than the costliest vine

+    Whose tendrils o’er marble-carved trellis-work twine:

+      _’Twas worn at my darling one’s throat_.

+

+    A throat that encages the nightingale’s trill,

+      And sweetens each silvery note,

+    And I think as I hear, in a rapturous thrill,

+    Her voice, whose volume can heaven’s dome fill,

+      That the _angels have lent her a throat_.

+

+    More sweet than exotics that Fashion dupes wear

+      As through the gay ballroom they float!

+    In the leaves of my Bible I laid it with care,

+    More _sacredly dear_ than a _buried friend’s hair_

+      Since worn at my darling one’s throat!

+

+    _July, 1870._

+

+

+

+

+              THE PARTING SHIP

+

+

+    In pensive mood I stood upon the quay,

+    Where busy Commerce plied her energy;

+    Where loading vessels hung their sails at rest,

+    And rose and fell, upon the water’s breast.

+    Where busy little tugs with hissing steam

+    Buried their noses in the foaming stream.

+    Near by, a steamer in a paneled wharf

+    Chafed at her chains and panted to be off.

+    A strange, mysterious ship, no pennon bold

+    Her nation or her destination told;

+    No crew was seen, no farewell song was sung,

+    No parting loved ones to each other clung;

+    No wife was weeping on her husband’s neck,

+    No mother blessed her wayward boy on deck.

+    A ceaseless throng pressed through the cabin door,

+    As if they longed to leave their native shore;

+    No backward glance, no tearful farewell view,

+    And no one seemed to think home worth adieu.

+    At last the bell was rung, the plank was drawn,

+    And with a shivering sigh, the ship was gone.

+    Then as I marked her curving track of foam,

+    I wondered in what waters she would roam;

+    I thought of those on board, the reckless air

+    Of their departure, and I breathed a prayer.

+    A red-haired man stood turning up a wheel,

+    That wound a clanking chain upon a reel;

+    I laid a coin upon his brawny hand,

+    And asked him, “Who thus leave their native land?”

+    He leaned upon his wheel and closed one eye,

+    As if the lid were burdened with a sty;

+    Then with a laugh he answered, “By the devil’s spleen and liver,

+    It’s on’y a Fulton ferry-boat a’gwine a’gross East River.”

+

+

+

+

+              TO M----, FROM E----

+

+        WRITTEN ON THE FLY-LEAF OF A BIBLE

+

+

+    One year of sweetest love intense!

+    One year of mutual confidence!

+    One year of gazing into eyes,

+    In which the love-light never dies!

+    One year of clasping hands, that thrill

+    With throbbing love from life’s red rill

+    One year of clouds, whose transient shade

+    The after glory brighter made!

+    One year of doubts, whose fleeting rust

+    Could not corrode our links of trust!

+    One year of prayer, whose pleading tone

+    Has for _each other_ sued the Throne!

+    One year _together_--may it prove

+    Prophetic of our earthly love!

+    One year _each other’s_--may it be

+    A type of our _eternity_!

+

+    _Sunday, May, 1871._

+

+

+

+

+              UNDER THE PINES

+

+“TELL THEM TO BURY ME UNDER THE PINES AT HOME.” FROM “SEA GIFT.”

+

+

+    I would not rest in the moldering tomb

+      Of the grim church-yard, where the ivy twines,

+    But make me a grave in the forest’s gloom,

+    Where the breezes wave, like a soldier’s plume,

+      Each dark-green bough of the dear old pines;

+

+    Where the lights and shadows softly merge,

+      And the sun-flakes sift through the netted vines;

+    Where the sea winds, sad with the sob of the surge,

+    From the harp-leaves sweep a solemn dirge

+      For the dead beneath the sighing pines.

+

+    When the winter’s icy fingers sow

+      The mound with jewels till it shines,

+    And cowled in hoods of glistening snow,

+    Like white-veiled sisters bending low,

+      Bow, sorrowing, the silent pines.

+

+    While others fought for cities proud,

+      For fertile plains and wealth of mines,

+    I breathed the sulph’rous battle cloud,

+    I bared my breast, and took my shroud

+      For the land where wave the grand old pines.

+

+    Though comrades sigh and loved ones weep

+      For the form shot down in the battle lines,

+    In my grave of blood I gladly sleep,

+    If the life I gave will help to keep

+      The Vandal’s foot from the Land of Pines.

+

+           *       *       *       *       *

+

+    The Vandal’s foot hath pressed our sod,

+      His heel hath crushed our sacred shrines;

+    And, bowing ’neath the chastening rod,

+    We lift our hearts and hands to God,

+      And cry: “Oh! save our Land of Pines!”

+

+

+

+

+              THE LAST LOOK

+

+                TO MARY

+

+

+    Do not fasten the lid of the coffin down yet;

+    Let me have a long look at the face of my pet.

+    Please all quit the chamber and pull to the door,

+    And leave me alone with my darling once more.

+

+    Is this little Ethel, so cold, and so still!

+    Beat, beat, breaking heart, ’gainst God’s mystic will,

+    Remember, O Christ, thou didst dread thine own cup,

+    And while I drink mine, let thine arm bear me up.

+

+    But the moments are fleeting: I must stamp on my brain,

+    Each dear little feature, for never again

+    Can I touch her; and only God measures how much

+    Affection a mother conveys by her touch.

+

+    Oh! dear little head, oh! dear little hair,

+    So silken, so golden, so soft, and so fair,

+    Will I never more smooth it? Oh! help me, my God,

+    To bear this worst stroke of the chastening rod.

+

+    Those bright little eyes that used to feign sleep,

+    Or sparkle so merrily, playing at peep,

+    Closed forever! And yet they seemed closed with a sigh,

+    As if for our sake she regretted to die.

+

+    And that dear little _mouth_, once so warm and so soft,

+    Always willing to kiss you, no matter how oft,

+    Cold and rigid, without the least tremor of breath,

+    How could you claim _Ethel_, O pitiless death!

+

+    Her hands! No, ’twill kill me to think how they wove

+    Through my daily existence a tissue of love.

+    Each finger’s a print upon memory’s page,

+    That will brighten, thank God! and not dim with my age.

+

+    Sick or well, they were ready at every request

+    To amuse us: sweet hands! they deserve a sweet rest.

+    Their last little trick was to wipe “Bopeep’s” eye,

+    Their last little gesture, to wave us good-bye.

+

+    Little feet! little feet, how dark the heart’s gloom,

+    Where your patter is hushed in that desolate room!

+    For oh! ’twas a sight sweet beyond all compare,

+    To see little “Frisky” rock back in her chair.

+

+           *       *       *       *       *

+

+    O Father! have mercy, and grant me thy grace

+    To see, through this frown, the smile on thy face;

+    To feel that this sorrow is sent for the best,

+    And to learn from my darling a lesson of rest.

+

+    _February 16th, 1875._

+

+

+

+

+LINES WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF AN UNKNOWN FRIEND

+

+

+    We’ve never met; I’ve never pressed your hand,

+      Nor caught the light of Friendship in your eyes;

+    Yet bound by grief, between two graves we stand,

+      And mingle tears, and hear each other’s sighs.

+

+    The same dark wings have taken from each hearth

+      The brightest jewel of the circle there,

+    And poor Faith stumbles at the mound of earth,

+      And feebly yields her place to wan Despair.

+

+    The same dear Christ that took our little one,

+      And laid her precious head upon His breast,

+    In tender love called home your darling son

+      To enter early his eternal rest.

+

+    But who could stand beside the open tomb,

+      And hear the clods fall on the coffin lid,

+    And see deep underneath the earthen gloom,

+      The dearest love of life forever hid?

+

+    Could we not hear the grave’s red lips proclaim,

+      “I am the Resurrection and the Life,”

+    And realize that Death in Jesus’ name

+      Is only rest from labor, pain, and strife?

+

+    ’Tis hard to feel assured our sainted dead

+      Are happy _there_, as we could make them here;

+    We love them so we give them up with dread,

+      And lay them in Christ’s arms with doubt and fear.

+

+    Oh! for a faith that sees in all God sends

+      The kindness of a father to his son;

+    That prays, in every trial--if it ends

+      In joy or grief, “Thy will, O Lord, be done.”

+

+    Beneath the same dark shadow let us kneel,

+      And lift our broken hearts in prayer to God

+    That while He chastens, He will help us feel

+      The wisdom of His purpose in the rod.

+

+    We are not strangers now; from heart to heart

+      The electric chords of mutual sorrow thrill.

+    And clasping hands across the miles apart,

+      We stand resolved, to “suffer and be still.”

+

+

+

+

+              OUT IN THE RAIN

+

+

+    The night is dark and cold, a beating rain

+    Falls ceaselessly upon the dripping roof;

+    The dismal wind, with now a fierce, wild shriek,

+    And now a hollow moan, as if in pain,

+    Circles the eaves, and bends the tortured trees that wring

+    Their long, bear hands in the bleak blast.

+                                               Within

+    Our chamber all is bright and warm. The fire

+    Burns with a ruddy blaze. The shaded lamp

+    Softens the pictures on the wall, and glows

+    Upon the flowers in the carpet, till they seem

+    All fresh and fragrant. Stretched upon the rug,

+    His collar gleaming in the fire-light, little Pip

+    Is sleeping on, defiant of the storm without.

+    The very furniture enjoys the warmth,

+    And from its sides reflects the cheerful light.

+    Up in its painted cage, the little bird,

+    His yellow head beneath his soft, warm wing,

+    Is hiding. Oh! my God, out in the storm

+    _Our little yellow head_ is beaten by the rain.

+    So lonely looks that precious little face

+    Up at the cold, dark coffin’s lid above,

+    In the bleak graveyard’s solitude!

+    Oh! Ethel darling, do you feel afraid?

+    Or is Christ with you in your little grave?

+    When last we gazed upon those lovely eyes

+    They looked so tranquil, in their last repose,

+    We knew that Christ’s own tender hand had sealed

+    Their lids with His eternal peace.

+    Oh! darling, are you happy up in heaven?

+    And do the angels part that golden hair

+    As tenderly as we? O Saviour dear,

+    Thou knowest childhood’s tenderness. Amid

+    The care of countless worlds, sometimes descend

+    From thine almighty throne of power, and find

+    That little yellow head, and lay it on thy breast,

+    And smooth her brow with thine own pierced hand;

+    She’ll kiss the wound and try to make it well.

+    And tell her how we love her memory here;

+    And let her sometimes see us, that she may

+    Remember us. O Jesus, we can trust

+    Her to thy care; and when we lay us down

+    To rest, beside that lonely, little grave,

+    Oh! let her meet us with her harp.

+    God help us both to make that meeting sure!

+

+

+

+

+              THE LILY AND THE DEW-DROP

+

+

+    Deep in a cell of darkest green,

+    Rayless and murky with unbroken gloom,

+    With downcast head and shrinking, modest mien,

+    A lily of the valley shed her rare perfume,

+    Breathed softly, as a sea shell’s murmur, from her bloom

+    An odor so exquisite, none can tell,

+    If ’tis an odor or a whispered sigh

+    That like the dying echoes of a bell

+    Falls on the raptured sense so dreamily,

+    The soul swoons in the tearful clasp of memory.

+

+    So when an old man hears a harvest song

+    He used to sing, or smells the new-mown hay,

+    A host of saddened recollections throng

+    The dusty chambers of his heart, and play

+    Upon the cobwebs there a soft Æolian lay.

+

+    (_Unfinished._)

+

+

+

+

+              LINES,

+

+   WRITTEN AFTER HAVING A HEMORRHAGE FROM THE LUNGS

+

+Written a short time before his death and handed to his wife with the

+request, “Do not open this until I am well, or until my death.”

+

+

+    Life bloomed for me as if my path thro’ Eden

+    Led its flowery way. Success had crowned

+    In many ways my efforts. No dark strife

+    With adverse Fate its portent shadows cast

+    Across the calm blue scope of heaven.

+                                          And though

+    Pride often chafed at plain commercial life,

+    It was but transient, for ambitious Hope

+    Kept ever in my view Fame’s gilded dome,

+    Upon whose highest pinnacle I chose my niche,

+    For vain conceit had whispered in my ear

+    That I had Genius to encharm the world,

+    And I looked forward to the loud applause

+    Of nations as a simple thing of time.

+    Of death I thought but as a fright for those

+    Who have no destiny but dying. Mine

+    Would come in age, but as a pallid seal

+    To Honor gained, and Life’s long labors done.

+    Yet I had felt the breath of Asrael’s wing

+    When from my youthful head he took my father’s hand,

+    And from my manhood’s arms my only child,

+    And down the past a little mound of earth,

+    Tombed with the darkest sorrow of our hearts,

+    Still stands, though veiling in the folds of time.

+    Of heaven I thought but as a distant home,

+    A place of sweetest rest that I would gain,

+    When weary of the burden of the world.

+    Thus gay of thought and bright of hope, I moved

+    Amid the flowers of my way.

+                                At once,

+    With scarce a rustle in the rose leaves, came

+    A shadowy form, and standing silently

+    Before my pathway, breathed a whispered sigh,

+    As if it loathed its office to perform;

+    Then laid Consumption’s ghastly banner on my breast,

+    Its pale folds crossed with fatal red.

+                                           The sky

+    Grew dark, the rose leaves withered, as the form

+    Withdrew, still silently; while I, alone

+    Upon the roadside, kneeled to pray for light.

+    The stunned surprise of sudden shattered hopes,

+    The faith of self-appointed destiny,

+    Still turned my eyes toward the Temple Fame.

+    Across its gilded dome a spotless cloud

+    Had drifted, hiding it from view, but lo!

+    The cloud, unfolding snowy depths, disclosed

+    The glories of that “House not made with hands,”

+    And bending from it, so full of tenderness,

+    I could discern the loved ones “gone before.”

+    And over all I recognized the Form

+    Whose brow endured Gabbatha’s shameful crown,

+    Whose woe distilled itself in trickling blood,

+    By Cedron’s murmuring wave.

+                                As tenderly

+    As ever mother touched her babe, He bore

+    Within His arms a little angel form,

+    With golden hair and blue expressive eyes,

+    One dimpled hand lay on His willing cheek,

+    While He bent down to meet the sweet caress,

+    The other, with that well-remembered look

+    She kissed, and threw the kiss to me.

+                                          Then down

+    I bowed my face, and longed to know mine end.

+    ’Twere very sweet to leave all toil and care

+    And join the blessed ones beyond the tide;

+    And still ’twere sweet beyond compare to wait

+    Till eventide with loved ones here, and share

+    Their weal or woe.

+                       Then came a flute-like voice

+    That thrilled the solemn air:

+                                  “Pursue thy way,

+    Yet humbly walk and watch, and if I come

+    At midnight, or at noon, be ready.”

+                                        Thus

+    I wish to live, life’s aims subserved to God;

+    And each continued day and hour regard

+    As special gifts to be improved for Him;

+    To wear the girdle of the world about my loins

+    So loosely that a moment will suffice

+    To break the clasp, and lay it down.

+

+

+                THE END

+

+

+

+

+

+End of Project Gutenberg's The Angel in the Cloud, by Edwin W. (Wiley) Fuller

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