On Seeing, In The Country, His Picture Of “The Bottle.”

Artist, whose hand, with horror winged, hath torn From the rank life of towns this leaf! and flung The prodigy of full-blown crime among Valleys and men to middle fortune born, Not innocent, indeed, yet not forlorn,-- Say, what shall calm us when such guests intrude Like comets on the heavenly solitude? Shall breathless glades, cheered by shy Dian’s horn,

Cold-bubbling springs, or caves? Not so! The soul Breasts her own griefs; and, urged too fiercely, says, “Why tremble? True, the nobleness of man

May be by man effaced; man can control To pain, to death, the bent of his own days. Know thou the worst! So much, not more, he can.”

TO A REPUBLICAN FRIEND, 1848.

God knows it, I am with you. If to prize Those virtues, prized and practised by too few, But prized, but loved, but eminent in you, Man’s fundamental life; if to despise

The barren optimistic sophistries Of comfortable moles, whom what they do Teaches the limit of the just and true (And for such doing they require not eyes);

If sadness at the long heart-wasting show Wherein earth’s great ones are disquieted; If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow

The armies of the homeless and unfed,-- If these are yours, if this is what you are, Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share.

CONTINUED.

Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem Rather to patience prompted, than that proud Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud,-- France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme;

Seeing this vale, this earth, whereon we dream, Is on all sides o’ershadowed by the high Uno’erleaped mountains of necessity, Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.

Nor will that day dawn at a human nod, When, bursting through the network superposed By selfish occupation,--plot and plan,

Lust, avarice, envy,--liberated man, All difference with his fellow-mortal closed, Shall be left standing face to face with God.

RELIGIOUS ISOLATION.

TO THE SAME FRIEND.

Children (as such forgive them) have I known, Ever in their own eager pastime bent To make the incurious bystander, intent On his own swarming thoughts, an interest own,--

Too fearful or too fond to play alone. Do thou, whom light in thine own inmost soul (Not less thy boast) illuminates, control Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown.

What though the holy secret, which moulds thee, Moulds not the solid earth? though never winds Have whispered it to the complaining sea,

Nature’s great law, and law of all men’s minds? To its own impulse every creature stirs: Live by thy light, and earth will live by hers!