"This truth within thy mind rehearse,

That in a boundless universe

Is boundless better, boundless worse.

"Think you this mould of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers

In yonder hundred million spheres ?"

It spake, moreover, in my mind:
"Tho' thou wert scatter'd to the wind,
Yet is there plenty of the kind."

Then did my response clearer fall: "No compound of this earthly ball Is like another, all in all.”

To which he answer'd scoffingly;
"Good soul! suppose I grant it thee,

Who'll weep for thy deficiency?

"Or will one beam be less intense, When thy peculiar difference

Is cancell'd in the world of sense?"

I would have said, "Thou canst not know," But my full heart, that work'd below,

Rain'd thro' my sight its overflow.

Again the voice spake unto me:

"Thou art so steep'd in misery,

Surely 'twere better not to be.

"Thine anguish will not let thee sleep,

Nor any train of reason keep :

Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep."

I said, "The years

with change advance :

If I make dark my countenance,

I shut my life from happier chance.

"Some turn this sickness yet might take,

Ev'n yet." But he: "What drug can make

A wither'd palsy cease to shake ?"

I wept, "Tho' I should die, I know

That all about the thorn will blow

In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;

"And men, thro' novel spheres of thought Still moving after truth long sought,

Will learn new things when I am not.”

"Yet," said the secret voice,

66

some time,

Sooner or later, will gray prime

Make thy grass hoar with early rime.

"Not less swift souls that yearn for light,

Rapt after heaven's starry flight,

Would sweep the tracts of day and night.

"Not less the bee would range her cells, The furzy prickle fire the dells,

The foxglove cluster dappled bells."

I said that "all the years invent;
Each month is various to present

The world with some development.

"Were this not well, to bide mine hour, Tho' watching from a ruin'd tower How grows the day of human power?"

"The highest-mounted mind," he said, "Still sees the sacred morning spread The silent summit overhead.

"Will thirty seasons render plain Those lonely lights that still remain, Just breaking over land and main ? '

"Or make that morn, from his cold crown And crystal silence creeping down,

Flood with full daylight glebe and town?

"Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let
Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set
In midst of knowlege, dream'd not yet.

"Thou hast not gain'd a real height, Nor art thou nearer to the light, Because the scale is infinite.

""Twere better not to breathe or speak, Than cry for strength, remaining weak,

And seem to find, but still to seek.

Moreover, but to seem to find

Asks what thou lackest, thought resign'd, A healthy frame, a quiet mind."