How can man love but what he yearns to help?
And that which men think weakness within strength,
But angels know for strength and stronger yet—
What were it else but the first things made new,
But repetition of the miracle,
The divine instance of self-sacrifice
That never ends and aye begins for man?
So, never I miss footing in the maze,
No,—I have light nor fear the dark at all.
My petty circle, the world measured me?
And when they stumble even as I stand,
Have I a right to stop ears when they cry,
As they were phantoms, took the clouds for crags,
Tripped and fell, where the march of man might move?
Beside, the cry is other than a ghost’s,
When out of the old time there pleads some bard,
Philosopher, or both and—whispers not,
But words it boldly. “The inward work and worth
“Of any mind, what other mind may judge (1670)
“Save God who only knows the thing He made,
“The veritable service He exacts?
“It is the outward product men appraise.
“Behold, an engine hoists a tower aloft:
“‘I looked that it should move the mountain too!”
“Or else ‘Had just a turret toppled down,
“Success enough!’—may say the Machinist
“Who knows what less or more result might be:
“But we, who see that done we cannot do,
“‘A feat beyond man’s force,’ we men must say. (1680)
“Regard me and that shake I gave the world!
“I was born, not so long before Christ’s birth,
“As Christ’s birth haply did precede thy day,—
“But many a watch, before the star of dawn:
“Therefore I lived,—it is thy creed affirms,
“Pope Innocent, who art to answer me!—
“Under conditions, nowise to escape,
“Whereby salvation was impossible.
“Each impulse to achieve the good and fair,
“Each aspiration to the pure and true, (1690)
“Being without a warrant or an aim,
“Was just as sterile a felicity
“As if the insect, born to spend his life
“Soaring his circles, stopped them to describe
“(Painfully motionless in the mid-air)
“Some word of weighty counsel for man’s sake,
“Some ‘Know thyself’ or ‘Take the golden mean!’
“—Forwent his happy dance and the glad ray,
“Died half an hour the sooner and was dust.
“I, born to perish like the brutes, or worse, (1700)
“Why not live brutishly, obey my law?
“But I, of body as of soul complete,
“A gymnast at the games, philosopher
“I’ the schools, who painted, and made music,—all
“Glories that met upon the tragic stage
“When the Third Poet’s tread surprised the Two,—
“Whose lot fell in a land where life was great
“And sense went free and beauty lay profuse,
“I, untouched by one adverse circumstance,
“Adopted virtue as my rule of life, (1710)
“Waived all reward, and loved for loving’s sake,
“And, what my heart taught me, I taught the world,
“And have been teaching now two thousand years.
“Witness my work,—plays that should please, forsooth!
“‘They might please, they may displease, they shall teach,
“‘For truth’s sake,’ so I said, and did, and do.
“Five hundred years ere Paul spoke, Felix heard,—
“How much of temperance and righteousness,
“Judgment to come, did I find reason for,
“Corroborate with my strong style that spared (1720)
“No sin, nor swerved the more from branding brow
“Because the sinner was called Zeus and God?
“How nearly did I guess at that Paul knew?
“How closely come, in what I represent
“As duty, to his doctrine yet a blank?
“And as that limner not untruly limns
“Who draws an object round or square, which square
“Or round seems to the unassisted eye,
“Though Galileo’s tube display the same
“Oval or oblong,—so, who controverts (1730)
“I rendered rightly what proves wrongly wrought
“Beside Paul’s picture? Mine was true for me.
“I saw that there are, first and above all,
“The hidden forces, blind necessities,
“Named Nature, but the thing’s self unconceived:
“Then follow,—how dependent upon these,
“We know not, how imposed above ourselves,
“We well know,—what I name the gods, a power
“Various or one; for great and strong and good
“Is there, and little, weak and bad there too, (1740)
“Wisdom and folly: say, these make no God,—
“What is it else that rules outside man’s self?
“A fact then,—always, to the naked eye,—
“And, so, the one revealment possible
“Of what were unimagined else by man.
“Therefore, what gods do, man may criticise,
“Applaud, condemn,—how should he fear the truth?
“But likewise have in awe because of power,
“Venerate for the main munificence,
“And give the doubtful deed its due excuse (1750)
“From the acknowledged creature of a day
“To the Eternal and Divine. Thus, bold
“Yet self-mistrusting, should man bear himself,
“Most assured on what now concerns him most—
“The law of his own life, the path he prints,—
“Which law is virtue and not vice, I say,—
“And least inquisitive where least search skills,
“I’ the nature we best give the clouds to keep.
“What could I paint beyond a scheme like this
“Out of the fragmentary truths where light
“Lay fitful in a tenebrific time? (1760)
“You have the sunrise now, joins truth to truth,
“Shoots life and substance into death and void;
“Themselves compose the whole we made before:
“The forces and necessity grow God,—
“The beings so contrarious that seemed gods,
“Prove just His operation manifold
“And multiform, translated, as must be,
“Into intelligible shape so far
“As suits our sense and sets us free to feel: (1770)
“What if I let a child think, childhood-long,
“That lightning, I would have him spare his eye,
“Is
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