Have all but always in intent, effect,
Or fact. Nay, nay, deny it not: I know.
Youth hath a strange and strong desire to try
All feelings on the heart: it is very wrong,
And dangerous, and deadly: strive against it!
It might be some old sage was warning us.
Youth might be wise. We suffer less from pains
Than pleasures.
I should like to see the world,
And gain that knowledge which is—
Barrener
Than ice; possessing and producing nought
But means and forms of death or vanity.
The world is just as hollow as an eggshell.
It is a surface not a solid, mind:
And all this boasted knowledge of the world
To me seems but to mean acquaintance with
Low things, or evil, or indifferent.
Much more is said of knowledge than it’s worth.
A man may gain all knowledge here, and yet
Be, after death, as much in the dark as I.
What makes you know of living after death?
Why, nothing that I know; and there it is—
But something I am told has told me so.
No angel ever came to me to prove it;
And all my friends have died, and left no ghosts.
All that is good a man may learn from himself;
And much, too, that is bad.
Nay, let me speak!
Aught that is good the soul receives of God
When He hath made it His; and until then
Man cannot know, nor do, nor be, aught good.
Oh! there is nought on earth worth being known
But God and our own souls—the God we have
Within our hearts; for it is not the hope,
Nor faith, nap fear, nor notions others have
Of God can serve us, but the sense and soul
We have of Him within us; and, for men,
God loves us men each individually,
And deals with us in order, soul by soul.
What are your politics?
I have none.
Good.
I have my thoughts. I am no party man.
I care for measures more than men, but think
Some little may depend upon the men;
Something in fires depends upon the grate.
What are your colours?
Blue as Heaven.
And mine
Are yellow as the sun.
Mine, green as grass.
Green’s forsaken, and yellow’s forsworn,
And blue’s the colour that shall be worn.
As to religion, politics, law, and war,
But little need be said. All are required,
And all are well enough. Of liberty,
And slavery, and tyranny we hear
Much; but the human mind affects extremes.
The heart is in the middle of the system;
And all affections gather round the truth,
The moderated joys and woes of life.
I love my God, my country, kind and kin,
Nor would I see a dog wronged of his bone.
My country! if a wretch should e’er arise,
Out of thy countless sons, who would curtail
Thy freedom, dim thy glory—while he lives
May an earth’s peoples curse him—for of all
Hast thou secured the blessing;—and if me
Exist who would not arm for liberty,
Be he too cursed living, and when dead,
Let him be buried downwards, with his face
Looking to Hell, and o’er his coward grave
The hare skulk in her form.
Nay, gently, friend.
Curse nothing, not the Devil. He’s beside you—
For aught you know.
I neither know nor care.
Kings, queens, knaves, tens would trick the world away,
And it were not, now and then, for some brave ace.
You see yon wretched starved old man; his brow
Grooved out with wrinkles, like the brown dry sand
The tide of life is leaving?
Yes, I see him.
Last week he thought he was about to die;
So he bade gold be strewn beneath his pillow,
Gold on a chest that he might lie and see,
And gold put in a basin on his bed,
That he might dabble with his fingers in.
He’s going now to grope for pence or pins.
He never gave a pin’s worth in his life.
What would you do to him?
I would have him wrought
Into a living wire, which, beaten out,
Might make a golden network for the world;
Then melt him inch by inch and hell by hell,
Where is the law of wrath.
Oh, charity!
It is a thought the Devil might be proud of—
Once and away. Misers and spendthrifts may
Torment each other in the world to come.
Men look on death as lightning, always far
Off, or in Heaven. They know not it is in
Themselves, a strong and inward tendency,
The soul of every atom, every hair:
That nature’s infinite electric life,
Escaping from each isolated frame,
Up out of earth, or down from Heaven, becomes
To each its proper death, and adds itself
Thus to the great reunion of the whole.
There is a man in mourning! What does he here?
He has just buried the only friend he had,
And now comes hither to enjoy himself.
Why will we dedicate the dead to God,
And not ourselves, the living? Oft we speak,
With tears of joy and trust, of some dear friend
As surely up in Heaven; while that same soul,
For aught we know, may be shuddering even in Hell
To hear his name named; or there may be no
Soul in the case—and the fat icy worm,
Give him a tongue, can tell us all about him.
Here is music. Stay. That simple melody
Comes on the heart like infant innocence—
Fore feeling pure; while yet the new-bodied soul
Is swinging to the motion of the heavens,
And scarce hath caught, as yet, earth’s backening course.
The heart is formed as earth was—its
Formless and void, and fit but for itself;
Then feelings half alive, just organized,
Come next—then creeping sports and purposes—
Then animal desires, delights, and loves—
For love is the first and granite-like effect
Of things—the longest and the highest: next
The wild and winged desires, youth’s saurian schemes,
Which creep and fly by turns; which kill, and eat,
And do disgorge each other: comes at length
The mould of perfect matchless manhood—then
Woman divides the heart, and multiplies it.
The insipidity of innocence
Palls: it is guilty, happy, and undone.
A death is laid upon it, and it goes—
Quits its green Eden for the sandy world,
Where it works out its nature, as it may,
In sweat,
