Ah! not the radiant spirit of Greece alone
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ermany, France, Christ, Moses, Athens, Rome.The strife, the mixture in her soul, are ours;Her genius and her glory are her own. _WORLDLY PLACE._ _Even in a palace, life may be led well!_So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling denOf common life, where, crowded up pell-mell, Our freedom for a little bread we sell,And drudge under some foolish master’s kenWho rates us if we peer outside our pen,--Matched with a palace, is not this a hell? _Even in a palace!_ On his truth sincere,Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came;And when my ill-schooled spirit is aflame Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,I’ll stop, and say, “There were no succor here!The aids to noble life are all within.” _EAST LONDON._ ’Twas August, and the fierce sun overheadSmote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,And the pale weaver, through his windows seenIn Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited. I met a preacher there I knew, and said,--“Ill and o’erworked, how fare you in this scene?”“Bravely!” said he; “for I of late have beenMuch cheered with thoughts of Christ, _the living bread_.” O human soul! as long as thou canst soSet up a mark of everlasting light,Above the howling senses’ ebb and flow, To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam,--Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night!Thou mak’st the heaven thou hop’st indeed thy home. _WEST LONDON._ Crouched on the pavement, close by Belgrave Square,A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied;A babe was in her arms, and at her sideA girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare. Some laboring-men, whose work lay somewhere there,Passed opposite; she touched her girl, who hiedAcross, and begged, and came back satisfied.The rich she had let pass with frozen stare. Thought I, “Above her state this spirit towers;She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,Of sharers in a common human fate. She turns from that cold succor, which attendsThe unknown little from the unknowing great,And points us to a better time than ours.” _EAST AND WEST._ In the bare midst of Anglesey they showTwo springs which close by one another play;And, “Thirteen hundred years agone,” they say,“Two saints met often where those waters flow. One came from Penmon westward, and a glowWhitened his face from the sun’s fronting ray;Eastward the other, from the dying day,And he with unsunned face did always go.” _Seiriol the Bright, Kybi the Dark!_ men said.The seer from the East was then in light,The seer from the West was then in shade.Ah! now ’tis changed. In conquering sunshine brightThe man of the bold West now comes arrayed:He of the mystic East is touched with night. _THE BETTER PART._ Long fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,How angrily thou spurn’st all simpler fare!“Christ,” some one says, “was human as we are;No judge eyes us from heaven, our sin to scan; We live no more, when we have done our span.”“Well, then, for Christ,” thou answerest, “who can care?From sin which Heaven records not, why forbear?Live we like brutes our life without a plan!” So answerest thou; but why not rather say,--“Hath man no second life? _Pitch this one high!_Sits there no judge in heaven, our sin to see? _More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!_Was Christ a man like us? _Ah! let us try__If we then, too, can be such men as he!_”
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