generous beliefs console The brave whom Fate denies the goal! If others reach it, is content; To Heaven’s high will his will is bent. Firm on his heart relied, What lot soe’er betide, Work of his hand He nor repents nor grieves, Pleads for itself the fact, As unrepenting Nature leaves Her every act.

Fell the bolt on the branching oak; The rainbow of his hope was broke; No craven cry, no secret tear,— He told no pang, he knew no fear; Its peace sublime his aspect kept, His purpose woke, his features slept; And yet between the spasms of pain His genius beamed with joy again.

O’er thy rich dust the endless smile Of Nature in thy Spanish isle Hints never loss or cruel break And sacrifice for love’s dear sake, Nor mourn the unalterable Days That Genius goes and Folly stays. What matters how, or from what ground, The freed soul its Creator found? Alike thy memory embalms That orange-grove, that isle of palms, And these loved banks, whose oak-boughs bold Root in the blood of heroes old.

ELEMENTS.

EXPERIENCE.

The lords of life, the lords of life,— I saw them pass, In their own guise, Like and unlike, Portly and grim,— Use and Surprise, Surface and Dream, Succession swift and spectral Wrong, Temperament without a tongue, And the inventor of the game Omnipresent without name;— Some to see, some to be guessed, They march from east to west: Little man, least of all, Among the legs of his guardians tall, Walked about with puzzled look. Him by the hand dear Nature took, Dearest Nature, strong and kind, Whispered, ‘Darling, never mind! To-morrow they will wear another face, The founder thou; these are thy race!’

COMPENSATION.

II.

The wings of Time are black and white, Pied with morning and with night. Mountain tall and ocean deep Trembling balance duly keep. In changing moon and tidal wave Glows the feud of Want and Have. Gauge of more and less through space, Electric star or pencil plays, The lonely Earth amid the balls That hurry through the eternal halls, A makeweight flying to the void, Supplemental asteroid, Or compensatory spark, Shoots across the neutral Dark.

III.

Man’s the elm, and Wealth the vine; Staunch and strong the tendrils twine: Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, None from its stock that vine can reave. Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There’s no god dare wrong a worm; 

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