I 2 When I arose and saw the dawn, I sighed for thee; When light rode high, and the dew was gone, Thy brother Death came, and cried, Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, Death will come when thou art dead, Sleep will come when thou art fled; POURQUOI la lumière est-elle donnée au malheureux, Et se réjouissent, quand ils ont trouvé le tombeau; Adversity Mes soupirs sont devenus comme mon pain, 13 K. Henry VI at the battle of Wakefield. THIS battle fares like to the morning's war, Sometime the flood prevails, and then the wind; Here on this molehill will I sit me down. Would I were dead!—if God's good will were so; To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, Failure How many make the hour full complete, So many hours must I take my rest; So many hours must I contemplate; many hours must I sport myself; So many weeks ere the poor So many days my ewes have been with young; To kings, that fear their subjects' treachery? His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade, His viands sparkling in a golden cup,. His body couchèd in a curious bed, When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him. 14 Observe, however, that of man's whole terrestrial possessions and attainments, unspeakably the noblest are Lost Ideals his Symbols, divine or divine-seeming; under which he marches and fights, with victorious assurance, in this lifebattle: what we can call his Realised Ideals. Of which realised Ideals, omitting the rest, consider only these two: his Church, or spiritual Guidance; his Kingship, or temporal one. The Church: what a word was there; richer than Golconda and the treasures of the world! In the heart of the remotest mountains rises the little Kirk; the Dead all slumbering round it, under their white memorial-stones, 'in hope of a happy resurrection': Dull wert thou, . . if never in any hour. . it spoke to thee things unspeakable, that went to thy soul's soul. Strong was he that had a Church,—what we can call a Church he stood thereby, though in the center of Immensities in the conflux of Eternities', yet manlike towards God and man; the vague shoreless Universe had become a firm city for him, a dwelling which he knew. Such virtue was in Belief; in these words well spoken: I believe. Well might men prize their Credo, and raise stateliest Temples for it, and reverend Hierarchies, and give it the tithe of their substance; it was worth living for and dying for But of those decadent ages in which no Ideal either grows or blossoms? when Belief and Loyalty have passed away, and only the cant and false echo of them remains ; and all Solemnity has become Pageantry; and the Creed of persons in authority, an Imbecility or a Machiavelism? Alas, of these ages World-history can take no notice; they have to be compressed more and more, and finally suppressed in the Annals of Mankind; blotted out as spurious,-which indeed they are. Hapless ages: wherein, if ever in any, it is an 15 unhappiness to be born. To be born, and to learn only, live, what VANITY of Vanities, saith the Preacher, What profit hath a man of all his labour The sun ariseth and the sun goeth down, and turneth round unto the north; All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; Unto the place whence the rivers come, All things are full of weariness; man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been is that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done : and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath already been in the ages that were before us. |