8

CO

The Two Voices.

I said, "When first the world began,
Young Nature through five cycles ran,
And in the sixth she moulded man.

"She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and, above the rest, Dominion in the head and breast."

Thereto the silent voice replied, “Self-blinded are you by your pride: Look up through night: the world is wide.

"This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe

Is boundless better, boundless worse.

"Think you this mould of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres?"

It spake, moreover, in my mind:

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Though thou wert scattered to the wind, Yet is there plenty of the kind."

Then did my response clearer fall: "No compound of this earthly ball Is like another, all in all.”

The Two Voices.

To which he answered scoffingly,
"Good soul! suppose I grant it thee,
Who'll weep for thy deficiency?

"Or will one beam be less intense, When thy peculiar difference

Is cancelled in the world of sense?"

I would have said, "Thou canst not know,"
But my full heart, that worked below,
Rained through my sight its overflow.

Again the voice spake unto me: "Thou art so steeped in misery,

Surely 't were better not to be.

"Thine anguish will not let thee sleep,

Nor any train of reason keep:

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Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep."

I said, "The years with change advance:

If I make dark

my countenance, I shut my life from happier chance.

"Some turn this sickness yet might take, Even yet." But he : "What drug can make A withered palsy cease to shake?

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The Two Voices.

I wept, "Though I should die, I know
That all about the thorn will blow

In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;

"And men, through novel spheres of thought Still moving after truth long sought,

Will learn new things when I am not.”

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"Yet," said the secret voice, some time,
Sooner or later, will gray prime

Make thy grass hoar with early time.

"Not less swift souls that

yearn

for light,

Rapt after heaven's starry flight,

Would sweep the tracts of day and night.

"Not less the bee would range her cells,
The furzy prickle fire the dells,
The foxglove cluster dappled bells."

I said that "all the years invent ;
Each month is various to present
The world with some development.

"Were this not well, to bide mine hour,
Though watching from a ruined tower
How grows the day of human power?"

The Two Voices.

"The highest-mounted mind," he said, "Still sees the sacred morning spread The silent summit overhead.

"Will thirty seasons render plain Those lonely lights that still remain, Just breaking over land and main?

"Or make that morn, from his cold crown
And crystal silence creeping down,
Flood with full daylight glebe and town?

"Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let
Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set
In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet:

"Thou hast not gained a real height, Nor art thou nearer to the light, Because the scale is infinite.

""T were better not to breathe or speak Than cry for strength, remaining weak, And seem to find, but still to seek.

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"Moreover, but to seem to find
Asks what thou lackest, thought resigned,
A healthy frame, a quiet mind."

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The Two Voices.

I said, "When I am gone away,

'He dared not tarry,' men will say, Doing dishonor to my clay."

"This is more vile," he made reply, "To breathe and loathe, to live and sigh, Than once from dread of pain to die.

“Sick art thou, a divided will
Still heaping on the fear of ill
The fear of men, a coward still.

"Do men love thee? Art thou so bound To men, that how thy name may sound Will vex thee lying under ground?

"The memory of the withered leaf
In endless time is scarce more brief
Than of the garnered autumn-sheaf.

"Go, vexèd spirit, sleep in trust;
The right ear, that is filled with dust,
Hears little of the false or just."

"Hard task, to pluck resolve," I cried, "From emptiness and the waste wide Of that abyss, or scornful pride!