The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt

Doth put the light of knowledge out ;
A puddle, or the cricket's cry,

Is to doubt a fit reply.

The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please;
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born;
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight;
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine;
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so ;

Man was made for joy and woe;
And, when this we rightly know,
Safely through the world we go.

We are led to believe a lie

When we see with not through the eye,

Which was born in a night to perish in a night When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears and God is light

To those poor souls who dwell in night :

But doth a human form display

To those who dwell in realms of day.

I

THE MENTAL TRAVELLER.

TRAVELLED through a land of men
A land of men and women too;

And heard and saw such dreadful things
As cold earth-wanderers never knew.

For there the babe is born in joy
That was begotten in dire woe;
Just as we reap in joy the fruit
Which we in bitter tears did sow.

And, if the babe is born a boy,
He's given to a woman old,
Who nails him down upon a rock,
Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.

She binds iron thorns around his head
She pierces both his hands and feet,
She cuts his heart out at his side,

To make it feel both cold and heat,

Her fingers number every nerve

Just as a miser counts his gold;

She lives upon his shrieks and cries, And she grows young as he grows old.

Till he becomes a bleeding youth,
And she becomes a virgin bright;
Then he rends up his manacles,

And binds her down for his delight.

He plants himself in all her nerves
Just as a husbandman his mould,
And she becomes his dwelling-place
And garden fruitful seventyfold.

An aged shadow soon he fades,
Wandering round an earthly cot,
Full-filled all with gems and gold
Which he by industry had got.

And these are the gems of the human soul, The rubies and pearls of a lovesick eye, The countless gold of the aching heart,

The martyr's groan and the lover's sigh.

They are his meat, they are his drink;
He feeds the beggar and the poor ;
To the wayfaring traveller

For ever open is his door.

His grief is their eternal joy,

They make the roofs and walls to ring; Till from the fire upon the hearth A little female babe doth spring.

And she is all of solid fire

And gems and gold, that none his hand Dares stretch to touch her baby form, Or wrap her in his swaddling-band.

But she comes to the man she loves,
If young or old or rich or poor;
They soon drive out the aged host,
A beggar at another's door.

He wanders weeping far away,
Until some other take him in ;

Oft blind and age-bent, sore distressed,
Until he can a maiden win.