ving cry, when fortune frowns,
Mutter their falsehoods through the bolted gate;
But in the brightness of the inner soul,
The placitude of peace and holy thought,
The joyous lightness of the spirit's wings,
Sweeping with equal strokes the azure sky
Of Present, Past, and wide Futurity;
In the high tidemarks on the sands of life,
Where thought hath swept her purifying wave,
Bearing the treasures of the unsearched deep
To swell the riches of humanity.
_That_ is a happiness apart from man
To aid, to sympathise with, or destroy;
In its calm solitude alike secure
From the broad adulation of the weak,
And the strained condescension of the great,
Both insults to the mighty soul within,
That is not prized but for its golden shrine.
Here there is that which makes the spirit free
And noble in the measure of its strength,
Untrammelled by conventionalities
That make the very light of heaven take worth
According to the casement it shines through.

O solitude! thy blessed power hath swept
All earthly passions from my soul like weeds
That choke the issues of eternal love.
What now to me are hatred and revenge?
Thoughts that if fleeting through the mind would fall
Like unknown birds upon a foreign shore,
Strange, wonderful; where no false hearts are nigh
To poison life with variance and strife.
O holy Nature! thou art only love
And peace and universal unity,
From thy sweet bosom springeth up no seed
Of bitterness and sorrow, that like thorns
Cling to the vesture of mortality,
Piercing the spirit through with cruel woe.
With thee my soul could dwell for evermore,
Expanding all good feelings day by day,
Till, at the last, like roses in full bloom
The blossoms fall from pure maturity.
Pride! Here no scale of inches is set up
For man to strain his littleness against,
But o'er me hangs the majesty of heaven,
Bright with the glory of the noontide sun;
Beneath, the Earth, that whispers "Thou art dust,
"Gat like a child forth from my fertile womb,
"And bone of my bone, thus, flesh of my flesh!"
Thou glorious firmament that like God's love
Enfoldest all creation utterly,
Making the pathway of the wheeling spheres
A splendour, and a triumph, and a joy,
That on the brightness of thine azure breast
Settest the constellated stars like gems,
To flash the glory of thy loveliness
Through all the fulness of unmeasured space.