t a poor
_infinite_ mortal, who, in thy narrow clay-prison here, _seemest_ so
unreasonable! Thou wilt never sell thy Life, or any part of thy Life,
in a satisfactory manner. Give it, like a royal heart; let the price
be Nothing: thou _hast_ then, in a certain sense, got All for it! The
heroic man,--and is not every man, God be thanked, a potential
hero?--has to do so, in all times and circumstances. In the most
heroic age, as in the most unheroic, he will have to say, as Burns
said proudly and humbly of his little Scottish Songs, little dewdrops
of Celestial Melody in an age when so much was unmelodious: "By
Heaven, they shall either be invaluable or of no value; I do not need
your guineas for them!" It is an element which should, and must, enter
deeply into all settlements of wages here below. They never will be
'satisfactory' otherwise; they cannot, O Mammon Gospel, they never
can! Money for my little piece of work 'to the extent that will allow
me to keep working;' yes, this,--unless you mean that I shall go my
ways _before_ the work is all taken out of me: but as to 'wages'--!--

On the whole, we do entirely agree with those old Monks, _Laborare
est Orare_. In a thousand senses, from one end of it to the other,
true Work _is_ Worship. He that works, whatsoever be his work, he
bodies forth the form of Things Unseen; a small Poet every Worker is.
The idea, were it but of his poor Delf Platter, how much more of his
Epic Poem, is as yet 'seen,' half-seen, only by himself; to all others
it is a thing unseen, impossible; to Nature herself it is a thing
unseen, a thing which never hitherto was;--very 'impossible,' for it
is as yet a No-thing! The Unseen Powers had need to watch over such a
man; he works in and for the Unseen. Alas, if he look to the Seen
Powers only, he may as well quit the business; his No-thing will never
rightly issue as a Thing, but as a Deceptivity, a Sham-thing,--which
it had better not do!

Thy No-thing of an Intended Poem, O Poet who hast looked merely to
reviewers, copyrights, booksellers, popularities, behold it has not
yet become a Thing; for the truth is not in it! Though printed,
hotpressed, reviewed, celebrated, sold to the twentieth edition: what
is all that? The Thing, in philosophical uncommercial language, is
still a No-thing, mostly semblance, and deception of the
sight;--benign Oblivion incessantly gnawing at it, impatient till
Chaos, to which it belongs, do reabsorb it!--

He who t