Shovel-hat, with or without Talfourd-Mahon Copyrights, or were it
with mere dungeons and gibbets and crosses, attack it, I say;
smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livest and
it lives; but smite, smite, in the name of God! The Highest
God, as I understand it, does audibly so command thee; still
audibly, if thou have ears to hear. He, even He, with his
_un_spoken voice, awfuler than any Sinai thunders or syllabled
speech of Whirlwinds; for the SILENCE of deep Eternities, of
Worlds from beyond the morning-stars, does it not speak to thee?
The unborn Ages; the old Graves, with their long-mouldering
dust, the very tears that wetted it now all dry,--do not these
speak to thee, what ear hath not heard? The deep Death-kingdoms,
the Stars in their never-resting courses, all Space and all Time,
proclaim it to thee in continual silent admonition. Thou too, if
ever man should, shalt work while it is called Today. For the
Night cometh, wherein no man can work.

All true Work is sacred; in all true Work, were it but true
hand-labour, there is something of divineness. Labour, wide as
the Earth, has its summit in Heaven. Sweat of the brow; and up
from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which
includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all
Sciences, all spoken Epics, all acted Heroisms, Martyrdoms,--up
to that 'Agony of bloody sweat,' which all men have called
divine! O brother, if this is not 'worship,' then I say, the
more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet
discovered under God's sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy
life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see
thy fellow Workmen there, in God's Eternity; surviving there,
they alone surviving: sacred Band of the Immortals, celestial
Bodyguard of the Empire of Mankind. Even in the weak Human
Memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods; they
alone surviving; peopling, they alone, the unmeasured solitudes
of Time! To thee Heaven, though severe, is _not_ unkind; Heaven
is kind,--as a noble Mother; as that Spartan Mother, saying
while she gave her son his shield, "With it, my son, or upon it!"
Thou too shalt return _home_ in honour; to thy far-distant Home,
in honour; doubt it not,--if in the battle thou keep thy shield!
Thou, in the Eternities and deepest Death-kingdoms, art not an
alien; thou everywhere art a denizen! Complain not; the very
Spartans did not _