world. The world
with its injustices, its golden brutalities, and dull yellow
guineas, is a disgust to such souls: the ray of Heaven that is
in them does at least pre-doom them to be very miserable here.
Yes:--and yet all misery is faculty misdirected, strength that
has not yet found its way. The black whirlwind is mother of the
lightning. No _smoke,_ in any sense, but can become flame and
radiance! Such soul, once graduated in Heaven's stern
University, steps out superior to your guinea.

Dost thou know, O sumptuous Corn-Lord, Cotton-Lord, O mutinous
Trades-Unionist, gin-vanquished, undeliverable; O much-enslaved
World,--this man is not a slave with thee! None of thy
promotions is necessary for him. His place is with the stars of
Heaven: to thee it may be momentous, to him it is indifferent,
whether thou place him in the lowest hut, or forty feet higher at
the top of thy stupendous high tower, while here on Earth. The
joys of Earth that are precious, they depend not on thee and thy
promotions. Food and raiment, and, round a social hearth, souls
who love him, whom he loves: these are already his. He wants
none of thy rewards; behold also, he fears none of thy
penalties. Thou canst not answer even by killing him: the case
of Anaxarchus thou canst kill; but the self of Anaxarchus, the
word or act of Anaxarchus, in no wise whatever. To this man
death is not a bugbear; to this man life is already as earnest
and awful, and beautiful and terrible, as death.

Not a May-game is this man's life; but a battle and a march, a
warfare with principalities and powers. No idle promenade
through fragrant orange-groves and green flowery spaces, waited
on by the choral Muses and the rosy Hours: it is a stern
pilgrimage through burning sandy solitudes, through regions of
thick-ribbed ice. He walks among men; loves men, with
inexpressible soft pity,--as they _cannot_ love him: but his
soul dwells in solitude, in the uttermost parts of Creation. In
green oases by the palm-tree wells, he rests a space; but anon
he has to journey forward, escorted by the Terrors and the
Splendours, the Archdemons and Archangels. All Heaven, all
Pandemonium are his escort. The stars keen-glancing, from the
Immensities, send tidings to him; the graves, silent with their
dead, from the Eternities. Deep calls for him unto Deep.

Thou, O World, how wilt thou secure thyself against this man?
Thou canst not hire him by thy guineas