ms to be,
instead of a benevolent purpose, a world ruled by a power indifferent to
the triumph of evil over good, and either "loveless" or unintelligent.

[Footnote A: _See passage just quoted._]

"Life, from birth to death,
Means--either looking back on harm escaped,
Or looking forward to that harm's return
With tenfold power of harming."[B]

[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe._]

And it is not possible for man to contravene this evidence of faults and
omissions: for, in doing so, he would remove the facts in reaction
against which his moral nature becomes active. What proof is there,
then, that the universal love is no mere dream? None! from the side of
the intellect, answers the poet. Man, who has the will to remove the
ills of life,

"Stop change, avert decay,
Fix life fast, banish death,"[C]

[Footnote C: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]

has not the power to effect his will; while the Power, whose
limitlessness he recognizes everywhere around him, merely maintains the
world in its remorseless course, and puts forth no helping hand when
good is prone and evil triumphant. "God does nothing."

"'No sign,'--groaned he,--
No stirring of God's finger to denote
He wills that right should have supremacy
On earth, not wrong! How helpful could we quote
But one poor instance when He interposed
Promptly and surely and beyond mistake
Between oppression and its victim, closed
Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake
From our long dream that justice bears no sword,
Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves.'"[A]

[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville._]

But he tells us in his later poems, that there is no answer vouchsafed
to man's cry to the Power, that it should reveal

"What heals all harm,
Nay, hinders the harm at first,
Saves earth."[B]

[Footnote B: _Reverie--Asolando._]

And yet, so far as man can see, there were no bar to the remedy, if
"God's all-mercy" did really "mate His all-potency."

"How easy it seems,--to sense
Like man's--if somehow met
Power with its match--immense
Love, limitless, unbeset
By hindrance on every side!"[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

But that love nowhere makes itself evident. "Power," we recognize,

"finds nought too hard,
Fulfilling itself all ways,
Unchecked, unchanged; while barred,
Baffled, what good began
Ends evil on every side."[A]

[Footnote A: _Reverie--Asoland