ampler stage of life to win,
I'll stop, and say: "There were no succour here!
The aids to noble life are all within."
EAST LONDON
'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,
And the pale weaver, through his windows seen
In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.
I met a preacher there I knew, and said:
"Ill and o'erwork'd, how fare you in this scene?"--
"Bravely!" said he; "for I of late have been
Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, _the living bread_."
O human soul! as long as thou canst so
Set up a mark of everlasting light,
Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,
To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam--
Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night!
Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.
WEST LONDON
Crouch'd on the pavement, close by Belgrave Square,
A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied.
A babe was in her arms, and at her side
A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.
Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there,
Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hied
Across, and begg'd, and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.
Thought I: "Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,
Of sharers in a common human fate.
"She turns from that cold succour, which attends
The unknown little from the unknowing great,
And points us to a better time than ours."
EAST AND WEST
In the bare midst of Anglesey they show
Two springs which close by one another play;
And, "Thirteen hundred years agone," they say,
"Two saints met often where those waters flow.
"One came from Penmon westward, and a glow
Whiten'd his face from the sun's fronting ray;
Eastward the other, from the dying day,
And he with unsunn'd face did always go."
_Seiriol the Bright, Kybi the Dark!_ men said.
The seer from the East was then in light,
The seer from the West was then in shade.
Ah! now 'tis changed. In conquering sunshine bright
The man of the bold West now comes array'd;
He of the mystic East is touch'd with night.
THE BETTER PART
Long fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,
How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare!
"Christ," some one says, "was human as we are;
No judge
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