Nothing can Happen in Violation of Natural Law 229 uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.

14. Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;

And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, art fresh and strong.

CHAPTER LXXIV

OUTWARD NATURE ALTHOUGH

INDIFFER

ENT TO MORALITY MAY BE ENLISTED ON
THE SIDE OF RIGHT

PHYSICAL NATURE IS RUTHLESS

1. Next to the greatness of cosmic forces, the quality which strikes everyone who does not avert his eyes from it, is their perfect and absolute recklessness. They go straight to their end, without regarding what or whom they crush on the road.

2. So careful of the type? but no,
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types are gone,
I care for nothing, all shall go."

3.

Man's but a fleck

Upon the unfathomed, ever shoreless sea
Of Being. Nature his friend? Ah! so

Let dreamers sing. But she, the ruthless sphinx;
"Guess thou my riddle, man, inquire! conform-
Ponder the measured sweep of Primal Law

Through æons, changeless, though all else may change."

4. I find no hint throughout the universe

Of good or ill, of blessings or of curse.

5. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.

6. The world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows a ship like a grain of dust.

7. Nature does not cocker us; we are children, not pets; she is not fond; everything is dealt to us without fear or favour, after severe universal laws.

8.

Streams will not curb their pride,
The just man not to entomb;
Nor lightnings go aside

To leave his virtues room;

Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man's barge.

9. All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean.

Gives us free scope; only, doth backward pull
Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.

12. The undivided will to seek the good,

'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings
A human music from the indifferent air.

13.

Man needs must fight

To make true peace his own;

He needs must combat might with might,
Or Might would rule alone.

14. To bring on the triumph of intellect over mechanism, of responsible morality over irresponsible force, is our mission.

15. If we think things cannot be different from what they are, we but add so much to the dead inertia of the world, which keeps them as they are; while if we will not succumb we may be part of the very forces that will help to make things different.

16. We may win more and more all power to the side of Right.

17. Thus Morality ceases to be a private affair and becomes cosmic. It may some day mean the universe under the guidance of our unselfish love.

THE WORLD IS FULL OF JUDGMENT-DAYS

1. To forget is not to be restored;

2.

To lose with time the sense of what we
did

Cancels not that we did; what's done

remains.

OUR DEEDS

LIVE ON

Our brief hours travel fast;
Each with its thought or deed, its why or how.
But know, each parting hour gives up a ghost
To dwell within thee,-an eternal Now!

3. The assurance that we live under a reign of natural law enforces upon us with a solemn joy and an abiding fear, the truth that what a man soweth, that shall he also reap;

4. And if he sow for others, others must reap of his sowing, tares of tares, and wheat of wheat.

5. Keep virtue's single path before thine eyes, Nor think from evil good can ever rise.

6. In their own hearts the earnest of the hope Which made them great, the good will ever find,