Which is far holier than the certitudes

Of those who, seeing little, think they hold
Within their own lives God's infinity.

So once again I am the child that weeps
In his bewilderment, regarding not

Their littleness who turn on him and say

'You used your toy too roughly; bear the pain.’

If I so used it, then God knows I bear

Enough of penalty to satisfy

The most severe; but did I use my faith
Too roughly? Nay, in that my faith itself
Is still unchanged, and in material guise
I am afflicted, surely faith it was

That proved too hard for me; my inward self
Moved on unheedful of the outward need

For caution; so did Eucharis move on,

Only, more faithful in that she resigned

Much more than I, her outward self was wrecked

The sooner; I am left to float along,

My pristine faith, thank God! unchanged, un

changed,

That there is truth and firm reality

Where most men see but clouds. That we have

failed

(If we have failed,) to reach it, matters not;

It mattered not that some were beaten back
By fear or baffling winds, from searching out
The mysteries of the western continent;

Columbus found it; so, when time is ripe,
That wind of God which for the admiral
Two months blew westward, contrary to wont,
Shall bear some on to land upon the shore
We failed to touch, if we have failed indeed.
There was not less dinned in the ears of those
Who sailed with him, of their impiety,

Than will be preached upon our history's text.

Than will be; for my mind is firmly bent

To write her memoir and to publish it,

That all may know her as she truly was.

Nothing is lost by truth, but all things gained;
Gain to her memory, lest, oozing out,

The bare facts of our marriage should be made
With some a cause for holding up of hands,
And villainous constructions of her nature;
Gain to the world, lest some, without the faith
To bear her baptism, should be bold to sit
Upon the seat which is at God's right hand.

You would withhold me? If you would, I care

not;

No man shall breathe upon her memory

And hold himself by ignorance excused;

And none shall dare to follow after her

Save by the gate through which she entered in,

The gate of her own pureness, and her faith

To see God only and to walk with Him.

But O, my friend, what inequality

The world endures ! what inequality

Corrupts its judgment ! I have seen a man,

A rough, shrewd man, whose greatest virtue lay
In carelessness of life, and hardihood

That brought him through where other men had

died;

I have seen such a man, but newly come

From wanderings in some region where the scale
Of man turns backward, where brute force alone
Is held in awe, and where his force of will
Has been a revelation ;-I have seen

This man bowed down to, feasted, magnified,
And all but made a saint of; so far well,-
Honour to whom 'tis due. But what reward
Reserves the world for him who ventures on

Into the future, carrying the scale

Of human nature forward,-visiting

Those regions yet unpeopled, save by thoughts

Of Him who soon will give them outward forms,— Men, who shall move unfettered by all law

Save that of Love, of that which brings them near

The Infinite Perfection;-does the world

Keep praise for such a man? Or stands it not, Even as the friends of Bunyan's pilgrim stood, To mock his setting forward? cries it not

'So would we have it!' when his foot has slipped, Or when he loses courage?

But we know

In what we have believed; we look behind

And see those steps by which the whole world

climbs

Up to its Father, marked each one with blood,

With blood and tears of agony; we know

That what men die for, other men will rise
To live in; if it be that Eucharis

Has died a martyr, as I think sometimes,—
A martyr not for carelessness of forms,
But carefulness to keep that alway first
Which should be first, at any sacrifice,-

Her death will not be wasted, nor her life.

The world is changing; God has sent his ploughs