93 LETTER XII. LEONARD TO STEPHEN. April 24, 18-3. THE world is full of inequalities; Man's life is all an inequality; His joys, emotions, sins and sympathies Of two unequal sources of attraction, Mere outward signs of inequality Between his inward self and what he deems His outward self should be. I know this now, And felt it along ago; I call to mind A time when some one gave me a toy horse Whose head was on a hinge and moved about As the horse moved; the hinge broke, and the head Dropped off; I know I wept for many days Over the headless body,-kept it safe, And took it out in secret to weep over, Knowing not wherefore; now the cause I know;— It was the strange bewilderment I felt To find what disproportion stood between My joy, and that which was the outward sign Of all my joy,—the hinge that quickly broke, O my true friend, if softly all my days In these plain words, or plainly hinted at ; 'Learn through your grief some lesson; learn to know 'The ways of life more clearly.' What to learn? And how more clearly? I can say with Keats That all my knowledge is that joy is gone There to abide for ever. Have they learnt, Me, whom an ocean capable to fill All conduits of sorrow, circles round, To you I would say something. Verily There have been times, there still are times, in which I seem to have fulfilled the wish of those Who would that I learnt clearly, through my loss, Some lesson; yet with this great difference,That they would bring me comfort, while despair, Clear, black, despair is all that I can reap From what at such times is the meeting point 'That he should have a millstone round his neck, More clearly felt by me than by my teachers Were ever seen or felt those ways of life Which they profess to know. O selfish wretch, Which should bear all things, hope, believe, endure All things for all men,-was thy charity Too weak to stoop to what had been to her The complement of her fidelity, The armour for her weakness, and to thee A giving up of nothing? Dost thou give Refuse thy charity, and lead in sin Not only her, but many after her ? Then art thou nothing; be condemned and die. This is my millstone; O, a heavy one! I sink beneath it down, and down, and down; I seem to come to where dead bodies float For ever in suspension; then I say, 'If she has sinned through me, she should be here; 'I find her not;' and then a light breaks through From some immeasurable height, by which I see her, not beside me, but far off Where that light falls from; then I rise again,- I shall not learn, save that it lies by far H |