None? its twinborn brother scarcely missed it from the spray:
None ?-if none indeed, then man's neglect were bitterness;
And life a land without a sun, a globe without a God!
Yea, flowers in the desert, there be that love your beauty;
Yea, jewels in the sea, there be that prize your brightness;
Children of unmerited oblivion, there be that watch and woo you,
And many tend your sweets, with gentle ministering care:
Thronging spirits of the happy, and the ever present Good One,
Yearning seek those precious things man hath not heart to love;
Gems of the humblest or the highest, pure and patient in their kind,
The souls unhardened by ill-usage, and uncorrupt by luxury.
And ye, poor desolates unsunned, toilers in the dark damp mine,
Wearied daughters of oppression, crushed beneath the car of avarice,
There be that count your tears, he hath numbered the hairs of thy
head,-
There be that can forgive your ill with kind considerate pity:
Count ye this for comfort, Justice hath her balances,
And yet another world can compensate for all:
The daily martyrdom of patience shall not be wanting of reward;
Duty is a prickly shrub, but its flower will be happiness and glory.
Ye too, the friendless, yet dependent, that find nor home nor lover,
Sad imprisoned hearts, captive to the net of circumstance,-
And ye, too harshly judged, noble unappreciated intellects,
Who, capable of highest, lowlier fix your just ambition in content,
And chiefest, ye famished infants of the poor, toiling for your parents' bread,
Tired, and sore, and uncomforted the while, for want of love and learning,
Who struggle with the pitiless machine in dull continuous conflict,
Tasked by iron men, who care for nothing but your labour,—
Be ye long-suffering and courageous; abide the will of Heaven:
God is on your side; all things are tenderly remembered:
His servants here shall help you; and where those fail you through Neglect,
His kingdom still hath time and space for ample discriminative Justice: Yea, though utterly on this bad earth ye lose both right and mercy, The tears that we forgat to note, our God shall wipe away.
Nevertheless, kind spirit, susceptible and guileless,
Meek uncherished dove, in a carrion flock of fowls,
Sensitive mimosa, shrinking from the winds that help to root the fir,
Fragile nautilus, shipwrecked in the gale whereat the conch is glad,
Thy sharp peculiar grief is uncomforted by hope of compensation,
For it is a delicate and spiritual wound, which the probe of pity bruiseth;
Yet hear how many thoughts extenuate its pain;
Even while a kindred heart can sorrow for its presence.
For the sting of neglect is in this,—that such as we are, all forget us,
That men and women, kith and kin, so lightly heed of other:
Sympathy is lacking from the guilty such as we, even where angels
And souls of fine accord must prize a fellow-sinner's love :
For the worst love those who love them, and the best claim heart for heart, And it is a holy thirst to long for love's requital :
Hard it will be, hard and sad, to love and be unloved,
And many a thorn is thrust into the side of him that is forgotten.
The oppressive silence of reserve, the frost of failing friendship,
Affection blighted by repulse, or chilled by shallow courtesy,
The unaided struggle, the unconsidered grief, the unesteemed self-sacrifice,
The gift, dear evidence of kindness, long due, but never offered,
The glance estranged, the letter flung aside, the greeting ill received,
The services of unobtrusive care unthanked, perchance unheeded,
These things, which hard men mock at, rend the feelings of the tender,
For the delicate tissue of a spiritual mind is torn by those sharp barbs;
The coldness of a trusted friend, a plentitude ending in vacuity,
Is as if the stable world had burst a hollow bubble.
But, consider child of sensibility; the lot of men is labour,
Labour for the mouth, or labour in the spirit, labour stern and individual. Worldly cares and worldly hopes exact the thoughts of all,
And there is a necessary selfishness rooted in each mortal breast.
The plans of prudence, or the whisperings of pride, or all-absorbing reveries of love,
Ambition, grief, or fear, or joy, set each man for himself:
Therefore, the centre of a cycle, whereunto all the universe convergeth,
Is seen in fallen solitude, the naked selfish heart:
Stripped of conventional deceptions, untrammelled from the harness of
We all may read one little word engraved on all we do;
Other men, what are they unto us? the age, the mass, the million,—
We segregate distinct from generalities, that isolated particle, a self:
It is the very law of our life, a law for soul and body,
An earthly law for earthly men, toiling in responsible probation.
For each is the all unto himself, disguise it as we may,
Each infinite, each most precious; yet even as a nothing to his neighbour.
O consider, we be crowding up an avenue, trapped in the decoy of time,
Behind us the irrevocable past, before us the illimitable future,
What wonder is there, if the traveller, wayworn, hopeful, fearful,
Burdened himself, so lightly heed the burden of his brother?
How shouldst thou marvel and be sad that the pilgrims trouble not to learn
When each hath to master for himself the lessons of life and immortality?
Moreover, what art thou,—so vainly impatient of neglect,
Where then is thy worthiness, that so thou claimest honour?
Let the true judgment of humility reckon up thine ill deserts,
How little is there to be loved, how much to stir up scorn?
The double heart, the bitter tongue, the rash and erring spirit,
Be these, ye purest among men, your passports into favour ?
It is mercy in the Merciful, and justice in the Just, to be jealous of his
creature's love,
But how should evil or duplicity arrogate affection to itself?
Where love is happiness and duty, to be jealous of that love is godlike, But who can reverence the guilty? who findeth pleasure in the mean? Check the presumption of thy hopes: thankfully take refuge in obscurity, Or, if thou claimest merit, thy sin shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.
Yet again: consider them of old, the good, the great, the learned,
Who have blessed the world by wisdom, and glorified their God by purity,
Did those speed in favour ? were they the loved and the admired?
Was every prophet had in honour? and every deserving one remembered
to his praise?
What shall I say of yonder band, a glorious cloud of witnesses,
The scorned, defamed, insulted,—but the excellent of earth?
It were weariness to count up noble names, neglected in their lives,
Whom none esteemed, nor cared to love, till death had sealed them his.
For good men are the health of the world, valued only when it perisheth,
Like water, light, and air, all precious in their absence.
Who hath considered the blessing of his breath, till the poison of an asthma
Who hath regarded the just pulses of his heart, till spasm or paralysis have stopped them?
Even thus, an unobserved routine of daily grace and wisdom,
When no more here, had worship of a world, whose penitence atoned for its neglect.
And living genius is seen among infirmities, wherefrom the commoner are
And other rival men of mind crowd this arena of contention;
And there be many cares; and a man knoweth little of his brother;
Feebly we appreciate a motive, and slowly keep pace with a feeling;
And social difference is much; and experience teacheth sadly,
How great the treachery of friends, how dangerous the courtesy of enemies.
So, the sum of all these things operateth largely upon all men,
Hedging us about with thorns, to cramp our yearning sympathies,
And we grow materialized in mind, forgetting what we see not,
But, immersed in perceptions of the present, keep things absent out of thought:
Thus, where ingratitude, and guilt, and labour, and selfishness would
Humbly will the good man bow, unmurmuring, to Neglect.
Yet once more, griever at Neglect, hear me to thy comfort, or rebuke:
For, after all thy just complaint, the world is full of love.
O heart of childhood, tender, trusting, and affectionate,
O youth, warm youth, full of generous attentions,
O woman, self-forgetting woman, poetry of human life;
And not less thou, O man, so often the disinterested brother,
Many a smile of love, many a tear of pity,
Many a word of comfort, many a deed of magnanimity,
Many a stream of milk and honey pour ye freely on the earth,
And many a rosebud of love rejoiceth in the dew of your affection,
Neglect? O liberal world, for thine are many prizes:
Neglect? O charitable world, where thousands feed on bounty;
Neglect? O just world, for thy judgments err not often;
Neglect? O libel on a world, where half that world is woman!
Where is the afflicted, whose voice, once heard, stirreth not a host of com
Where is the sick untended, or in prison, and they visited him not?
The hungry is fed, and the thirsty satisfied, till ability set limits to the will,
And those who did it unto them, have done it unto God!
For human benevolence is large, though many matters dwarf it,
Prudence, ignorance, imposture, and the straitenings of circumstance and time.
And if to the body, so to the mind, the mass of men are generous:
Their estimate who know us best, is seldom seen to err:
Be sure the fault is thine, as pride, or shallowness, or vanity,
If all around thee, good and bad, neglect thy seeming merit:
No man yet deserved, who found not some to love him;
And he that never kept a friend need only blame himself:
Many for unworthiness will droop and die, but all are not unworthy;
It must indeed be cold clay soil that killeth every seed.
Therefore examine thy state, O self-accounted martyr of Neglect,
It may be, thy merit is a cubit, and thy measure thereof a furlong:
But grant it greater than thy thoughts, and grant that men thy fellows
For pleasure, business, or interest, misuse, forget, neglect thee,—
Still be thou conqueror in this, the consciousness of high deservings;
Let it suffice thee to be worthy; faint not thou for praise;
For that thou art, be grateful; go humbly even in thy confidence;
And set thy foot on the neck of an enemy so harmless as Neglect.
GODLINESS with Contentment,-these be the pillars of felicity,
Jachin, wherewithal it is established, and Boaz, in the which is strength: (1)
And upon their capitals is lily-work, the lotus fruit and flower,
Those fair and fragrant types of holiness, innocence, and beauty;
Great gain pertaineth to the pillars, nets and chains of wreathen gold,
And they stand up straight in the temple porch, the house where Glory
dwelleth.
The body craveth meats, and the spirit is athirst for peacefulness;
He that hath these, hath enough; for all beyond is vanity.
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