Whereon capricious Commerce rides.
Look, thou substantial spirit of content!
Across this little vale, thy continent,
To where, beyond the mouldering mill,
Yon old deserted Georgian hill
Bares to the sun his piteous aged crest
And seamy breast,

By restless-hearted children left to lie
Untended there beneath the heedless sky,
As barbarous folk expose their old to
die.

Upon that generous-rounding side,

With gullies scarified

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Where keen Neglect his lash hath plied, Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil,

And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil.

Scorning the slow reward of patient grain,

He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain,

Then sat him down and waited for the rain.

He sailed in borrowed ships of usury-
A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, 140
Seeking the Fleece and finding misery.
Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle
trance

He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance

Should plough for him the stony field of Chance,

Aye, as each year declined,

With bitter heart and ever-brooding mind He mourned his fate unkind.

In dust, in rain, with might and main, He nursed his cotton, cursed his grain, Fretted for news that made him fret again,

Snatched at each telegram of Future Sale, And thrilled with Bulls' or Bears' alternate wail

In hope or fear alike for ever pale. 170 And thus from year to year, through hope and fear,

With many a curse and many a secret tear,

Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear,
At last

He woke to find his foolish dreaming past,
And all his best-of-life the easy prey
Of squandering scamps and quacks that
lined his way

With vile array, From rascal statesman down to petty knave;

Himself, at best, for all his bragging

O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st,

Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt,

And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st,

Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out!

Lo! while thy heart's within, helping the choir,

Without, thine eyes range up and down the time,

Blinking at o'er-bright science, smit with desire

To see and not to see. Hence, crime on crime.

Yea, if the Christ (called thine) now paced yon street,

Thy halfness hot with His rebuke would swell;

10

Legions of scribes would rise and run and beat

His fair intolerable Wholeness twice to hell.

Nay (so, dear Heart, thou whisperest in my soul),

'Tis a half time, yet Time will make it whole,

30

If I do ask, How God can dumbness keep While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time, Stabbing His saintliest children in their sleep,

And staining holy walls with clots of crime?—

Or, How may He whose wish but names a fact

Refuse what miser's-scanting of supply Would richly glut each void where man hath lacked

Of grace or bread?-or, How may Power deny

Wholeness to th' almost-folk that hurt our hope

These heart-break Hamlets who so barely fail

In life or art that but a hair's more scope Had set them fair on heights they ne'er may scale?—

Somehow by thee, dear Love, I win con

tent:

Thy Perfect stops th' Imperfect's argu

ment.

IV

By the more height of thy sweet stature grown,

Twice-eyed with thy gray vision set in mine,

I ken far lands to wifeless men unknown, I compass stars for one-sexed eyes too fine.