(_He thinks_.)
I know that God is good, though evil dwells
Among us, and doth all things holiest share;
That there is joy in heaven, while yet our knells
Sound for the souls which He has summoned there:
That painful love unsatisfied hath spells
Earned by its smart to soothe its fellows care:
But yet this atom cannot in the whole
Forget itself--it aches a separate soul.
(_He speaks._)
But, Madam, to my Poet I return.
With his sweet cadences of woven words
He made their rude untutored hearts to burn
And melt like gold refined. No brooding birds
Sing better of the love that doth sojourn
Hid in the nest of home, which softly girds
The beating heart of life; and, strait though it be,
Is straitness better than wide liberty.
He taught them, and they learned, but not the less
Remained unconscious whence that lore they drew,
But dreamed that of their native nobleness
Some lofty thoughts, that he had planted, grew;
His glorious maxims in a lowly dress
Like seed sown broadcast sprung in all men's view.
The sower, passing onward, was not known,
And all men reaped the harvest as their own.
It may be, Madam, that those ballads sweet,
Whose rhythmic words we sang but yesterday,
Which time and changes make not obsolete,
But (as a river blossoms bears away
That on it drop) take with them while they fleet--
It may be his they are, from him bear sway:
But who can tell, since work surviveth fame?--
The rhyme is left, but lost the Poet's name.
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