English

CHAPTER VII.

What am I? man; O what is man? O nought!
What, am I nought? yes; what? sin and debate:
Three vices all in one, of one life bought:
Man am I not; what then? I am man's hate:
Yes, man I am; man, because mortal, dead;
Mortality my guide, by mischief led.

Man, because like to man, man, because born;
In birth no man, a child, child, because weak;
Weak, because weaken'd by ill-fortune's scorn;

CHAPTER VI.

After this conflict between God and man,
Remorse took harbour in God's angry breast;
Astraea to be pitiful began,
All heavenly powers to lie in mercy's rest;
Forthwith the voice of God did redescend,
And his Astraea warn'd all to amend.

To you I speak, quoth she; hear, learn, and mark,
You that be kings, judges, and potentates,
Give ear, I say; wisdom, your strongest ark,

CHAPTER V.

As these two slumbers have two contraries,
One slumber in the face, one in the mind;
So their two casements two varieties,
One unto heaven, and one to hell combin'd:
The face is flattery, and her mansion hell;
The mind is just, this doth in heaven dwell.

The face, heaving her heavy eyelids up
From forth the chamber of eternal night,
Sees virtue hold plenty's replenish'd cup,

CHAPTER IV.

If happiness may harbour in content,
If life in love, if love in better life,
Then unto many happiness is lent,
And long-departed joy might then be rife:
Some happy if they live, some if they die,
Happy in life, happy in tragedy.

Content is happiness because content;
Bareness and barrenness is virtue's grace,
Bare because wealth to poverty is bent,

CHAPTER III .

But every cloud cannot hide Phaebus' face,
Nor shut the casement of his living flame;
Nor is there every soul which wanteth grace,
Nor every heart seduc'd with mischief's name:
Life cannot live without corruption,
World cannot be without destruction.

Nor is the body all corrupt, or world
Bent wholly unto wickedness' assault;
The adder is not always seen uncurl'd,

CHAPTER I .

Wisdom, elixir of the purest life,
Hath taught her lesson to judicial views,
To those that judge a cause, and end a strife,
Which sits in judgment's seat and justice use;
A lesson worthy of divinest care,
Quintessence of a true divinest fear:

Unwilling that exordium should retain
Her life-infusing speech, doth thus begin:
You, quoth she, that give remedy or pain,

To be made wholly one
With all the world in fellowship of grief
May count for something. Human joy is brief,
And sorrow stalks between us and the sun.

I told my story of pain to one I met;
He gentler seemed, to grief more reconciled
He said: " A grey-haired mother you regret;
I sorrow for a child. "

If I could see thee! — know
Just once for certain that thou waitest me,
The dreariest pang would go:
But, this is just the gift which cannot be.

Most hard it seems to bear,
Most hard, — that, if the dead be living yet,
Our foreheads may be met
Never by breathings from their mountain-air.

O mother — just to know
That Death's forlorn black " Never " is a lie!

And, after battle, tenderer is the breeze,
More bountiful the beauty of the night, —
New stars within the abysmal blue shine bright,
And balmier odours fill the forest-trees,
And yet more silvery moonlight floods the seas,
And woman's breast is more exceeding white:
More heavenly is the touch of finger light,
And more divine the most strange sense of ease.

Oh, wind the wreath of battle round thy brow,
Thou lover-warrior! Then shalt thou learn how
The kiss of woman may be God's own calm

And yet chief strength gives chiefest tenderness. —
After the battle comes the calm of sleep
Upon a woman's breast, and eyes that weep,
And the superb and sorrowless caress.
Oh, did not Christ, after the bitter stress
Of unknown agony in the garden deep,
Fruits of unknown, unearthly triumph reap, —
When, death being over, love leant down to bless?

First, battle; after, woman. First the swords