'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, And the pale weaver through his windows seen In Spitalfields, looking thrice dispirited; I met a preacher there I knew, and said: "Ill and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene?" "Bravely," said he; "for I of late have been Much cheered with thoughts of...Learn More

God knows it, I am with you. If to prize Those virtues, priz'd and practis'd by too few, But priz'd, but lov'd, but eminent in you, Man's fundamental life: if to despise The barren optimistic sophistries Of comfortable moles, whom what they do Teaches the limit of the just and true-- And for such doing have no need of eyes: If sadness at the long...Learn More

Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill That to the stars uncrowns his majesty, Planting his stedfast footsteps in the sea, Making the Heaven of Heavens his dwelling-place, Spares but the cloudy border of his base To the foil'd searching of mortality: And...Learn More

Foil'd by our fellow men, depress'd, outworn, We leave the brutal world to take its way, And, Patience! in another life, we say, The world shall be thrust down, and we up-borne! And will not, then the immortal armies scorn The world's poor routed leavings? or will they, Who fail'd under the heat of this life's day, Support the fervours of the...Learn More