382 THE CREED OF THE POET. SECOND.-But this is only to be known by Reverence and Reverential Waiting and Watching. Hence he says-and it is in harmony with his whole philosophy, "To humbleness of heart descends The prescience from on high, The faith that elevates the just, And makes each soul a separate heaven, Again, THIRD. "The eye it cannot choose but see, We cannot bid the ear be still, Nor less I deem that there are powers Which of themselves our minds possess; When we can feed these minds of ours In a wise passiveness. Close up the barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives." That thus in fact all Nature exists for Man if he will only avail himself of it. "If the thing we seek Be genuine knowledge, bear we then in mind FOURTH.-But therefore there is danger lest the Baneful that is Exterior to Man be transferred Within him. FIFTH.-Still the Evil and the Good may be around us, and yet we be ignorant of them, for he asserted upwards of fifty years since that the Eye can only see what it is fitted to see. Is no mechanic structure, built by rule." SIXTH.-Hence not to Increase the circumference of our knowledge, but to Enlarge the vision of our moral Nature is of supreme importance, "How to acquire The inward principle that gives effect To outward argument." 384 THE CREED OF THE POET. SEVENTH.-Hence, in harmony with this, and resulting from this, it is that Life is what we make it, and Death is what we make it. "We may not doubt that who can best subject Is too infirm to reach." EIGHTH.-And thus we shall soon see that the charm, and the Greatness, and the Novelty of Life is in performing those Duties which lie nearest to us. NINTH. "The primal duties shine aloft like stars The charities that soothe, and heal and bless Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers." And hence the Greatness of Man and of Life is not in Dreaming but in Acting. "The food of hope Is meditated action." "Thought and theory," he said once, "must precede all action, that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory." TENTH.-Yet in the midst of all our Duties and our Deeds, disappointments will meet us, and then we shall find Nature everywhere a source of consolation and joy. That Repose and Immobility which is to be Mrs. Jameson's Common Place Book, p. 15. ASTHETIC AND ETHIC. 385 found nowhere in human history, is to be found in Nature, and there, is for ever a lenitive for all Despondency. "For the man Who in this spirit communes with the Forms Of Nature, Needs must feel The joy of that pure principle of love, The spiritual presences of absent things." "So build we up the being that we are What e'er we see Or feel, shall tend to quicken and refine; ELEVENTH.-But finally, even this fails without leaning in devout acquiescence and Faith on the strength and purity of the Divine Will. "By grace divine, Not otherwise, oh nature, we are thine." "In the port Of levity, no refuge can be found, No shelter for a spirit in distress. And proud insensibility to hope, That her mild nature can be terrible That neither she nor silence lack the power To avenge their own insulted majesty." LL |