THE TWO VOICES. A STILL Small voice spake unto me, "Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?" Then to the still small voice I said; "Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made." To which the voice did urge reply; To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie." "An inner impulse rent the veil Of his old husk: from head to tail "He dried his wings: like gauze they grew: I said, "When first the world began, She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and, above the rest, Dominion in the head and breast." Thereto the silent voice replied; "This truth within thy mind rehearse, Is boundless better, boundless worse. "Think you this mould of hopes and fears It spake, moreover, in my mind : Then did my response clearer fall: To which he answer'd scoffingly; "Or will one beam be less intense, Is cancell'd in the world of sense?" I would have said, "Thou canst not know,”. Again the voice spake unto me: "Thine anguish will not let thee sleep, Nor any train of reason keep: Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep." I said, "The years with change advance : I shut my life from happier chance. "Some turn this sickness yet might take, Ev'n yet." But he: "What drug can make A wither'd palsy cease to shake?" I wept, "Tho' I should die, I know "And men, thro' novel spheres of thought "Yet," said the secret voice, some time, Sooner or later, will gray prime Make thy grass hoar with early rime. "Not less swift souls that yearn for light, Rapt after heaven's starry flight, Would sweep the tracts of day and night. "Not less the bee would range her cells, The furzy prickle fire the dells, The foxglove cluster dappled bells.” I said that "all the years invent; "Were this not well, to bide mine hour, Tho' watching from a ruin'd tower How grows the day of human power?” "The highest-mounted mind," he said, "Still sees the sacred morning spread The silent summit overhead. "Will thirty seasons render plain Those lonely lights that still remain, Just breaking over land and main ? "Or make that morn, from his cold crown And crystal silence creeping down, Flood with full daylight glebe and town? "Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set In midst of knowledge, dream'd not yet. "Thou hast not gain'd a real height, Nor art thou nearer to the light, Because the scale is infinite. "'T were better not to breathe or speak, Than cry for strength, remaining weak, And seem to find, but still to seek. "Moreover, but to seem to find I said, "When I am gone away, "This is more vile," he made reply, Than once from dread of pain to die. "Do men love thee? Art thou so bound To men, that how thy name may sound Will vex thee lying underground? "The memory of the wither'd leaf In endless time is scarce more brief Than of the garner'd Autumn-sheaf. "Go, vexed Spirit, sleep in trust; The right ear, that is fill'd with dust, Hears little of the false or just." "Hard task, to pluck resolve," I cried, "From emptiness and the waste wide Of that abyss, or scornful pride! 66 Nay rather yet that I could raise One hope that warm'd me in the days While still I yearn'd for human praise. When, wide in soul and bold of tongue, "I sung the joyful Pæan clear, "Waiting to strive a happy strife, "Some hidden principle to move, To put together, part and prove, And meet the bounds of hate and love "As far as might be, to carve out "To search thro' all I felt or saw, “At least, not rotting like a weed, "To pass, when Life her light withdraws, "In some good cause, not in mine own, "Whose eyes are dim with glorious tears, "Then dying of a mortal stroke, "Yea!" said the voice, "thy dream was good, While thou abodest in the bud. It was the stirring of the blood. "If Nature put not forth her power About the opening of the flower, Who is it that could live an hour? "Then comes the check, the change, the fall. Pain rises up, old pleasures pall. There is one remedy for all. "Yet hadst thou, thro' enduring pain, Link'd month to month with such a chain Of knitted purport, all were vain. "Thou hadst not between death and birth "That men with knowledge merely play'd, "Much less this dreamer, deaf and blind, |