Are thine to pluck with confidence, and it were unfriendliness to hesitate :

Thou abhorrest flattery: but a generous excess in

praise

Is thine to yield with honest heart, and false were the charity to doubt it:

The difference lieth in thine aim; kindliness and good are of charity,

But selfish, harmful, vile, and bad is flattery's evil

end.

131

Of Neglect.

Generous and righteous is thy grief, slighted child of sensibility;

For kindliness enkindleth love, but the waters of indifference quench it:

Thy soul is athirst for sympathy, and hungereth to find affection,

The tender scions of thy heart yearn for the sunshine of good feeling;

And it is an evil thing and bitter, when the cheerful face of Charity,

Going forth gaily in the morning to woo the world with smiles,

Is met by those wayfaring men with coldness, suspicion, and repulse,

And turneth into hard dead stone at the Gorgon

visage of Neglect.

O brother, warm and young, covetous of others'

favour,

I see thee checked and chilled, sorrowing for censure or forgetfulness:

Let coarse and common minds despise-that wounding of thy vanity,

Alas, I note a sorer cause, the blighting of thy

love;

Let the callous sensual deride thee,-disappointed of thy praise,

Alas, thou hast a juster grief, defrauded of their kindness:

It is a theme for tears to feel the soft heart harden

ing,

The frozen breath of apathy sealing up the fountain of affection;

It is a pang, keen only to the best, to be injured well-deserving,

And slumbering Neglect is injury,—could ye not watch one hour?

When God himself complained, it was that none

regarded,

And indifference bowed to the rebuke, Thou gavest Me no kiss when I came in.

Moreover, praise is good; honour is a treasure to

be hoarded;

A good man's praise foreshadoweth God's, and in His smile is heaven :

But men walk on in hardihood, steeling their sinfulness to censure,

And where rebuke is ridiculed, the love of praise were an infirmity;

The judge thou heedest not in fear, cannot have deep homage of thy hope,

And who then is the wise of this world, that will own he trembleth at his fellows?

Calm, careless, and insensible, he mocketh blame or

calumny,

Neither should his dignity be humbled to some pittance of their praise :

The rather, let false pride affect to trample on the

treasure

Which evermore in secret strength unconquered Nature prizeth;

Rather, shall he stifle now the rising bliss of triumph, Lest after, in the world's Neglect, he must acknowledge bitterness.

For lo, that world is wide, a huge and crowded continent,

Its brazen sun is mammon, and its iron soil is

care,

A world full of men, where each man clingeth to his

idol;

A world full of men, where each man cherisheth his

sorrow;

A world full of men, multitude shoaling upon mul

titude,

A surging sea, where every wave is burdened with an argosy of self,

A boundless beach, where every stone is a separate

microscopic world,

A forest of innumerable trees, where every root is independent.

What then is the marvel or the shame, if units be lost among the million,

Canst thou reasonably murmur, if a leaf drop off unnoticed?

Wondrous in architecture, intricate and beautiful, delicately tinged and scented,

Exquisite of feeling and mysterious in life, none cared for its growth, or its decay :

None? yea, no one of its fellows,-nor cedar, palm, nor bramble,

None? its twinborn brother scarcely missed it from

the

spray :

None?-if none indeed, then man's neglect were

bitterness;