MY COMRADE AND I.

WE two have grown up so divinely together,
Flower within flower from seed within seed,
The sagest philosopher cannot say whether

His being or mine was first called and decreed.
In the life before birth, by inscrutable ties,

We were linked each to each; I am bound up in him;
He sickens, I languish; without me, he dies;

I am life of his life, he is limb of my limb.

Twin babes from one cradle, I tottered about with him,
Chased the bright butterflies, singing, a boy with him;
Still as a man I am borne in and out with him,

Sup with him, sleep with him, suffer, enjoy with him.
Faithful companion, me long he has carried

Unseen in his bosom, a lamp to his feet;

More near than a bridegroom, to him I am married,
As light in the sunbeam is wedded to heat.

If my beam be withdrawn he is senseless and blind;
I am sight to his vision, I hear with his ears;
His the marvellous brain, I the masterful mind;

I laugh with his laughter, and weep with his tears
So well that the ignorant deem us but one:

They see but one shape and they name us one name.
O pliant accomplice! what deeds we have done,
Thus banded together for glory or shame.

When evil waylays us, and passion surprises,
And we are too feeble to strive or to fly,
When hunger compels or when pleasure entices,
Which most is the sinner, my comrade or I?
And when over perils and pains and temptations
I triumph, where still I should falter and faint,
But for him, iron-nerved for heroical patience,
Whose then is the virtue, and which is the saint?

Am I the one sinner? of honors sole claimant
For actions which only we two can perform?
Am I the true creature, and thou but the raiment ?
Thou magical mantle, all vital and warm,

Wrapped about me, a screen from the rough winds of Time,
Of texture so flexile to feature and gesture!
Can ever I part from thee? Is there a clime

Where Life needeth not this terrestrial vesture?

When comes the sad summons to sever the sweet
Subtle tie that unites us, and tremulous, fearful.

I feel thy loosed fetters depart from my feet;

When friends gather round us, pale-visaged and tearful,
Beweep and bewail thee, thou fair earthly prison!

And kiss thy cold doors, for thy inmate mistaken;

Their eyes seeing not the freed captive, arisen

From thy trammels unclasped and thy shackles downshaken;

Oh, then shall I linger, reluctant to break

The dear sensitive chains that about me have grown?
And all this bright world, can I bear to forsake
Its embosoming beauty and love, and alone
Journey on to I know not what regions untried?
Exists there, beyond the dim cloud-rack of death,
Such life as enchants us? O skies arched and wide!
O delicate senses! O exquisite breath!

Ah, tenderly, tenderly over thee hovering,

I shall look down on thee, empty and cloven,
Pale mould of my being!-thou visible covering
Wherefrom my invisible raiment is woven.
Though sad be the passage, nor pain shall appall me,
Nor parting, assured, wheresoever I range

The glad fields of existence that naught can befall me
That is not still beautiful, blessed and strange.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER.*

[From Self-Acquaintance.]

ILL-CHOSEN PURSUITS.

THE blind at an easel, the palsied with a graver, the halt making for the goal,
The deaf ear tuning psaltery, the stammerer discoursing eloquence,
What wonder if all fail? the shaft flieth wide of the mark,
Alike if itself be crooked, or the wow be strung awry;

And the mind which were excellent in one way, but foolishly toileth in another,

What is it but an ill-strung bow, and its aim a crooked arrow?

By knowledge of self, thou provest thy powers; put not the racer to the

plough,

Nor goad the toilsome ox to wager his slowness with the fleet.

* The extracts from this author are from Proverbial Philosophy.

[From Fame.]

THE DIGNITY AND PATIENCE OF GENIUS.

A GREAT mind is an altar on a hill; should the priest descend from his altitude

To canvass offerings and worship from dwellers on the plain?

Rather with majestic perseverance, will he minister in solitary grandeur, Confident the time will come when pilgrims shall be flocking to the shrine. For fame is the birthright of genius; and he recketh not how long it be delayed:

The heir need not hasten to his heritage, when he knoweth that his tenure is eternal.

The careless poet of Avon, was he troubled for his fame ?

Or the deep-mouthed chronicler of Paradise, heeded he the suffrage of his equals ?

Mæonides took no thought, committing all his honors to the future,
And Flaccus, standing on his watch-tower, spied the praise of ages.

[From Truth in Things False.]

SPIRITUAL FEELERS.

THE Soul hath its feelers, cobwebs floating on the wind,

That catch events in their approach with sure and apt presentiment,
So that some halo of attraction heraldeth a coming friend.
Investing, in his likeness, the stranger that passed on before;
And while the word is in thy mouth, behold thy word fulfilled,
And he of whom we spake can answer for himself.

[From Writing.]

LETTERS.

THEIR preciousness in absence is proved by the desire of their presence: When the despairing lover waiteth day after day,

Looking for a word in reply, one word writ by that hand,

And cursing bitterly the morn ushered in by blank disappointment:

Or when the long-looked-for answer argueth a cooling friend,

And the mind is plied suspiciously with dark inexplicable doubts,

While thy wounded heart counteth its imaginary scars,

And thou art the innocent and injured, that friend the capricious and in fault:

Or when the earnest petition, that craveth for thy needs

Unheeded, yea, unopened, tortureth with starving delay:

Or when the silence of a son, who would have written of his welfare,

Racketh a father's bosom with sharp-cutting fears:

For a letter, timely writ, is a rivet to the chain of affection;

And a letter, untimely delayed, is as rust to the solder.

The pen, flowing in love, or dipped black in hate,

Or tipped with delicate courtesies, or harshly edged with censure,

Hath quickened more good than the sun, more evil than the sword,

More joy than woman's smile, more woe than frowning fortune;

And shouldst thou ask my judgment of that which hath most profit in the

world,

For answer take thou this, The prudent penning of a letter.

[From Beauty.]

THE CONQUEROR.

THOU mightier than Manoah's son, whence is thy great strength,

And wherein the secret of thy craft, O charmer charming wisely ?

Ajax may rout a phalanx, but beauty shall enslave him single-handed:
Pericles ruled Athens, yet is he the servant of Aspasia:

Light were the labor, and often-told the tale, to count the victories of beauty,

Learning sitteth at her feet, and Idleness laboreth to please her;
Folly hath flung aside his bells, and leaden Dulness gloweth;
Prudence is rash in her defence; Frugality filleth her with riches;

Despair came to her for counsel; and Bereavement was glad when she consoled;

Justice putteth up his sword at the tear of supplicating beauty

And Mercy, with indulgent haste, hath pardoned beauty's sin.

For beauty is the substitute for all things, satisfying every absence,
The rich delirious cup, to make all else forgotten.

[From Beauty.]

MENTAL SUPREMACY.

THERE is a beauty of the reason: grandly independent of externals,
It looketh from the windows of the house, shining in the man triumphant.
I have seen the broad blank face of some misshapen dwarf

Lit on a sudden as with glory, the brilliant light of mind:

Who then imagined him deformed? intelligence is blazing on his forehead, There is empire in his eye, and sweetness on his lip, and his brown cheek

glittereth with beauty:

And I have known some Nireus of the camp, a varnished paragon of chamberers,

Fine, elegant, and shapely, moulded as the masterpiece of Phidias,-
Such an one, with intellects abased, have I noted crouching to the dwarf,
Whilst his lovers scorn the fool whose beauty hath departed!

[From Beauty.]

THE SOURCE OF MAN'S RULING PASSION.

VERILY the fancy may be false, yet hath it met me in my musings,

(As expounding the pleasantness of pleasure, but no ways extenuating license,)

That even those yearnings after beauty, in wayward wanton youth,
When guileless of ulterior end, it craveth but to look upon the lovely,
Seem like struggles of the soul, dimly remembering pre-existence,
And feeling in its blindness for a long-lost god to satisfy its longing;

God, the undiluted good, is root and stock of beauty,
And every child of reason drew his essence from that stem.
Therefore, it is of intuition, an innate hankering for home,

A sweet returning to the well, from which our spirit flowed,
That we, unconscious of a cause, should bask these darkened souls
In some poor relics of the light that blazed in primal beauty.

Only, being burdened with the body, spiritual appetite is warped,
And sensual man, with taste corrupted, drinketh of pollutions:
Impulse is left, but indiscriminate; his hunger feasteth upon carrion;
His natural love of beauty doteth over beauty in decay.

He still thirsteth for the beautiful; but his delicate ideal hath grown gross, And the very sense of thirst hath been fevered from affection into passion.

[From Indirect Influences.]

ARGUMENT.

THE weakness of accident is strong, where the strength of design is weak
And a casual analogy convinceth, when a mind beareth not argument.
Will not a man listen? be silent; and prove thy maxim by example:
Never fear, thou losest not thy hold, though thy mouth doth not render a

reason.

Contend not in wisdom with a fool, for thy sense maketh much of his conceit,

And some errors never would have thriven, had it not been for learned

refutation;

Yea, much evil hath been caused by an honest wrestler for truth.
And much of unconscious good, by the man that hated wisdom:
For the intellect judgeth closely, and if thou overstep thy argument,
Or seem not consistent with thyself, or fail in thy direct purpose,
The mind that went along with thee, shall stop and return without thee,
And thou shalt have raised a foe, where thou mightest have won a friend.

[From Indirect Influences.]

THE POWER OF SUGGESTION.

HINTS, shrewdly strown, mightily disturb the spirit,

Where a barefaced accusation would be too ridiculous for calumny:

The sly suggestion touches nerves, and nerves contract the fronds,

And the sensitive mimosa of affection trembleth to its root;

And friendships, the growth of half a century, those oaks that laugh at

storms,

Have been cankered in a night by a worm, even as the prophet's gourd. Hast thou loved, and not known jealousy ? for a sidelong look

Can please or pain thy heart more than the multitude of proofs:

Hast thou hated, and not learned that thy silent scorn

Doth deeper aggravate thy foe than loud-cursing malice ?

Thinkest thou the thousand eyes that shine with rapture on a ruin,
Would have looked with half their wonder on the perfect pile?
And wherefore not but that light hints, suggesting unseen beauties
Fill the complacent gazer with self-grown conceits?