Other verses of the same unpublished ballad, though imperfect, enforce the idea:--
If a toy but gladden his little brothers (A touch in caress to a child's hair given) Young Jesus' hands are filled with prayers (Sweep into music all strings of Heaven).
. . . for his sweet-kissed wife God kissed him on his blissful mouth.
Allegories of a happy road from bodily to heavenly experience fill many a more complex passage; here it is given with Chap-book directness.
Elsewhere he closely regrets his loneliness, and repudiates the merit of its heroism in this epitaph on the writer of "Love in Dian's Lap":--
_Here lies one who could only be heroic._
How little, in the sifted judgement, seems That swelling sound of vanity! Still 'tis proved To be heroic is an easier thing Than to be just and good. If any be (As are how many daily ones!) who love With love unlofty through no lofty days Their little simple wives, and consecrate Dull deeds with undulled justice: such poor livers, Though they as little look to be admired As thou look'st to admire, are of more prizeful rate Than he who worshipped with unmortal love A nigh unmortal woman, and knew to take The pricking air of snowy sacrifice.
Being without the occasional "confirmation," he yearned for it; without that particular chance of being daily just and good, he saw in it the sum of life's purpose. And when he was threatened with the approach of too close affection, he grew alarmed, crying:--
Of pleasantness I have not any art In this grief-erudite heart.
O Sweet! no flowers have withered on my hair, For none have wreathed them there; And not to me, as unto others' lots, Fell flowerful youth, but such the thorns that bare Still faithful to my hair. O sweet! for me pluck no forget-me-nots, But scoop for me the Lethe water dull Which yields the sole elixir that can bless-- Utter forgetfulness-- And I shall know that thou art pitiful.
Another form of his painful, elaborate, and even disingenuous attitude towards happiness was distrust. "All life long he had been learning how to be wretched," he quotes from Hawthorne, "and now, with the lesson thoroughly at heart, he could with difficulty comprehend his little airy happiness"; then, continuing in his own verse:--