O sovereign spirit, above [_Ep._ 12. All offering but man's love, All praise and prayer and incense undefiled! The one thing stronger found Than towers with iron bound; The one thing lovelier than a little child, And deeper than the seas are deep, 479 And tenderer than such tears of love as angels weep.
Dante, the seer of all things evil and good, [_Str._ 13. Beheld two ladies, Beauty And high life-hallowing Duty, That strove for sway upon his mind and mood And held him in alternating accord Fast bound at feet of either: but our lord, The seer and singer of righteousness and wrong Who stands now master of all the keys of song, Sees both as dewdrops run Together in the sun, 490 For him not twain but one thing twice divine; Even as his speech and song are bread and wine For all souls hungering and all hearts athirst At best of days and worst, And both one sacrament of Love's great giving To feed the spirit and sense of all souls living.
The seventh day in the wind's month, ten years gone [_Ant._ 13. Since heaven-espousing earth Gave the Republic birth, The mightiest soul put mortal raiment on 500 That came forth singing ever in man's ears Of all souls with us, and through all these years Rings yet the lordliest, waxen yet more strong, That on our souls hath shed itself in song, Poured forth itself like rain On souls like springing grain That with its procreant beams and showers were fed For living wine and sacramental bread; Given all itself as air gives life and light, Utterly, as of right; 510 The goodliest gift our age hath given, to be Ours, while the sun gives glory to the sea.
Our Father and Master and Lord, [_Ep._ 13. Who hast thy song for sword, For staff thy spirit, and our hearts for throne: As in past years of wrong, Take now my subject song, To no crowned head made humble but thine own; That on thy day of worldly birth Gives thanks for all thou hast given past thanks of all on earth. 520
153. _Cromwell_, 1827: _Étude sur Mirabeau_, 1834 (_Littérature et Philosophie mêlées_, 1819-1834).
177. _Han d'Islande_, 1823. _Bug-Jargal_, 1826.
182. _Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné_, 1829: _Claude Gueux_, 1834.
216. _Napoléon le Petit_, 1852. _Châtiments_, 1853. _Histoire d'un Crime_, 1877. In this place I must take occasion to relieve my conscience from a sense of duty unfulfilled so long as I for one have not uttered my own poor private protest--worthless and weightless though it may seem, if cast as a grain into the scale of public opinion--against a projected insult at once to contemporary France and to the present only less than to past generations of Englishmen.