That Nature lends such evil dreams,
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life?
'So careful of the type!' but no,
From scarped cliff and quarried stone,
She cries, 'A thousand types are gone;
I care for nothing; all shall go:
Thou makest thine appeal to me;
I bring to life, I bring to death;
The spirit does but mean the breath.
I know no more.' And he,--shall he,
Man, her last work, who seemed so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies
And built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed,
And love creation's final law,
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw,
With ravine shrieked against his creed,--
Who loved, who suffered countless ills,
Who battled for the true, the just,--
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or sealed within the iron hills?
No more!--a monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tore each other in their slime,
Were mellow music matched with him.
O, life, as futile then as frail,--
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer or redress,
Behind the vail, behind the vail!"

The sagacity of the poet here,--that strange sagacity which seems so
nearly akin to the prophetic spirit,--suggests in this noble passage the
true reading of the enigma. The appearance of man upon the scene of
being constitutes a new era in creation; the operations of a new
_instinct_ come into play,--that _instinct_ which anticipates a life
after the grave, and reposes in implicit faith upon a God alike just and
good, who is the pledged "rewarder of all who diligently seek Him." And
in looking along the long line of being,--ever rising in the scale from
higher to yet higher manifestations, or abroad on the lower animals,
whom instinct never deceives,--can we hold that man, immeasurably higher
in his place, and infinitely higher in his hopes and aspirations, than
all that ever went before him, should be, notwithstanding, the one grand
error in creation,--the one painful worker, in the midst of present
trouble, for a state into which he is never to enter,--the befooled
expectant of a happy future, which he is never to see? Assuredly no. He
who keeps faith with all his humbler creatures,--who gives to even the
bee and the dormouse the winter for which they prepare,--will to a
certainty not break faith with man,--with man, alike