sun, the breeze.

'And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.'

'To be or do any limited thing'! What indeed, we ask in such hours, is a
limited thing, when all the humble interests of our daily life are
palpably big with eternity? Is the first kiss of a great love a limited
thing? though there is, unhappily, no denying that it comes to an end!
When a young husband and wife smile across to each other above the sleep
of their little child--is that a limited thing? When the siren voices of
the world blend together on the lips of a young poet, and with rapt eyes
and hot heart he makes a song as of the morning stars--is that a limited
thing? Are love, and genius, and duty done in the face of death--are
these limited things? I think not--and man, indeed, knows better.

Greatness is not relative. It is absolute. It is not for man to depress
himself by measuring himself against the eternities and the immensities
external to him. What he has to do is to look inward upon himself, to
fathom the eternities and the immensities in his own heart and brain.

And the more man sees himself forsaken by the universe, the more
opportunity to vindicate his own greatness. Is there no kind heart
beating through the scheme of things?--man's heart shall still be kind.
Will the eternal silence make mock of his dreams and his idealisms,
laugh coldly at 'the splendid purpose in his eyes'? Well, so be it. His
dreams and idealisms are none the less noble things, and if the gods do
thus make mock of mortal joy and pain--let us be grateful that we were
born mere men.

Moreover, he has one great answer to the universe--the answer of
courage. He is still Prometheus, and there is no limit to what he can
bear. Let the vultures of pain rend his heart as they will, he can still
hiss 'coward' in the face of the Eternal. Nay, he can even laugh at his
sufferings--thanks to the spirit of humour, that most blessed of
ministering angels, without which surely the heart of humanity had long
since broken, by which man is able to look with a comical eye upon
terrors, as it were taking themselves so seriously, coming with such
Olympian thunders and lightnings to break the spirit of a mere six foot
of earth!

But