Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent!--
What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest?
Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spent
In handwork only? Have you nothing best,
Which generous souls may perfect and present,
And He shall thank the givers for? no light
Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor,
Who sit in darkness when it is not night?
No cure for wicked children? Christ,--no cure,
No help for women, sobbing out of sight
Because men made the laws? no brothel-lure
Burnt out by popular lightnings? Hast thou found
No remedy, my England, for such woes?
No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound,
No call back for the exiled? no repose,
Russia for knouted Poles worked underground,
And gentle ladies bleached among the snows?
No mercy for the slave, America?
No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France?
Alas, great nations have great shames, I say.
No pity, O world, no tender utterance
Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way
For poor Italia, baffled by mischance?
O gracious nations, give some ear to me!
You all go to your Fair, and I am one
Who at the roadside of humanity
Beseech your alms,--God's justice to be done.
So, prosper!

]

79. "Yes," of course, you answer; "we want nice houses here, not houses
in Verona. What should we do with houses in Verona?" And I answer, do
precisely what you do with the most expensive part of your possessions
here: take pride in them--only a noble pride. You know well, when you
examine your own hearts, that the greater part of the sums you spend on
possessions is spent for pride. Why are your carriages nicely painted
and finished outside? You don't see the outsides as you sit in them--the
outsides are for other people to see. Why are your exteriors of houses
so well finished, your furniture so polished and costly, but for other
people to see? You are just as comfortable yourselves, writing on your
old friend of a desk, with the white cloudings in his leather, and using
the light of a window which is nothing but a hole in the brick wall. And
all that is desirable to be done in this matter is merely to take pride
in preserving great art, instead of in producing mean art; pride in the
possession of precious and enduring things, a little way off, instead
of slight and perishing things near at hand. You know, in old English
times, o