em twined with mutual suffering weave,
When but a word all suffering would remove?
And wherefore yet delayeth the reprieve
Of Love, that doth not willingly afflict
Its children, neither wantonly aggrieve?
Can aught the gracious purpose interdict
Of Him, whose piercing eye, whose boundless sway,
No cloud can dim, no barrier restrict?
Say'st thou, "By path inscrutable, and way
Past finding out, perchance, may mercy bend
To its own use, whate'er its course would stay,
And through the labouring world high mandate send
That all things work together unto good,
Work, though by means corrupt, to righteous end?"

Beware how such conjectures must conclude.
Can means impure Omnipotence befit,
And clog the range of its solicitude?
Can finite bonds confine the Infinite?
Though man, by choice of ill, must needs offend,
Need God do ill that good may come of it?
Must havoc's mad typhoon perforce descend?
May naught else serve to fan the stagnant air?
Must captive flame earth's quaking surface rend,
Or seek escape in lava flood? and ere
Effete society new structure raise,
Must dearth or pestilence the ground prepare?
Thus is it that a parent's care purveys
His bounty, and, exacting rigorously
The price in tears, each boon's full cost defrays?
Thus, with vain thrift withholding the decree,
That from his treasury's exhaustless store
To all could grant unbought felicity?

'But haply still 'tis reasoned (and with more
Of reason's semblance were the plea maintained),
That higher yet would life's ambition soar,
Not for mere scheme of happiness ordained,
But for advance in virtue,--for the growth
By patient zeal and meek endurance gained:
That, at the table of voluptuous sloth,
Though banqueted on sweets without alloy,
Unsated were a generous nature, loth
To feast where unearned lusciousness would cloy,
Faint with the tedium of unbroken rest,
Sick with the sameness of unruffled joy:
That for more poignant pleasure, and of zest
Heightened and edged by healthful exercise,--
For scope wherein her conscious strength to test
In keen pursuit and venturous enterprise,
For dear exemplars, in whose course serene
Affection's tearful warmth might sympathise,
For these the yearning mind would languish, e'en
Though with all else that wish could name endued,
While, in h