Naught can deform the human race
Like to the armourer's iron brace;
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun;
When gold and gems adorn the plough,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow;
The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Do to rags the heavens tear;

The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags;
One mite wrung from the labourer's hands.
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands,
Or, if protected from on high,
Shall that whole nation sell and buy;
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate;
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding-sheet;
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Shall dance before dead England's hearse.

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mocked in age and death;
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out;
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death;

The babe is more than swaddling bands
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.

The questioner who sits so sly

Shall never know how to reply;

He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out;
A puddle, or the cricket's cry,

Is to doubt a fit reply;

The child's toys and the old man's reasons

Are the fruits of the two seasons;
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile;
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please;
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born;
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight;
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine;
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Safely through the world we go.

We are led to believe a lie

When we see with not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears and God is light

To those poor souls who dwell in night; But doth a human form display

To those who dwell in realms of day.

THE MENTAL TRAVELLER.

THE 'Mental Traveller' indicates an explorer of mental phænomena. The mental phænomenon here symbolized seems to be the career of any great Idea or intellectual movement—as, for instance, Christianity, chivalry, art, &c.-represented as going through the stages of 1. birth, 2. adversity and persecution, 3. triumph and maturity, 4. decadence through over-ripeness, 5. gradual transformation, under new conditions, into another renovated Idea, which again has to pass through all the same stages. In other words, the poem represents the action and re-action of Ideas upon society, and of society upon Ideas.

Argument of the stanzas: 2. The Idea, conceived with pain, is born amid enthusiasm. 3. If of masculine, enduring nature, it falls under the control and ban of the already existing state of society (the woman old). 5. As the Idea develops, the old society becomes moulded into a new society (the old woman grows young). 6. The Idea, now free and dominant, is united to society, as it were in wedlock. 8. It gradually grows old and effete, living now only upon the spiritual treasures laid up in the days of its early energy. 10. These still subserve many purposes of practical good, and outwardly the Idea is in its most flourishing estate, even when sapped at its roots. 11. The halo of authority and tradition, or prestige, gathering round the Idea, is symbolized in the resplendent babe born on his hearth. 13. This prestige deserts the] Idea itself, and attaches to some individual, who usurps the honour due only to the Idea (as we may see in the case of papacy, royalty, &c.); and the Idea is eclipsed by its own very prestige, and assumed living representative. 14. The Idea wanders homeless till it can find a new community to mould (until he can a maiden win '). 15 to 17. Finding whom, the Idea finds itself also living under strangely different

while he pursues.

conditions. 18. The Idea is now "beguiled to infancy "—becomes a new Idea, in working upon a fresh community, and under altered conditions. 20. Nor are they yet thoroughly at one; she flees away 22. Here we return to the first state of the case. The Idea starts upon a new course-is a babe; the society it works upon has become an old society-no longer a fair virgin, but an aged woman. 24. The Idea seems so new and unwonted that, the nearer it is seen, the more consternation it excites. 26. None can deal with the Idea so as to develop it to the full, except the old society with which it comes into contact; and this can deal with it only by misusing it at first, whereby (as in the previous stage, at the opening of the poem) it is to be again disciplined into ultimate triumph.

I.

I TRAVELLED through a land of men,
A land of men and women too;
And heard and saw such dreadful things
As cold earth-wanderers never knew.

2.

For there the babe is born in joy

That was begotten in dire woe;

Just as we reap in joy the fruit

Which we in bitter tears did sow.

3.

And if the babe is born a boy,

He's given to a woman old,
Who nails him down upon a rock,
Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.

VOL. II.

4.

She binds strong thorns around his head,
She pierces both his hands and feet,

She cuts his heart out at his side,

To make it feel both cold and heat.

I