of a wrong,
    Disturbs the economy of nature’s realm,
    Who, when she formed, designed them an abode. 
    The sum is this:  If man’s convenience, health,
    Or safety, interfere, his rights and claims
    Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs. 
    Else they are all—­the meanest things that are—­
    As free to live, and to enjoy that life,
    As God was free to form them at the first,
    Who in his sovereign wisdom made them all. 
    Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
    To love it too.

Cowper.

* * * * *

Trust.

    Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
      Will be the final goal of ill,
      To pangs of nature, sins of will,
    Defects of doubt and taints of blood;

    That nothing walks with aimless feet;
      That not one life shall be destroyed,
      Or cast as rubbish to the void,
    When God hath made the pile complete;

    That not a worm is cloven in vain;
      That not a moth with vain desire
      Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
    Or but subserves another’s gain.

Tennyson.

* * * * *

Say not.

    Say not, the struggle naught availeth,
      The labor and the wounds are vain,
    The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
      And as things have been they remain.

    If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
      It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
    Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
      And, but for you, possess the field.

    For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
      Seem here no painful inch to gain,
    Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
      Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

    And not by eastern windows only,
      When daylight comes, comes in the light;
    In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly! 
      But westward, look, the land is bright.

A. H. Clough.

* * * * *

See, through this air.

    See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,
    All matter quick, and bursting into birth. 
    Above, how high progressive life may go! 
    Around, how wide! how deep extend below! 
    Vast chain of being! which from God began,
    Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
    Beast, bird, fish, insect, which no eye can see,
    No glass can reach; from infinite to thee;
    From thee to nothing.  On superior powers
    Were we to press, inferior might on ours;
    Or in the full creation leave a void,
    Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroyed: 
    From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike,
    Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.