The nobler mind with things of basest name—­
With idleness, dishonesty, and shame! 
It hath its bounds, and thus far it is well
To check presumption—­visions wild to quell;
Then ’tis the chastening of a father’s hand—­
All wholesome, all expedient.  But to stand
Writhing beneath the unsparing lash, and be
Trampled on veriest earth, while misery
Stems the young blood, or makes it freeze with care,
And on the tearless eyeballs writes, Despair!
Oh! this is terrible!—­and it doth throw
Upon the brow such early marks of woe,
That men seem old ere they have well been young;
Their fond hopes perish, and their hearts are wrung
With such dark feelings—­misanthropic gloom,
Spite of their natures, haunts them to the tomb.

XVIII.

Now, Edmund ’midst the bustling throng appears
One old in wretchedness, though young in years;
For he had struggled with an angry world,
Had felt misfortune’s billows o’er him hurled,
And strove against its tide—­where wave meets wave
Like huge leviathans sporting wild, and lave
Their mountain breakers round with circling sweep,
Till, drawn within the vortex of their deep,
The man of ruin struggleth—­but in vain;
Like dying swimmers who, in breathless pain
Despairing, strike at random!—­It would be
A subject worth the schoolmen’s scrutiny,
To trace each simple source from whence arose
The strong and mingled stream of human woes. 
But here we may not.  It is ours alone
To make the lonely wanderer’s fortunes known;
And now, in plain but faithful colours dressed,
To paint the feelings of his hopeless breast.

XIX.

His withered prospects blacken—­wounds await—­
The grave grows sunlight to his darker fate. 
All now is gall and bitterness within,
And thoughts, once sternly pure, half yield to sin. 
His sickened soul, in all its native pride,
Swells ’neath the breast that tattered vestments hide
Disdained, disdaining; while men flourish, he
Still stands a stately though a withered tree. 
But, Heavens! the agony of the moment when
Suspicion stamped the smiles of other men;
When friends glanced doubts, and proudly prudent grew,
His counsellors, and his accusers too!

XX.

Picture his pain, his misery, when first
His growing wants their proud concealment burst;
When the first tears start from his stubborn soul. 
Big, burning, solitary drops, that roll
Down his pale cheek—­the momentary gush
Of human weakness—­till the whirlwind rush
Of pride, of shame, had dashed them from his eye,
And his swollen heart heaved mad with agony! 
Then, then the pain—­the infinity of feeling—­
Words fail to paint its anguish.  Reason, reeling,
Staggered with torture through his burning brain,
While his teeth gnashed with bitterness and pain;
Reflection grew a scorpion, speech had fled,
And all but madness and despair were dead.