No More Learning

Sometimes the poor are damned indeed
To take,--not means for being blessed,--
But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed
From which the worms that it doth feed _240
Squeeze less than they before possessed.

20.
And some few, like we know who,
Damned--but God alone knows why--
To believe their minds are given
To make this ugly Hell a Heaven; _245
In which faith they live and die.

21.
Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,
Each man be he sound or no
Must indifferently sicken;
As when day begins to thicken, _250
None knows a pigeon from a crow,--

22.
So good and bad, sane and mad,
The oppressor and the oppressed;
Those who weep to see what others
Smile to inflict upon their brothers; _255
Lovers, haters, worst and best;

23.
All are damned--they breathe an air,
Thick, infected, joy-dispelling:
Each pursues what seems most fair,
Mining like moles, through mind, and there _260
Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care
In throned state is ever dwelling.


PART 4.

SIN.

1.
Lo. Peter in Hell's Grosvenor Square,
A footman in the Devil's service!
And the misjudging world would swear _265
That every man in service there
To virtue would prefer vice.

2.
But Peter, though now damned, was not
What Peter was before damnation.
Men oftentimes prepare a lot _270
Which ere it finds them, is not what
Suits with their genuine station.

3.
All things that Peter saw and felt
Had a peculiar aspect to him;
And when they came within the belt _275
Of his own nature, seemed to melt,
Like cloud to cloud, into him.

4.
And so the outward world uniting
To that within him, he became
Considerably uninviting _280
To those who, meditation slighting,
Were moulded in a different frame.

5.
And he scorned them, and they scorned him;
And he scorned all they did; and they
Did all that men of their own trim _285
Are wont to do to please their whim,
Drinking, lying, swearing, play.

6.
Such were his fellow-servants; thus
His virtue, like our own, was built
Too much on that indignant fuss _290
Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us
To bully one another's guilt.

7.
He had a mind which was somehow
At once circumference and centre
Of all he might or feel or know; _295
Nothing went ever out, although
Something did ever enter.

8.
He had as much imagination
As a pint-pot;--he never could
Fancy another situation, _300
From which to dart his contemplation,
Than that wherein he stood.

9.
Yet his was individual mind,
And new created all he saw
In a new manner, and refined _305
Those new creations, and combined
Them, by a master-spirit's law.

10.