Yet still there whispers the small voice within, Heard through Gain's silence, and o'er Glory's din; Whatever creed be taught or land be trod, Man's conscience is the oracle of God.
But mighty Nature bounds as from her birth;
The sun is in the heavens, and life on earth:
Flowers in the valley, splendor in the beam,
Health on the gale, and freshness in the stream.
The fact is that my wife if she had common sense would have more power over me than any other whatsoever, for my heart always alights upon the nearest perch.
Socrates said, our only knowledge was
"To know that nothing could be known;" a pleasant
Science enough, which levels to an ass
Each Man of Wisdom, future, past, or present.
Newton, (that Proverb of the Mind,) alas!
Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent,
That he himself felt only "like a youth
Picking up shells by the great Ocean-Truth."
But every fool describes, in these bright days, His wondrous journey to some foreign court, And spawns his quarto, and demands your praise,-- Death to his publisher, to him 'tis sport.
[My advice] will one day be found
With other relics of 'a former world,'
When this world shall be former, underground,
Thrown topsy-turvy, twisted, crisped, and curled,
Baked, fried or burnt, turned inside-out, or drowned,
Like all the worlds before, which have been hurled
First out of, and then back again to Chaos,
The Superstratum which will overlay us.
I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private rancour; my name, which had been a knightly or noble one, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and muttered, and murmured, was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me.
Sorrow preys upon Its solitude, and nothing more diverts it From its sad visions of the other world Than calling it at moments back to this. The busy have no time for tears.