And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.

Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.

Poems very seldom consist of poetry and nothing else; and pleasure can be derived also from their other ingredients. I am convinced that most readers, when they think they are admiring poetry, are deceived by inability to analyse their sensations, and that they are really admiring, not the poetry of the passage before them, but something else in it, which they like better than poetry.

You smile upon your friend to-day, To-day his ills are over; You hearken to the lover's say, And happy is the lover. 'Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never: I shall have lived a little while Before I die for ever.

They say my verse is sad: no wonder; Its narrow measure spans Tears of eternity, and sorrow, Not mine. but man's.

And how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.