Part 2 — UNDER THE CLIFF.

"Still ailing, Wind? Wilt be appeased or no? Which needs the other's office, thou or I? Dost want to be disburthened of a woe, And can, in truth, my voice untie Its links, and let it go? "Art thou a dumb, wronged thing that would be righted, Intrusting thus thy cause to me? Forbear! No tongue can mend such pleadings; faith, requited With falsehood,—love, at last aware Of scorn,—hopes, early blighted,— "We have them; but I know not any tone So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow: Dost think men would go mad without a moan, If they knew any way to borrow A pathos like thy own? "Which sigh wouldst mock, of all the sighs? The one So long escaping from lips starved and blue, That lasts while on her pallet-bed the nun Stretches her length; her foot comes through The straw she shivers on,— "You had not thought she was so tall; and spent, Her shrunk lids open; her lean fingers shut Close, close; their sharp and livid nails indent The clammy palm; then all is mute: That way, the spirit went. "Or wouldst thou rather that I understand Thy will to help me?—like the dog I found Once, pacing sad this solitary strand, Who would not take my food, poor hound, But whined and licked my hand." * * * * All this, and more, comes from some young man's pride Of power to see, in failure and mistake, Relinquishment, disgrace, on every side, Merely examples for his sake, Helps to his path untried: Instances he must—simply recognize? Oh, more than so!—must, with a learner's zeal, Make doubly prominent, twice emphasize, By added touches that reveal The god in babe's disguise. Oh, he knows what defeat means, and the rest, Himself the undefeated that shall be! Failure, disgrace, he flings them you to test,— His triumph in eternity Too plainly manifest! Whence judge if he learn forthwith what the wind Means in its moaning,—by the happy, prompt, Instinctive way of youth, I mean,—for kind Calm years, exacting their accompt Of pain, mature the mind: And some midsummer morning, at the lull Just about daybreak, as he looks across A sparkling foreign country, wonderful To the sea's edge for gloom and gloss Next minute must annul,— Then, when the wind begins among the vines, So low, so low, what shall it mean but this? "Here is the change beginning, here the lines Circumscribe beauty, set to bliss The limit time assigns." Nothing can be as it has been before; Better, so call it, only not the same. To draw one beauty into our hearts' core, And keep it changeless! such our claim; So answered,—Never more! Simple? Why, this is the old woe o' the world, Tune to whose rise and fall we live and die. Rise through it, then! Rejoice that man is hurled From change to change unceasingly, His soul's wings never furled! That's a new question; still remains the fact, Nothing endures: the wind moans, saying so; We moan in acquiescence: there's life's pact, Perhaps probation,—do I know? God does: endure His act! Only, for man, how bitter not to grave On his soul's hands' palms one fair, good, wise thing Just as he grasped it! For himself, death's wave; While time first washes—ah, the sting!— O'er all he'd sink to save.