solid earth. In his magnificent "Ode to Duty" there is, united with the same elevation of thought, a far more definite and imperative tone. The strain is of a maturer order, and the wisdom which comes by experience is wedded to that of spiritual insight. It affirms that between the lower and higher sections of man's nature there commonly exists an antagonism, and that the condition of man's life is a militant condition. A few happier spirits may stand outside the battle, and, led on by an inner law of unconscious goodness, may, at least for an indefinite period, advance along a flower-strewn path of virtue: but even these are insecure; the path of virtue is, for the most part, a rough and thorny path, and the children of men can only find peace while they tread it in obedience to a Law challenging them from above. To find true freedom they must subject themselves to a noble bondage

Stern daughter of the Voice of God!

O Duty! if that name thou love

Who art a light to guide, a rod

To check the erring, and reprove ;

Thou who art victory and law

When empty terrors overawe;

From vain temptations dost set free;

And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!

There are who ask not if thine eye

Be on them; who, in love and truth,

Where no misgiving is, rely

Upon the genial sense of youth:

Glad hearts! without reproach or blot;
Who do thy work, and know it not;

Long may the kindly impulse last,

But thou, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast!

Serene will be our days and bright,

And happy will our nature be,
When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security.

And they a blissful course may hold
Even now who, not unwisely bold,
Live in the spirit of this creed,

Yet find that other strength, according to their need.

I, loving freedom, and untried,

No sport of every random gust, Yet being to myself a guide,

Too blindly have reposed my trust. And oft when in my heart was heard Thy timely mandate, I deferred

The task imposed, from day to day;

But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.

Through no disturbance of my soul,

Or strong compunction in me wrought,

I supplicate for thy control;

But in the quietness of thought Me this unchartered freedom tires,

I feel the weight of chance desires.

My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose which ever is the same.

Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear

The Godhead's most benignant grace, Nor know we anything so fair

As is the smile upon thy face.

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;

And fragrance in thy footing treads;

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;

And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh

and strong.

To humbler functions, awful Power !

I call thee; I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour;

Oh! let my weakness have an end.

Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give;

And, in the light of truth, thy bondsman let me live!

66 He sang of the Commandments great and good" -thus speaks a thoughtful poet, Isaak Williams, of the Psalmist King. No uninspired poet has offered a nobler tribute than this ode to those Commandments which that Psalmist proclaimed to be "exceeding broad"; not even that Greek poet who made his Antigone reply to the tyrant: "This edict never issued forth from Jove, not yet from that sceptred Justice that holds sway among the Shades below." It is not against law but unjust law, and the law that proceeds from no authentic authority, that the spirit of Liberty exalts itself. "When Thou hast set my heart at liberty," then, and not till then, are the highways of Virtue made straight. They are then beset no longer by those innumerable alternatives which are the plague of men who mistake a febrile wilfulness for a strong will. In subjection to a righteous law is found man's only freedom from a bondage to passions and caprices. It is a common error to assume that liberty can never exist where an unlimited choice does not exist.1 this assumption were true there could be no freedom of will among the angels; nay, even the Infinite Goodness might then be said not to be free, since no such alternative as that between the Good and the

If

Evil can ever affront His divine choice. The highest liberty does not essentially consist in choice between alternatives (else it would decay in proportion as virtuous habits had given to the spirit an indisputed

1 This subject is well illustrated in a work by Donoso Cortés, Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.

victory over the sense), but in our doing willingly that which we do, and not doing it either from a servile compulsion, or from a mechanical necessity. The distinction is all-important. Man must ever venerate Liberty and aspire after it; if, therefore, he mistakes its essential nature, relatively to Law, he will account every demand upon his obedience a degradation, however necessary he may acknowledge it to be in order to avoid anarchy; and, as a consequence, the ennobling principle of loyalty must be banished at once from all human relations, domestic, civil, political, and religious-a loss simply fatal to the higher virtue. The chief excellence of this poem, in its moral bearings, consists in the absolute spontaneousness of its "good confession" that Duty is the one thing that gives dignity to life. The poet does not speak of the excesses into which human nature falls when apart from such a guide, but of "omissions "

I deferred

The task imposed, from day to day.

It is in the "quietness of thought" that he repudiates the "unchartered freedom" which tires, and demands instead the liberating yoke of that subjection which is at once "victory and law." He looks around him, and from every side the same lesson is borne in upon him. It is because they obey law that the flowers return in their seasons and the stars revolve in their courses; the law of Nature is to inanimate things what Duty is to man. The peasant who had only half learned his lesson in science might imagine that

the law of gravitation was but a burden that binds man to the earth. The philosopher knows that amid the boundless fields of the creation it is that which gives to everything its proper place, its motion and its rest. Close akin to the "Ode to Duty" is the "Happy Warrior." It illustrates by an example the principle which the earlier poem affirms.

as a militant condition

It regards human life

Who is he

Who is the happy Warrior?
Whom every man in arms should wish to be?
-It is the generous spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought:
Whose high endeavors are an inward light
That make the path before him ever bright;
Who, with a natural instinct to discern

What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn ;
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,
But makes his moral being his prime care;
Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train !
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;

In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest dower;
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives;

-Who, if he rise to station of command,
Rises by open means; and there will stand
On honorable terms, or else retire,

And in himself possess his own desire;
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state;
Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall,
Like showers of manna, if they come at all;
Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,