VI.

And there is comfort: victim soul,

Go straight before that Judge ;

With pitying care to hear the whole His patience will not grudge;

So, out of harm, and hate, and pain, If thou but kiss the rod,

Thou shalt attain the golden gain

Of Brotherhood with GOD! →

Cruelty:

AS BETWEEN MAN AND HIS BEAST.

I.

MAN's cruel baseness to his beast!

-Poor uncomplaining brute,

Its wrongs are innocent at least,

And all its sorrows mute:

They cannot have deserved their woes,

As these bad masters can ;

And evil is the lot of those

Who serve the tyrant, Man.

II.

I dare not let my fever'd thought

Brood o'er the frightful page

By human malice writ and wrought
In every clime and age!

Alas! the catalogue of crime

Begun by cruel Cain

Has made the swollen stream of Time

One cataract of pain!

III.

Lo! surgery's philosophic knife,

Too merciless to kill,

Dissecting out the strings of life

With calm and horrid skill,

And bloody goads,-and wealing whips,

And many a torture fell,

Have wrung from every creature's lips

That Earth to them is Hell!

IV.

Yea: dream not that the Good and Wise

To these can be unjust;

Nor, if not claimants for the skies,

That all dissolve to dust:

They have a spirit which survives

This cauldron of unrest,

And here though wretched in their lives,

Elsewhere they shall be blest!

V.

In the just Government and strong
Of such a God as ours,

Only for wickedness and wrong

Perpetual Judgment lours:

No creature ever ran a race

Of griefs not earn'd before, Without some compensating grace

Of happiness in store!

VI.

Let this, then, comfort those who weep

For Crime and Pity too;

For if just judgment doth not sleep,

No more doth mercy true:

The cruel Man,-lament his fate,

For he can reach no bliss ;

The tortured beast,-its future state

Shall recompense for this.