Oh! for a mind congenial with my own!
Loving whatever is divine in thought,
And beautiful in vision. Life is short,
My youth is past, and I am still alone.
Oh! for a friend with kindred feelings fraught
To love me, cheer me, and, with skill untaught,
Forth from my heart-strings call each slumbering tone;
One of the true imaginative sort
To whom I might, confidingly, make known
What glorious pageants sometimes sweep athwart
My visual range, and vanish into nought,
Whither the poet’s bubble worlds are blown.
Is there a voice that can respond to mine?
Or must my life in loneliness decline?
I am a member of the Sect of Friends,
A sect reviled and ridiculed and flouted
With quirks and quibbles of the penny-a-liners,
And even learned men who should know better,
Men who know little of the things they talk of.
Sects dimly read each other’s inner life,
And so through ignorance misjudge each other;
The best things in the world are most abused;
So has it happened with the Sect of Friends;
And yet its members individually
Are mostly treated with respect and praise.
A sect in numbers inconsiderable,
Diminished to a very few in England
By rigid rules and unwise regulations,
And over-prudence in contracting marriage;
But growing rapidly across the Atlantic.
A sect whose doctrines being little known,
And nothing popular, are therefore freely
Misrepresented by the outside world;
And yet a noble sect, who boldly stood
For liberty of conscience and for truth
In the dark days of bigot persecution;
Who, when more numerous sects shrunk cowardly
Into safe garrets, or down into dark cellars,
To worship God by stealth, in fear and trembling,
Assembled boldly in their meeting-houses,
And, when expelled by brutal soldiery,
Stood in the open streets to worship God;
Yes, even in the streets of Colchester!
Till hurried off with blows and violence,
Inflicted equally on men and women,
To dungeons dismal as the times were dark!
Thousands were thus imprisoned wrongfully,
And hundreds perished in most loathsome cells
By cruel usage and by prison fevers.
. . . . . . .
Friends were the real and valiant Protestants;
They took their stand for liberty of conscience,
And perfect freedom in the forms of worship;
Protested against hireling ministry;
Protested against human interference
Between the soul of man and his Creator;
Protested against empty forms and ceremonies,
And outward ordinances employed in worship,
As superseded by the coming of Christ,
And non-essential to the soul’s salvation;
Believing that the saving grace of God
Is freely offered to the human family;
Protested against war in all its forms;
Protested against oaths and imprecations;
Protested against human slavery,
And capital punishment for any crimes;
Protested, on the other hand, in favour
Of peace, and progress, and humanity;
Of justice, godliness, and temperance;
Of woman’s mission to proclaim the Gospel,
And relative equality with man;
The free diffusion of the Holy Scriptures;
And of the education of the people.
. . . How many men mistake their mission!
How many a cobbler thinks himself a Solon!
Mistaking the ambition for the power,
And, listening to the flattery of the heart,
Grows noteless to the warnings of the brain.
I have beheld a borough magistrate
Sitting in glory on the Bench of Justice,
Who had been better picking plums at home.
I have beheld a preacher, bold and noisy,
With brow perspiring, hammering on a text,
Who had been better hammering on a lapstone.
I have beheld a member of Parliament,
One of the actual makers of our laws,
Who had been better sitting on a board
With thread and needle and a brother goose,
Making the breeches of the British people.
. . . . . . .
True greatness calmly smiles at insolence,
’Tis littleness that promptly takes offence—
. . . . . . .
There never was a doctrine so absurd
As not to find disciples to adopt it;
There never was a theory so Utopian,
So shallow, crass, jejune, and contradictory,
As not to find shrewd men to swallow it
Write for it, fight for it, and at last go mad for it.
One fool draws other fools into his net;
This is the law of Natural Selection.
. . . . . . .
Slaves all! slaves all! slaves all! we all are slaves!
Some to a foolish crotchet of the brain,
Some to an idle habit formed in youth,
Some to a treacherous glass of sparkling liquor,
Some to a pipe of villainous tobacco,
But most of us to other people’s eyes.
Unnumbered are the forms that slavery takes:
We choose our master when we form a habit.
. . . . . . .
But all the world is one great auction room,
In which men struggle for the various lots,
It is for them to choose which lots to strive for,
And what they are content to pay for them.
Some buy bad bargains when they hope for good,
And others good beyond their expectations.
Experience is the most expensive thing,
When you are forced to buy it as you want it,
'Tis wiser far to borrow other people’s.
Some trust to mother-wit to help them on,
And some to luck, and some to providence,
But Heaven helps those the best who help themselves.