Still, if I can pity an overdriven horse, or love my dog, without robbing heaven of its dues of reverence, when these animals are as much below me as I am thy inferior; why mayest not thou “watch me, where I weep,” from thy circuits of higher heights and deeper depths than mine?
LXIV.
He asks whether Hallam is looking back on this life,
“As some divinely gifted man,”
who has burst through all the adverse circumstances of his humble birth, by genius and labour; making
“by force his merit known,
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state’s decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;”
as Lord Beaconsfield did.
Does not such a hero in his elevation,
“When all his active powers are still,”
sometimes feel tender memories of the scenes of his early life—