"Or of one stuff has some Hand made us all,
Baptized us all in one great sequent plan,
Where deep to ever vaster deep may call,
And all their large expression find in Man?
"Flowers climb to birds, and birds and beasts to Man,
And Man to God, by some strong instinct driven;
And so the golden ladder upward ran,
Its foot among the flowers, its top in heaven.
"All lives Man lives; of matter first then tends
To plants, an animal next unconscious, dim,
A man, a spirit last, the cycle ends,—
Thus all creation weds with God in him.
"And if he fall, a world in him doth fall,
All things decline to lower uses; while
The golden chain that bound the each to all
Falls broken in the dust, a linkless pile.
"And Love's fair sacraments and mystic rite
In Nature, which their consummation find,
In wedded hearts, and union infinite
With the Divine, of married mind with mind,
Foul symbols of an idol temple grow,
And sun-white Love is blackened into lust,
And man's impure doth into flower-cups flow,
And the fair Kosmos mourneth in the dust.
O Thou, out-topping all we know or think,
Far off yet nigh, out-reaching all we see,
Hold Thou my hand, that so the top-most link
Of the great chain may hold, from us to Thee;
"And from my heaven-touched life may downward flow
Prophetic promise of a grace to be;
And flower, and bird, and beast, may upward grow,
And find their highest linked to God in me."
Possibly you will say at once, "Oh, my boy has no taste for natural history, and he would take no interest in this kind of thing." All the better his finding it a bit dry—it will rid the subject of some of its dangerous attraction. I have yet to find the boy for whom the Latin Grammar has the least interest; but we do not excuse him on that ground from grinding at it. Whether he takes an interest in it or not, you have to teach him that he has got to know about these things before going to school, to guard him from the danger of having all sorts of false, and often foul, notions palmed off on him. I do not say that pure knowledge will necessarily save, but I do say that the pitcher which is full of clear spring-water has no room for foul. I do say that you have gained a great step, if in answer to the offer of enlightenment which he is certain to receive, you have enabled your boy to acquit himself of the rough objurgation—forgive me for putting it in schoolboy language: "Oh, hold your jaw! I know all about that, and I don't want any of your rot." I do say that early associations are most terribly strong, and if you will secure that those early associations with regard to life and birth shall be bound up with all the sanctities of life—with home, with his mother, with family, with all that is best and highest in life; then his whole attitude in life will be different. But if these early associations are linked with all that is false and foul, some subtle odor of the sewer will still cling about the heart of the shrine, a nameless sense of something impure in the whole subject; an undefinable something in his way of looking at it, which has often made the purity of men—blameless in their outer life—- sadden and perplex me almost as much as the actions and words of confessedly impure men.