answer to make. I remember well the time when this poetry, so resounding
in its music, so mournful, so apparently generous, filled my heart with a
vague anguish of sorrow for the sufferer, and of indignation at the cold
insensibility that had maddened him. Thousands have felt the power of
this great poem, which stands, and must stand to all time, a monument of
what sacred and solemn powers God gave to this wicked man, and how vilely
he abused this power as a weapon to slay the innocent.

It is among the ruins of ancient Rome that his voice breaks forth in
solemn imprecation:--

'O Time, thou beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin, comforter,
And only healer when the heart hath bled!--
Time, the corrector when our judgments err,
The test of truth, love,--sole philosopher,
For all besides are sophists,--from thy shrift
That never loses, though it doth defer!--
Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift
My hands and heart and eyes, and claim of thee a gift.

* * * *

'If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
Which shall not whelm me, _let me not have worn
This iron in my soul in vain, shall_ THEY _not mourn_?
And thou who never yet of human wrong
Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis,