XX.‘ LET BE!’

Ah, yes; we tell the good and evil trees

By fruits: But how tell these?

Who does not know

That good and ill

Are done in secret still,

And that which shews is verily but show!

How high of heart is one, and one how sweet of mood:

But not all height is holiness,

Nor every sweetness good;

And grace will sometimes lurk where who could guess?

The Critic of his kind,

Dealing to each his share,

With easy humour, hard to bear,

May not impossibly have in him shrined,

As in a gossamer globe or thickly padded pod,

Some small seed dear to God.

Haply yon wretch, so famous for his falls,

Got them beneath the Devil-defended walls

Of some high Virtue he had vow'd to win;

And that which you and I

Call his besetting sin

Is but the fume of his peculiar fire

Of inmost contrary desire,

And means wild willingness for her to die,

Dash'd with despondence of her favour sweet;

He fiercer fighting, in his worst defeat,

Than I or you,

That only courteous greet

Where he does hotly woo,

Did ever fight, in our best victory.

Another is mistook

Through his deceitful likeness to his look!

Let be, let be:

Why should I clear myself, why answer thou for me?

That shaft of slander shot

Miss'd only the right blot.

I see the shame

They cannot see:

‘ Tis very just they blame

The thing that's not.