Page:Captain Craig; a book of poems.djvu/43

That sympathy, which aureoles itself
To superfluity from you and me,
May stand against the soul for five or six
Persistent and indubitable streaks
Of irritating brilliance, out of which
A man may read, if he have knowledge in him,
Proportionate attest of ignorance,
Hypocrisy, good-heartedness, conceit,
Indifference,—with all of these out-hued
By the spiritual inactivity
Which more than often is identified
With individual intensity,
And is the parent of that selfishness
Whereof no end of lesser tions and isms
Are querulously born. But there are things
To be considered here, or your machine
May never justify the purchase of it;
For if you fail to gauge the difference
Between self-sacrifice and self-contempt,
Your light will be all devil and your faith
Diseased,—whatever courage you have left:
Courage is not enough to make men glad
For laughter when that laughter is itself
The tribute of recriminating groans;
Nor are the shapes of obsolescent creeds
Much longer to flit near enough to make
Men glad for living in a world like this;