CHAPTER XIII.
A DECLARATION.
I cannot choose, but marvel at the way
In which we pass our lives from day to day;
Learning strange lessons in the human heart;
And yet, like shadows, letting them depart.
Is misery so familiar, that we bring
Ourselves to view it as "a usual thing?"
We do too little feel each other's pain;
We do too much relax the social chain
That binds us to each other; slight the care
There is for grief, in which we have no share.
Amid the many contrasts produced by our forced unions of nature and art, there is no contrast so strange as that between the exterior and the internal world of society. It would seem as if the one existed only to give the lie to the other. The one—so dark, so deep, so difficult of access; the other—so covered with glittering falsehoods, and all
