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Their feast was such as Earth, the general mother,
Pours from her fairest hosom, when she smiles
In the embrace of Autumn. To each other
As when some parent fondly reconciles
Her warring children, she their wrath beguiles
With her own sustenance they relenting weep—
Such was this festival, which, from their isles
And continents and winds and oceans deep,
All shapes might throng to share that fly or walk or creep.
The poet's wide-reaching sympathy touches all sentient beings; in the same spirit of the Higher Pantheism that breathes in the Song of the Sun of St. Francis of Assissi, he beholds in all the manifestations of the Divine.
It is easy for the careless, and the indifferent, no less than the sensual or the vicious, to deride such an ideal. It is possible even for those who would desire it to be true to be convinced of the impossibility of its realisation. There are men and women who acknowledge with pain Nature "red in tooth and claw"; there are poets who tell us—shall we say with exultation?—that "Carnage is Heaven's own daughter." Still the generous mind refuses to be contented with a future for humanity that leaves the poor in their wretchedness; that makes one man die of sensual surfeit whilst another perishes of starvation; that dooms men to war upon their brother men until the judgment day; a future in which cruelty, lust, oppression, and wrongdoing are to be permanent elements. Man is surely worthy of a better fate than to be the tyrant of a world filled with the victims of his unbridled appetites and remorseless power. Man is the butcher of creation. Those who are not satisfied that man, who ought to be only a little lower than the angels, should for ever live by the torture and misery of his fellow-creatures must devise some way for his escape from the thraldom of evil. If any better expedient than that suggested by Shelley can be found by all means let it be propounded. At present we see that the poverty and misery of the poor, the luxury and sensuality of the rich, whilst equally hurtful, are largely preventible. It is certain that man can live without the use of intoxicants, and without the use of animal flesh. Why, then, should man turn
