PHILOSOPHY, THE GUIDE OF MENTAL LIFE 269 



That march now from the mountain to the sea; 

 'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first, 

 Loving not, hating not, just choosing so. 

 'Say the first straggler that bofists purple spots 

 Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off; 

 'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a xoorm, 

 And two worms he whose nippers end in red; 

 As it likes me each time, I do: so He. 



The introspective mind of Rabbi Ben Ezra responds on a much 

 higher spiritual level: 



He fixed thee mid this dance 



Of plastic circumstance, 



This Present, thou, forsooth, xvouldst fain arrest; 



Machinery just meant 



To give thy soul its bent, 



Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. 



In "Saul," Browning sees evidence of perfection everywhere in 

 nature: 



Do I ask any faculty highest, to image success? 

 I but open my eyes, — and perfection, no more and no less, 

 In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God, 

 In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul, and the clod. 



Resentment at the inability of humanity, despite choice, to con- 

 trol the inexorable powers of nature, blazes forth again and again 

 in Omar's lines: 



And this inverted bowl we call the sky, 

 Whereunder, crawling, cooped, we live and die — 



Lift not thy hands to it for help for it 

 As impotently moves as thou and I. 



Ah, love! Could thou and I with Fate conspire 

 To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, 



Would we not shatter it to bits and then 

 Remold it nearer to the heart's desire? 



But in William Henley's "Invictus" we find a defiant trumpet- 

 call of humanity to material limitations: 



It matters not how straight the gate, 

 How charged with punishments the scroll; 

 I am the master of my fate, 

 I am the captain of my soul. 



