"
Farewell! I did not know thy worth;
But thou art gone, and now 'tis prized:
So angels walk'd unknown on earth,
But when they flew were recognized.--_Hood_.
John Burroughs, writing of Thoreau, says: "He improves with age--in
fact requires age to take off a little of his asperity, and fully
ripen him. The world likes a good hater and refuser almost as well as
it likes a good lover and accepter--only it likes him farther off."
_Louise Michel at the burial of Blanqui, (1881.)_
Blanqui drill'd his body to subjection to his grand conscience and his
noble passions, and commencing as a young man, broke with all that
is sybaritish in modern civilization. Without the power to sacrifice
self, great ideas will never bear fruit.
Out of the leaping furnace flame
A mass of molten silver came;
Then, beaten into pieces three,
Went forth to meet its destiny.
The first a crucifix was made,
Within a soldier's knapsack laid;
The second was a locket fair,
Where a mother kept her dead child's hair;
The third--a bangle, bright and warm,
Around a faithless woman's arm.
A mighty pain to love it is,
And'tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pain the greatest pain,
It is to love, but love in vain.
_Maurice F. Egan on De Guerin._
A pagan heart, a Christian soul had he,
He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sigh'd,
Till earth and heaven met within his breast:
As if Theocritus in Sicily
Had come upon the Figure crucified,
And lost his gods in deep, Christ-given rest.
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