To check presumption--visions wild to quell;
Then 'tis the chastening of a father's hand--
All wholesome, all expedient. But to stand
Writhing beneath the unsparing lash, and be
Trampled on veriest earth, while misery
Stems the young blood, or makes it freeze with care,
And on the tearless eyeballs writes, _Despair!_
Oh! this is terrible!--and it doth throw
Upon the brow such early marks of woe,
That men seem old ere they have well been young;
Their fond hopes perish, and their hearts are wrung
With such dark feelings--misanthropic gloom,
Spite of their natures, haunts them to the tomb.


XVIII.

Now, Edmund 'midst the bustling throng appears
One old in wretchedness, though young in years;
For he had struggled with an angry world,
Had felt misfortune's billows o'er him hurled,
And strove against its tide--where wave meets wave
Like huge leviathans sporting wild, and lave
Their mountain breakers round with circling sweep,
Till, drawn within the vortex of their deep,
The man of ruin struggleth--but in vain;
Like dying swimmers who, in breathless pain
Despairing, strike at random!--It would be
A subject worth the schoolmen's scrutiny,
To trace each simple source from whence arose