can interpret the pain of a parting between loving hearts, with its
remorseful recollections of the wholly innocent love's joys that are
past?

"Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met--or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken hearted."

Who but a poet can depict the perils of an unconscious drifting apart,
such as has destroyed many a friendship and wrecked many a married life,
as Clough has depicted it in "Qua Cursum Ventus"? If you would know the
life-long sorrow of the blind man at your side, would enter into his
life and for a brief moment share his captivity, read Milton's
interpretation of that sorrow in Samson's Lament. If you would find some
message to cheer the blind man in his darkness and illumine his
captivity, read the same poet's ode on his own blindness:

"God doth not need
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

No prison statistics, no police reports, no reformer's documents, no
public discussions of the question, What to do with the tramp, will ever
so make the student of life participant of the innermost experience of
the tramp, his experience of dull despair, his loss of his grip on life,
as Béranger's "The Old Vagabond." No expert in nervous diseases, no