Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul;
There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires
That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil,
Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible,
As exhalations laden with slow death,
And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys
Breathes pallid pestilence.
His finely-touched spirit has still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. His full nature, like that river of which Cyrus* broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth.
But the effect of his being on those around him was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
* Cyrus, founder of the Persian Empire divided the River Gyndes after one of his sacred horses drowned in it. [Herodotus i, 189.
