POETRY.
TO AN OPTIMIST.
DIM eyes, clear-sighted only for the distance, Fond fancy poring on those hills of blue, Blamest thou me, bent only on resistance To ills of nearer view ?
You were a painter born, and I a fighter ; You to love beauty, I to set wrong right ; You, where a thing is bright, to paint it brighter, I to say, " Black's not white."
Had you been saved of old when heaven's great ruin Crashed down in flood, and Hope itself looked dark, You had admired " the good that rain was doing," And praised " the accommodation of the Ark."
You see but cherubs where, in misery bundled, Poor children rot unheeded in a mews ; You note the rainbow when a mop is trundled With rinsings from the stews.
I have the fatal fault to see too clearly,
Blight in the bloom and ill in all to spy, Believing truth itself is bought too dearly If purchased with a lie.
So fail I, friend, to see earth as you see it,— All sunshine, angels bursting from the blue ; Though with good health and money, I agree, it May, while they both last, do.
What then our difference ? This ! As clever jugglers Who force the court-card, will not yield the plain, You quote the one blest, not the hopeless strugglers, The millions in their pain.
I too see good, but do not pause to praise it ; Leave opiate praise, love rather tonic blame; " Improveable" I hold the world ; to raise it, Man's only lawful aim.
Yet, oh ! thy pardon, Heaven, if oft-times grumbling, I murmur o'er lost harvests' wasted toil ; I know it must be, yet it is so humbling, That best things soonest spoil. A. G. B.
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