Miscellaneous Sonnets, 1842 - V - Continued

Who ponders National events shall find

An awful balancing of loss and gain,

Joy based on sorrow, good with ill combined,

And proud deliverance issuing out of pain

And direful throes; as if the All-ruling Mind,

With whose perfection it consists to ordain

Volcanic burst, earthquake, and hurricane,

Dealt in like sort with feeble human kind

By laws immutable. But woe for him

Who thus deceived shall lend an eager hand

To social havoc. Is not Conscience ours,

And Truth, whose eye guilt only can make dim;

And Will, whose office, by divine command,

Is to control and check disordered Powers?