Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/144

 chiefly sees is the peace of nature's obedience to law, and the everlasting youth of her unchanging life.

He contrasts her calm with our turmoil, her quiet changes of action day after day, her rest after action, with our hurry, our confusion, and our noise. Calm soul of things, he cries, make me calm, let the human world, like thee, perfect its vast issues "in toil unsevered from tranquillity." Again, he contrasts the immortal life of nature with our decay and death. That life existed before us, will exist after us, fulfilling pauselessly its pure eternal course. Oh, he cries, to be alone with that intense life, and in its youthfulness, to be clear, composed, refreshed, ennobled; to have its steadfast joy! Calm, with life, that was the ideal he drew from nature.

Then, he also contrasts her joy and freedom with the sorrow and the slavery of our struggle towards any perfection. She obeys law silently and therefore