Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Sweet ever; and in naught so sweet as this:

That though the heavens be barred, if we but hold

An equal, quiet, will-illumined mind,

Such greatness in us, laborless, must win

Great answers: cheer from all created things,

And interchange of love by natural right

With the high few, a kinship not of clay.

Be these thy present comfort! Like a man

Who tends a watchlight on the hills alone

At Childermas, (and through a night so cold,

The red clots of the rowan-berry twirl

Incorporate with a small stiff cone of ice,

And the wind breaks his flail, and swineherds hear

Outside, the pine-boles crack with frost i’ the heart,)

Thou shalt, ere long, upon a distant peak

Descry a doubted smoke, a likelier spark,

A shadow shot across a glare, and then

Two spurts of flame that bare the under sea;