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FERISHTAH'S FANCIES.
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We call the plague! 'Nay, but our memory fadesAnd leaves the past unsullied!' Does it so?Why, straight the purpose of such breathing-space,Such respite from past ill, grows plain enough!What follows on remembrance of the past?Fear of the future! Life, from birth to death,Means—either looking back on harm escaped,Or looking forward to that harm's returnWith tenfold power of harming. Black, not White,Never the whole consummate quietudeLife should be, troubled by no fear!—nor hope—I'll say, since lamplight dies in noontide, hopeLoses itself in certainty. Such lotMan's might have been: I leave the consequenceTo bolder critics of the Primal Cause;