"the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends."
If this solid earth came from elements dissolved by "fluent heat," and man
was the last result; then he, who is now enduring fears and sorrows and
the battering "shocks of doom," typifies "this work of time" on natural
objects; for he must be, as they have been, in process of being moulded
for a higher state. He is moving upward, "working out the beast," and
letting "the ape and tiger die," while in his present probationary
condition.