University of Virginia Library

Seeing that all which lives beneath the sun
Is, in the last resource, explain'd by One;
That every will which works or star which sings
In fine goes back into the font of things;
That by a final gathering of force
The soul of man shall, to complete its course,
With a great rush return from whence it came;
The last and first can differ but in name,
And there is one beginning and one end.
How then these varied interests defend
Which now distract and dissipate the soul,
Leading it daily further from the whole—
Wherein we know there lies our only good?
Ah, we have heard but have not understood!
From the confessions of our lips the heart,
Untouch'd and unconvinced, has stood apart,
So that mere words have trick'd us over long.
But, when the soul is search'd, the soul proves strong;
Zenith and Nadir and the Sacred Hill
Shew nothing keener than the human will,
Directed wisely unto wisdom's term.
Let us be therefore bold, and here affirm
That one strong wrench and this alone man needs
To set himself apart from evil deeds;
And if in ceasing utterly from these
The true Path lies, then are all mysteries
So well within the circle of his days
That if, forsooth, there sounds a seraph's praise
About the white light of a central throne,
Not to the end shall angels serve alone.
Man's voice with theirs may join, he stand with them,
Nor fail at last of any diadem
Which can crown souls in any place unknown,
Nor—if the stars have thrones—lose star and throne.

All this, however, is but mystic speech—
Our lip-confessions shew what man must reach;
The soul its origin from One discerns,
And the soul's rest is when the soul returns.
But up that steep incline which once we trod,
When we came down—we know not why—from God,
We know indeed that none to climb begin,
Nor dare, until they cast away their sin.

Now, is it hard for man to sin no more?
To say that all which drew aside before,
Henceforth for him, is of its lure bereft,
That to go upward is the one course left?
Bear with me, friends, if what I know full well,
Of all evasions free, for once I tell:
This is not hard to any heart resolved,
Since in the soul's bent is one change involved,
One simple reconstruction of the will;
Then from the soul shall pass the lust of ill.

Think that outside our end all toil is vain;
Think that who wills can to the end attain;
Know that what does not to that end belong
Is folly always, if not open wrong:
Fix this before you, and you shall not err;
Nothing shall tempt you, nothing shall deter.
These are plain words, but their high sense enrings
The solemn secret of acquiring wings,
And from a complex to a simple mode
Can bring the soul, so that it knows the road;
So, seal'd with all simplicity, discerns
How what was many to the One returns.