A handful of brain holds me:  I consume
    So much that all the books the world contains,
    Cannot allay my furious famine-pains:—­
    What feasts were mine!  Yet hunger is my doom. 
With one world Aristarchus fed my greed;
    This finished, others Metrodorus gave;
    Yet, stirred by restless yearning, still I crave: 
    The more I know, the more to learn I need. 
Thus I’m an image of that Sire in whom
    All beings are, like fishes in the sea;
    That one true object of the loving mind. 
Reasoning may reach Him, like a shaft shot home;
    The Church may guide; but only blest is he
    Who loses self in God, God’s self to find.

V.

THE BOOK OF NATURE.

Il mondo e il libro.

The world’s the book where the eternal Sense
    Wrote his own thoughts; the living temple where,
    Painting his very self, with figures fair
    He filled the whole immense circumference. 
Here then should each man read, and gazing find
    Both how to live and govern, and beware
    Of godlessness; and, seeing God all-where,
    Be bold to grasp the universal mind. 
But we tied down to books and temples dead,
    Copied with countless errors from the life,—­
    These nobler than that school sublime we call. 
O may our senseless souls at length be led
    To truth by pain, grief, anguish, trouble, strife! 
    Turn we to read the one original!

VI.

AN EXHORTATION TO MANKIND.

Abitator del mondo.

Ye dwellers on this world, to the first Mind
    Exalt your eyes; and ye shall see how low
    Vile Tyranny, wearing the glorious show
    Of nobleness and worth, keeps you confined. 
Then look at proud Hypocrisy, entwined
    With lies and snares, who once taught men to know
    The fear of God.  Next to the Sophists go,
    Traitors to thought and reason, jugglers blind. 
Keen Socrates to quell the Sophists came: 
    To quell the Tyrants, Cato just and rough: 
    To quell the Hypocrites, Christ, heaven’s own flame. 
But to unmask fraud, sacrilege, and lies,
    Or boldly rush on death, is not enough;
    Unless we all taste God, made inly wise.

VII.

THE BROOD OF IGNORANCE.

Io nacqui a debellar.

To quell three Titan evils I was made,—­
    Tyranny, Sophistry, Hypocrisy;
    Whence I perceive with what wise harmony
    Themis on me Love, Power, and Wisdom laid. 
These are the basements firm whereon is stayed,
    Supreme and strong, our new philosophy;
    The antidotes against that trinal lie
    Wherewith the burdened world groaning is weighed. 
Famine, war, pestilence, fraud, envy, pride,