Hence also my heart must all pleasure forego! 
I may not pretend aught rightly to know,
I may not pretend, through teaching, to find
A means to improve or convert mankind. 
Then I have neither goods nor treasure,
No worldly honor, rank, or pleasure;
No dog in such fashion would longer live! 
Therefore myself to magic I give,
In hope, through spirit-voice and might,
Secrets now veiled to bring to light,
That I no more, with aching brow,
Need speak of what I nothing know;
That I the force may recognize
That binds creation’s inmost energies;
Her vital powers, her embryo seeds survey,
And fling the trade in empty words away. 
O full-orb’d moon, did but thy rays
Their last upon mine anguish gaze! 
Beside this desk, at dead of night,
Oft have I watched to hail thy light: 
Then, pensive friend! o’er book and scroll,
With soothing power, thy radiance stole! 
In thy dear light, ah, might I climb,
Freely, some mountain height sublime,
Round mountain caves with spirits ride,
In thy mild haze o’er meadows glide,
And, purged from knowledge-fumes, renew
My spirit, in thy healing dew!

Woe’s me! still prison’d in the gloom
Of this abhorr’d and musty room! 
Where heaven’s dear light itself doth pass
But dimly through the painted glass! 
Hemmed in by book-heaps, piled around,
Worm-eaten, hid ’neath dust and mold,
Which to the high vault’s topmast bound,
A smoke-stained paper doth enfold;
With boxes round thee piled, and glass,
And many a useless instrument,
With old ancestral lumber blent—­
This is thy world! a world! alas! 
And dost thou ask why heaves thy heart,
With tighten’d pressure in thy breast? 
Why the dull ache will not depart,
By which thy life-pulse is oppress’d? 
Instead of nature’s living sphere,
Created for mankind of old,
Brute skeletons surround thee here,
And dead men’s bones in smoke and mold. 
Up!  Forth into the distant land! 
Is not this book of mystery
By Nostradamus’ proper hand,
An all-sufficient guide?  Thou’lt see
The courses of the stars unroll’d;
When nature doth her thoughts unfold
To thee, thy-soul shall rise, and seek
Communion high with her to hold,
As spirit cloth with spirit speak! 
Vain by dull poring to divine
The meaning of each hallow’d sign. 
Spirits!  I feel you hov’ring near;
Make answer, if my voice ye hear!

[He opens the book and perceives the sign of the Macrocosmos.]

Ah! at this spectacle through every sense,
What sudden ecstasy of joy is flowing! 
I feel new rapture, hallow’d and intense,
Through every nerve and vein with ardor glowing. 
Was it a god who character’d this scroll,
The tumult in my-spirit healing,
O’er my sad heart with rapture stealing,
And by a mystic impulse, to my soul,
The powers of nature all around revealing. 
Am I a god?  What light intense
In these pure symbols do I see
Nature exert her vital energy? 
Now of the wise man’s words I learn the sense;
 “Unlock’d the spirit-world is lying,
 Thy sense is shut, thy heart is dead! 
 Up scholar, lave, with zeal undying,
 Thine earthly breast in the morning-red!”