And circumstance of matter what doth weigh? 
Oh! not the height and depth of this to know
But reachings of that grosser element,
Which, entered in and clinging to it so,
With earthlier earthiness than dwells in clay,
Can drag the spirit down, that, looking up,
Sees, through surrounding shades of death and time,
With solemn wonder, and with new-born hope,
The dawning glories of its native clime;
And inly swell such mighty floods of love,
Unutterable longing and desire,
For that celestial, blessed home above,
The soul springs upward like the mounting fire,
Up, through the lessening shadows on its way,
While, in its raptured vision, grows more clear
The calm, the high, illimitable day
To which it draws more near and yet more near. 
Draws near?  Alas! its brief, its waning strength
Upward no more the fetters’ weight can bear: 
It falters,—­pauses,—­sinks; and, sunk at length,
Plucks at its chain in frenzy and despair.

Not forever fallen!  Not in eternal prison! 
No! hell with fire of pain
Melteth apart its chain;
Heaven doth once more constrain: 
It hath arisen!

And never, never again, thus to fall low? 
Ah, no! 
Terror, Remorse, and Woe,
Vainly they pierced it through with many sorrows;
Hell shall regain it,—­thousand times regain it;
But can detain it
Only awhile from ruthful Heaven’s to-morrows.

That sin is suffering,
It knows,—­it knows this thing;
And yet it courts the sting
That deeply pains it;
It knows that in the cup
The sweet is but a sup,
That Sorrow fills it up,
And who drinks drains it.

It knows; who runs may read. 
But, when the fetters dazzle, heaven’s far joy seems dim;
And ’tis not life but so to be inwound. 
A little while, and then—­behold it bleed
With madness of its throes to be unbound!

It knows.  But when the sudden stress
Of passion is resistlessness,
It drags the flood that sweeps away,
For anchorage, or hold, or stay,
Or saving rock of stableness,
And there is none,—­
No underlying fixedness to fasten on: 
Unsounded depths; unsteadfast seas;
Wavering, yielding, bottomless depths: 
But these!

Yea, sometimes seemeth gone
The Everlasting Arm we lean upon!

So blind, as well as maimed and halt and lame,
What sometimes makes it see? 
Oppressed with guilt and gnawed upon of shame,
What comes upon it so,
Faster and faster stealing,
Flooding it like an air or sea
Of warm and golden feeling? 
What makes it melt,
Dissolving from the earthiness that made it hard and heavy? 
What makes it melt and flow,
And melt and melt and flow,—­
Till light, clear-shining through its heart of dew,
Makes all things new?