XI

  But fly the boundary of the Senses—­live
  The Ideal life free Thought can give;
    And, lo, the gulf shall vanish, and the chill
  Of the soul’s impotent despair be gone! 
  And with divinity thou sharest the throne,
    Let but divinity become thy will! 
  Scorn not the Law—­permit its iron band
    The sense (it cannot chain the soul) to thrall. 
  Let man no more the will of Jove withstand,
    And Jove the bolt lets fall!

  XII

  If, in the woes of Actual Human Life—­
  If thou could’st see the serpent strife
    Which the Greek Art has made divine in stone—­
  Could’st see the writhing limbs, the livid cheek,
  Note every pang, and hearken every shriek
    Of some despairing lost Laocoon,
  The human nature would thyself subdue
    To share the human woe before thine eye—­
  Thy cheek would pale, and all thy soul be true
    To Man’s great Sympathy.

  XIII

  But in the Ideal Realm, aloof and far,
  Where the calm Art’s pure dwellers are,
    Lo, the Laocoon writhes, but does not groan. 
  Here, no sharp grief the high emotion knows—­
  Here, suffering’s self is made divine, and shows
    The brave resolve of the firm soul alone: 
  Here, lovely as the rainbow on the dew
    Of the spent thunder-cloud, to Art is given,
  Gleaming through Grief’s dark veil, the peaceful blue
    Of the sweet Moral Heaven.

  XIV

  So, in the glorious parable, behold
  How, bow’d to mortal bonds, of old
    Life’s dreary path divine Alcides trod: 
  The hydra and the lion were his prey,
  And to restore the friend he loved today,
    He went undaunted to the black-brow’d God;
  And all the torments and the labors sore
    Wroth Juno sent—­the meek majestic One,
  With patient spirit and unquailing, bore,
    Until the course was run—­

  XV

  Until the God cast down his garb of clay,
  And rent in hallowing flame away
    The mortal part from the divine—­to soar
  To the empyreal air!  Behold him spring
  Blithe in the pride of the unwonted wing,
    And the dull matter that confined before
  Sinks downward, downward, downward as a dream! 
    Olympian hymns receive the escaping soul,
  And smiling Hebe, from the ambrosial stream,
    Fills for a God the bowl!

* * * * *

GENIUS (1795)

  Do I believe, thou ask’st, the Master’s word,
  The Schoolman’s shibboleth that binds the herd? 
  To the soul’s haven is there but one chart? 
  Its peace a problem to be learned by art? 
  On system rest the happy and the good? 
  To base the temple must the props be wood? 
  Must I distrust the gentle law, imprest,
  To guide and warn, by Nature on the breast,
  Till, squared to rule the instinct of