Of blissful gratitude and fearless love? 
  Dare I avow that wish was mine to see,
  And hope that future times would surely see,
  The man to come, parted, as by a gulph,
  From him who had been; that I could no more 60
  Trust the elevation which had made me one
  With the great family that still survives
  To illuminate the abyss of ages past,
  Sage, warrior, patriot, hero; for it seemed
  That their best virtues were not free from taint 65
  Of something false and weak, that could not stand
  The open eye of Reason.  Then I said,
  “Go to the Poets, they will speak to thee
  More perfectly of purer creatures;—­yet
  If reason be nobility in man, 70
  Can aught be more ignoble than the man
  Whom they delight in, blinded as he is
  By prejudice, the miserable slave
  Of low ambition or distempered love?”

    In such strange passion, if I may once more 75
  Review the past, I warred against myself—­
  A bigot to a new idolatry—­
  Like a cowled monk who hath forsworn the world,
  Zealously laboured to cut off my heart
  From all the sources of her former strength; 80
  And as, by simple waving of a wand,
  The wizard instantaneously dissolves
  Palace or grove, even so could I unsoul
  As readily by syllogistic words
  Those mysteries of being which have made, 85
  And shall continue evermore to make,
  Of the whole human race one brotherhood.

    What wonder, then, if, to a mind so far
  Perverted, even the visible Universe
  Fell under the dominion of a taste 90
  Less spiritual, with microscopic view
  Was scanned, as I had scanned the moral world?

    O Soul of Nature! excellent and fair! 
  That didst rejoice with me, with whom I, too,
  Rejoiced through early youth, before the winds 95
  And roaring waters, and in lights and shades
  That marched and countermarched about the hills
  In glorious apparition, Powers on whom
  I daily waited, now all eye and now
  All ear; but never long without the heart 100
  Employed, and man’s unfolding intellect: 
  O Soul of Nature! that, by laws divine
  Sustained and governed, still dost overflow
  With an impassioned life, what feeble ones
  Walk on this earth! how feeble have I been 105
  When thou wert in thy strength!  Nor this through stroke
  Of human suffering, such as justifies
  Remissness and inaptitude of mind,
  But through presumption; even in pleasure pleased
  Unworthily, disliking here, and there 110
  Liking; by rules of mimic art transferred
  To things above all art; but more,—­for