The golden mean, is lost on such an one: 
The man’s fantastic will is the man’s law. 
So here—­we call the treasure knowledge, say,
Increased beyond the fleshly faculty—­ 140
Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,
Earth forced on a soul’s use while seeing heaven: 
The man is witless of the size, the sum,
The value in proportion of all things,
Or whether it be little or be much. 
Discourse to him of prodigious armaments
Assembled to besiege his city now,
And of the passing of a mule with gourds—­
’Tis one!  Then take it on the other side,
Speak of some trifling fact,—­he will gaze rapt 150
With stupor at its very littleness,
(Far as I see) as if in that indeed
He caught prodigious import, whole results. 
And so will turn to us the bystanders
In ever the same stupor (note this point)
That we too see not with his opened eyes. 
Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,
Preposterously, at cross purposes. 
Should his child sicken unto death,—­why, look
For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, 160
Or pretermission of the daily craft! 
While a word, gesture, glance from that same child
At play or in the school or laid asleep,
Will startle him to an agony of fear,
Exasperation, just as like.  Demand
The reason why—­“’tis but a word,” object—­
“A gesture”—­he regards thee as our lord
Who lived there in the pyramid alone,
Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young
We both would unadvisedly recite 170
Some charm’s beginning, from that book of his, deg. deg.171
Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst
All into stars, as suns grown old are wont. 
Thou and the child have each a veil alike
Thrown o’er your heads, from under which ye both
Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match
Over a mine of Greek fire, deg. did ye know! deg.177
He holds on firmly to some thread of life
(It is the life to lead perforcedly)
Which runs across some vast distracting orb 180
Of glory on either side that meagre thread,
Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet—­
The spiritual life around the earthly life: 
The law of that is known to him as this,
His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. 
So is the man perplext with impulses
Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,
Proclaiming what is right and wrong across,
And not along, this black thread thro’ the blaze—­
“It should be” balked by “here it cannot be.” 190
And oft the man’s soul springs into his face
As if he saw again and heard again
His sage that bade him “Rise” and he did rise. 
Something, a word, a tick o’ the blood within