toss’d,
    Reason herself, once bold, acute, and strong,
    No more discerns the bounds of right and wrong: 
    Lost, in the mist of fear, her Heavenly Guide,
    She deems all efforts vain, and sinks beneath the tide.

      “But shrink not thou from earth’s malignant power! 
    Hope builds on high an everlasting tower;
    And strength divine supports the suffering good,
    As lasting ramparts break the torrent-flood.

      “Sustain’d by this, with resolute control
    The Mental Hero curbs his struggling soul,
    Bids with new fire his pure affections glow,
    And calls his lingering wishes from below. 
    Refined by slow degrees, his passions rise,
    Soar from the earth, and gain upon the skies. 
    A light, unbought by all the joys of Sin,
    Cheers his wide soul, and brightens all within: 
    And, though mankind his pious peace molest,
    And mock the sigh that struggles half suppress’d;
    Tho’, leagued with man, the hostile powers of hell
    Bid round his head the maddening tempest swell;
    For ever fix’d on worlds beyond the pole,
    Nought else can move his heaven-directed soul. 
    ’Tis his with tearless fortitude to feel
    The bigot fury of a tyrant’s steel;
    ’Tis his with cool untempted eye to gaze
    On Wealth’s bright pomp, and Beauty’s brighter blaze: 
    And, as the stream its equal current leads
    Thro’ dusky forests and thro’ flowery meads,
    Serene he treads Misfortune’s thorny soil,
    Nor on surrounding pleasures wastes a smile—­
    Whate’er events the tide of time may swell,
    His only care, to act or suffer well. 
    What tho’ malignant foes innumerous scowl,
    Tho’ mortals hiss, and fiends around him howl? 
    Yet, higher powers, the guardians of his life,
    With sacred transport watch the godlike strife;
    Yet Heaven, with all her thousand eyes, looks down,
    And binds her martyr with a deathless crown.

      “When the last pang the struggling spirit sends
    Far from the circle of his mourning friends,
    And, bathed with many a tear, the hallow’d bust
    Protects the mouldering body of the just;
    Oh! with what rapture, mounting, he descries
    Scenes of unutterable glory rise,
    With trembling hope bows to his heavenly Lord,
    And hears with awful joy th’ absolving word! 
    Oh! with what speed he flies, dismiss’d to stray
    Thro’ the vast regions of eternal day;
    Creation’s various wonders to explore,
    A radiant sea of light, without a shore! 
    Then, too, that spark of intellectual fire
    Which burn’d thro’ life, and never shall expire,
    Which, oft’ on earth deplored its bounded view,
    And still from sphere to sphere excursive flew,
    The mind, upborne on intuition’s wings,
    Thro’ Truth’s bright regions, momentary, springs,
    And, piercing at one view the maze of fate,
    Smiles at the darkness of her former state!