Now Time his dusky pennons o’er the scene
Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past
Fades from our charmed sight.  My task is done: 
Thy lore is learned.  Earth’s wonders are thine own,
With all the fear and all the hope they bring. 525
My spells are past:  the present now recurs. 
Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains
Yet unsubdued by man’s reclaiming hand.

Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,
Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue 530
The gradual paths of an aspiring change: 
For birth and life and death, and that strange state
Before the naked powers that thro’ the world
Wander like winds have found a human home,
All tend to perfect happiness, and urge 535
The restless wheels of being on their way,
Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,
Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal: 
For birth but wakes the universal mind
Whose mighty streams might else in silence flow 540
Thro’ the vast world, to individual sense
Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape
New modes of passion to its frame may lend;
Life is its state of action, and the store
Of all events is aggregated there 545
That variegate the eternal universe;
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,
That leads to azure isles and beaming skies
And happy regions of eternal hope. 
Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:  550
Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,
Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,
Yet spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth,
To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,
That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, 555
Lighting the green wood with its sunny smile.

Fear not then, Spirit, death’s disrobing hand,
So welcome when the tyrant is awake,
So welcome when the bigot’s hell-torch flares;
’Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour, 560
The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep. 
For what thou art shall perish utterly,
But what is thine may never cease to be;
Death is no foe to virtue:  earth has seen
Love’s brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, 565
Mingling with freedom’s fadeless laurels there,
And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. 
Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene
Of linked and gradual being has confirmed? 
Hopes that not vainly thou, and living fires 570
Of mind as radiant and as pure as thou,
Have shone upon the paths of men—­return,
Surpassing Spirit, to that world, where thou
Art destined an eternal war to wage
With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot 575
The germs of misery from the human heart. 
Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,