’This commerce of sincerest virtue needs
No mediative signs of selfishness,
No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,
No balancings of prudence, cold and long;
In just and equal measure all is weighed, 235
One scale contains the sum of human weal,
And one, the good man’s heart. 
How vainly seek
The selfish for that happiness denied
To aught but virtue!  Blind and hardened, they,
Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, 240
Who covet power they know not how to use,
And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give,—­
Madly they frustrate still their own designs;
And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy
Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, 245
Pining regrets, and vain repentances,
Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade
Their valueless and miserable lives.

’But hoary-headed Selfishness has felt
Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave:  250
A brighter morn awaits the human day,
When every transfer of earth’s natural gifts
Shall be a commerce of good words and works;
When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,
The fear of infamy, disease and woe, 255
War with its million horrors, and fierce hell
Shall live but in the memory of Time,
Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start,
Look back, and shudder at his younger years.’

6.

All touch, all eye, all ear,
The Spirit felt the Fairy’s burning speech. 
O’er the thin texture of its frame,
The varying periods painted changing glows,
As on a summer even, 5
When soul-enfolding music floats around,
The stainless mirror of the lake
Re-images the eastern gloom,
Mingling convulsively its purple hues
With sunset’s burnished gold. 10

Then thus the Spirit spoke: 
’It is a wild and miserable world! 
Thorny, and full of care,
Which every fiend can make his prey at will. 
O Fairy! in the lapse of years, 15
Is there no hope in store? 
Will yon vast suns roll on
Interminably, still illuming
The night of so many wretched souls,
And see no hope for them? 20
Will not the universal Spirit e’er
Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?’