Their heart's sole treasure: the affections seem Beauteous at most to you, which we must taste Or die and this strange quality accords,
That luminous brow, though in another it scowls An eating brand, a shame. I dare not judge you. The rules of right and wrong thus set aside, There's no alternative-I own you one
Of higher order, under other laws
Than bind us; therefore, curb not one bold glance! 'T is best aspire. Once mingled with us all . .
Michal. Stay with us, Aureole! cast those hopes
And stay with us! An angel warns me, too, Man should be humble; you are very proud: And God, dethroned, has doleful plagues for such -Warns me to have in dread no quick repulse, No slow defeat, but a complete success : You will find all you seek, and perish so!
Paracelsus [after a pause]. Are these the barren firstfruits of my quest?
Is love like this the natural lot of all ?
How many years of pain might one such hour
O'erbalance? Dearest Michal, dearest Festus, What shali I say, if not that I desire
To justify your love; and will, dear friends,
In swerving nothing from my first resolves.
See, the great moon! and ere the mottled owls Were wide awake, I was to go. It seems You acquiesce at last in all save this— If I am like to compass what I seek By the untried career I choose; and then, If that career, making but small account Of much of life's delight, will yet retain Sufficient to sustain my soul: for thus I understand these fond fears just expressed, And first; the lore you praise and I neglect, The labours and the precepts of old time, I have not lightly disesteemed. But, friends, Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness; and around, Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect, clear perception-which is truth. A baffling and perverting carnal mesh Binds it, and makes all error: and to KNOW Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly
The demonstration of a truth, its birth,
And you trace back the effluence to its spring And source within us; where broods radiance vast,
To be elicited ray by ray, as chance
Shall favour: chance-for hitherto, your sage Even as he knows not how those beams are born,
As little knows he what unlocks their fount: And men have oft grown old among their books To die case-hardened in their ignorance,
Whose careless youth had promised what long years Of unremitted labour ne'er performed:
While, contrary, it has chanced some idle day, To autumn loiterers just as fancy-free
As the midges in the sun, gives birth at last To truth-produced mysteriously as cape Of cloud grown out of the invisible air. Hence, may not truth be lodged alike in all, The lowest as the highest? some slight film The interposing bar which binds a soul
And makes the idiot, just as makes the sage Some film removed, the happy outlet whence Truth issues proudly? See this soul of ours! How it strives weakly in the child, is loosed In manhood, clogged by sickness, back compelled By age and waste, set free at last by death: Why is it, flesh enthrals it or enthrones? What is this flesh we have to penetrate?
Oh, not alone when life flows still, do truth
And power emerge, but also when strange chance Ruffles its current; in unused conjuncture, When sickness breaks the body-hunger, watching, Excess or languor—oftenest death's approach, Peril, deep joy or woe. One man shall crawl Through life surrounded with all stirring things, Unmoved; and he goes mad: and from the wreck Of what he was, by his wild talk alone, You first collect how great a spirit he hid. Therefore, set free the soul alike in all, Discovering the true laws by which the flesh Accloys the spirit! We may not be doomed To cope with seraphs, but at least the rest Shall cope with us. Make no more giants, God,
But elevate the race at once! We ask
To put forth just our strength, our human strength, All starting fairly, all equipped alike,
Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted- See if we cannot beat thine angels yet! Such is my task. I go to gather this
The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed About the world, long lost or never found. And why should I be sad or lorn of hope? Why ever make man's good distinct from God's, Or, finding they are one, why dare mistrust?
Who shall succeed if not one pledged like me? Mine is no mad attempt to build a world Apart from his, like those who set themselves To find the nature of the spirit they bore,
And, taught betimes that all their gorgeous dreams Were only born to vanish in this life, Refused to fit them to its narrow sphere,
But chose to figure forth another world
And other frames meet for their vast desires,—
And all a dream! Thus was life scorned; but life Shall yet be crowned: twine amaranth! I am priest! And all for yielding with a lively spirit A poor existence, parting with a youth Like those who squander every energy Convertible to good, on painted toys,
Breath-bubbles, gilded dust! And though I spurn All adventitious aims, from empty praise
To love's award, yet whoso deems such helps Important, and concerns himself for me,
May know even these will follow with the rest— As in the steady rolling Mayne, asleep Yonder, is mixed its mass of schistous ore. My own affections laid to rest awhile,
Will waken purified, subdued alone
By all I have achieved. Till then-till then Ah, the time-wiling loitering of a page
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