| |
| AND truth, you say, is all divine; | |
| ’T is truth we live by; let her drench | |
| The shuddering heart like potent wine; | |
| No matter how she wreck or wrench | |
| |
| The gracious instincts from their throne, | 5 |
| Or steep the virgin soul in tears;— | |
| No matter; let her learn her own | |
| Enormities, her vilest fears, | |
| |
| And sound the sickliest depths of crime, | |
| And creep through roaring drains of woe, | 10 |
| To soar at last, unstained, sublime, | |
| Knowing the worst that man can know; | |
| |
| And having won the firmer ground, | |
| When loathing quickens pity’s eyes, | |
| Still lean and beckon underground, | 15 |
| And tempt a struggling foot to rise. | |
| |
| Well, well, it is the stronger way! | |
| Heroic stuff is hardly made; | |
| But one, who dallies with dismay, | |
| Admires your boldness, half-afraid. | 20 |
| |
| He deems that knowledge, bitter-sweet, | |
| Can rust and rot the bars of right, | |
| Till weakness sets her trembling feet | |
| Across the threshold of the night. | |
| |
| She peers, she ventures; growing bold, | 25 |
| She breathes the enervating air, | |
| And shuns the aspiring summits, cold | |
| And silent, where the dawn is fair. | |
| |
| She wonders, aching to be free, | |
| Too soft to burst the uncertain band, | 30 |
| Till chains of drear fatality | |
| Arrest the feeble willing hand. | |
| |
| Nay, let the stainless eye of youth | |
| Be blind to that bewildering light! | |
| When faith and virtue falter, truth | 35 |
| Is handmaid to the hags of night. | |
| |
