What is the truth? The focus of all rays

Passing through Nature and the soul and mind.

It is the Sun of Suns, around which wind

The Heavens and all the worlds. Such is its blaze,

That had it not, at intervals, a haze,

Grading both Angel and the Human-kind,

The bright Arch-angel would be stricken blind,

To grope in Heaven, a Homer, sighing lays.

What less could fitly crown Omnipotence

Than Truth, the focus of all rays in Good?

Lo! there it shines upon the Holy Rood,

Breaking through clouds, a-massing dark and dense

From countless ages, Cains to Brotherhood—

With rays of pardon for the World's offense.