Ever as we journey sink

The old behind the new,

And Heav’n commands we think

As justly as we do.

One golden virtue more

Than virtue we must prize,

One iron duty more

Than duty, to be wise.

Who to himself hath said,

‘This chamber must be closed;

This tract of truth I dread,

This darkness God-imposed

May not be lifted,’ keeps

An ever-open door

Thro’ which deception creeps,

Confounding more and more,

Until to wild extremes

Of falsehood driv’n he dies,

Intoxicate with dreams

And drunk with a thousand lies.

And more if he have taken

A secret lie for friend,

He shall be found forsaken,

And terrible his end.

So one doth travelling ride;

A dreadful forest fears;

Rejoiced at length a guide

He meeteth unawares.

With thunder overthrown

Day dies in solitude;

The guide, a monster grown,

Devours him in the wood.

Idle and base the cry

‘If it be so, so be it;

But if it be so, then I

Will look not lest I see it.’

Or this, ‘If it be so

We lose this thing or that;

’Twere better not to know.’

The lightning spareth not

The timorous soul who hides

His head in danger thus:

The iron fact abides;

Things were not made for us.

Who answers, who repines?

Not he who works in love,

But he who thinks divines

The thing he cannot prove.

He takes his stand and rolls

The phrase he hopes for Heav’n,

But cheats the hungry souls

And gives them bread of leav’n.

His ears are filled with wax,

His bandaged eyeballs blind,

And yet no doubts perplex,

And he can see the wind.

Though all in science good,

By incessant question found,

Beyond it strayed we brood

And argue round and round;

And where we hoped the end,

Such distance we have come,

Amazed we only find

The point we started from;

And fancies, like the breath

We utter, do but prove

A cloud above, beneath,

To fog us as we move.

We climb from cloud to cloud

The airy precipice;

Fain would we reach to God;

We fall thro’ the abyss.

The vapours will not bear.

Wild-clutching we are hurl’d

Thro’ measurements of air

Again upon the world.

Clear rings the answer high,

‘The mystery makes itself;

The mystery is a lie;

Be cleansed and know thyself.’

If with unshaken will,

Resolving not to stray

But to be rising still,

We clamber day by day

From truth to truth, at last,

In valleys of the night

Not lost, we know the vast

And simple upper light,

Only one labouring knows.

The base, tumultuous wreck

Of rock and forest shows;

The summit, a single peak.

So sought, so seen, so found.

And what the end so high?

A summit splendour crown’d

Between the earth and sky,

Where with sidereal blaze

The mistless planets glow,

And stars unsully’d gaze

On unpolluted snow.

No strife the vast reveals

But perfect peace indeed—

The thunder of spinning wheels

At rest in eternal speed.