Beauty and Truth, in Heaven's congenial clime,
Inseparate seen beside the Almighty throne,
Together sprung, before the birth of time,
From God's own glory, while he dwelt alone;—
These, when creation made its wonders known,
Were sent to mortals, that their mingling powers
Might lead and lure us to ethereal bowers.
But our perverse condition here below
Oft sees them severed, or in conflict met:
Oh, sad divorce! the well-spring of our woe,
When Truth and Beauty thus their bond forget,
And Heaven's high law is at defiance set!
'Tis this that Good of half its force disarms,
And gives to Evil all its direst charms.
See Truth with harsh Austerity allied,
Or clad in cynic garb of sordid hue:
See him with Tyranny's fell tools supplied,
The rack, the fagot, or the torturing screw,
Or girt with Bigotry's besotted crew:
What wonder, thus beheld, his looks should move
Our scorn or hatred, rather than our love?
See Beauty, too, in league with Vice and Shame,
And lending all her light to gild a lie;
Crowning with laureate-wreaths an impious name,
Or lulling us with Siren minstrelsy
To false repose when peril most is nigh;
Decking things vile or vain with colours rare,
Till what is false and foul seems good and fair.
Hence are our hearts bewilder'd in their choice,
And hence our feet from Virtue led astray:
Truth calls imperious with repulsive voice
To follow on a steep and rugged way;
While Beauty beckons us along a gay
And flowery path, that leads, with treacherous slope,
To gulfs remote from happiness or hope.
Who will bring back the world's unblemish'd youth
When these two wander'd ever hand in hand;
When Truth was Beauty, Beauty too was Truth,
So link'd together with unbroken band,
That they were one; and Man, at their command,
Tasted of sweets that never knew alloy,
And trod the path of Duty and of Joy?
Chiefly the Poet's power may work the change:
His heavenly gift, impell'd by holy zeal,
O'er Truth's exhaustless stores may brightly range,
And all their native loveliness reveal;
Nor e'er, except where Truth has set his seal,
Suffer one gleam of Beauty's grace to shine,
But in resistless force their lights combine.