In this Poem we have a profound acknowledgment of the revealed Godhead in its triune manifestations, though not expressed in ecclesiastical formula:
“Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess.”
This Power lives in our hearts. Eye hath not seen Him, nor is He to be found “in world or sun,” or by dissection of what has lived, or by process of reasoning.
If ever his own faith faltered, and a voice said, “believe no more,” the reproving witness was within himself.
“A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer’d, I have felt.”[86]
Still he was
“as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near.”[87]
His own heart, which is the home of faith, testified to Divine truth, which “no man understands,” but he accepts it as the one solution of what exists.
CXXV.
He admits that some “bitter notes” have sounded from his harp. But though his tongue may at times have seemed to speak with contradiction, Hope was nevertheless still alive to better things.