And, to their own amazement, was fulfill’d:
They feign’d a firmness Christians need not feign.
The Christian truly triumph’d in the flame: 580
The Stoic saw, in double wonder lost,
Wonder at them, and wonder at himself,
To find the bold adventures of his thought
Not bold, and that he strove to lie in vain.
Whence, then, those thoughts? those towering thoughts, that flew
Such monstrous heights?—From instinct, and from pride.
The glorious instinct of a deathless soul,