“Ah, Haydn,” said I, “would you have me change?
What soul shall dwell on God’s most holy hill
But he ‘that sweareth to his own hurt,’ yes,
‘And changeth not’?”
“But yet,” he said, “but yet
If you were wrong to swear? How can it be
That any project so against the soul—
Each instinct of one’s nature—should be right?”
“Yet nature,” said I, “may be but corrupt.
What is this instinct, that it should not lie?