* * * * *
Sense of this God, by fear, the sensual have,
Distresséd Nature crying unto Grace;
For sovereign reason then becomes a slave,
And yields to servile sense her sovereign place,
When more or other she affects to be
Than seat or shrine of this Eternity.
Yea, Prince of Earth let Man assume to be,
Nay more—of Man let Man himself be God,
Yet without God, a slave of slaves is he;
To others, wonder; to himself, a rod;
Restless despair, desire, and desolation;
The more secure, the more abomination.
Then by affecting power, we cannot know him.
By knowing all things else, we know him less.
Nature contains him not. Art cannot show him.
Opinions idols, and not God, express.
Without, in power, we see him everywhere;
Within, we rest not, till we find him there.
Then seek we must; that course is natural—
For ownéd souls to find their owner out.
Our free remorses when our natures fall—
When we do well, our hearts made free from doubt—
Prove service due to one Omnipotence,
And Nature of religion to have sense.
Questions again, which in our hearts arise—
Since loving knowledge, not humility—
Though they be curious, godless, and unwise,
Yet prove our nature feels a Deity;
For if these strifes rose out of other grounds,
Man were to God as deafness is to sounds.
* * * * *
Yet in this strife, this natural remorse,
If we could bend the force of power and wit
To work upon the heart, and make divorce
There from the evil which preventeth it,
In judgment of the truth we should not doubt
Good life would find a good religion out.
If a fair proportion of it were equal to this, the poem would be a fine one, not for its poetry, but for its spiritual metaphysics. I think the fourth and fifth of the stanzas I have given, profound in truth, and excellent in utterance. They are worth pondering.
We now descend a decade of the century, to find another group of names within the immediate threshold of the sixties.