O thou that after toil and storm
Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form.
Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor then with shadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
Her faith thro' form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good.
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!
See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And ev'n for want of such a type.
Has it crushed out his pure sense of poetic beauty? Here in No. 84 we have a poem which, for what I can only call absolute beauty, is simply perfect.
Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare
The round of space, and rapt below
Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood,
And shadowing down the horned flood
In ripples, fan my brows, and blow
The fever from my cheek, and sigh
The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death
Ill brethren, let the fancy fly
From belt to belt of crimson seas
On leagues of odor streaming far
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper 'Peace.'
And finally we are able to see from his own words that he is not ignorantly resisting the influences of science, but that he knows science, reveres it and understands its precise place and function. What he terms in the following poem (113 of In Memoriam) Knowledge and Wisdom are what we have been speaking of as Science and Poetry.