Helps, governments, diversities of tongues; who can weigh your worth?—
To walk no longer with the just; to be driven from the porch of science;
To bid long adieu to those intimate ones, poets, philosophers, and teachers;
To see no record of the sympathies which bind thee in communion with the good;
To be thrust from the feet of Him who spake as never man spake;
To have no avenue to heaven but the dim aisle of superstition;
To live as an Esquimaux, in lethargy; to die as the Mohawk, in ignorance:
O what were life, but a blank? what were death, but a terror?
What were man, but a burden to himself? what were mind, but misery?
Yea, let another Omar burn the full library of knowledge,