And feeling in its blindness for a long-lost god, to satisfy its longing;
As if the sucking babe, tenderly mindful of his mother,
Should pull a dragon's dugs, and drain the teats of poison.
Our primal source was beauty, and we pant for it ever and again;
But sin hath stopped the way with thorns; we turn aside, wander, and are lost.
God, the undiluted good, is root and stock of beauty,
And every child of reason drew his essence from that stem.
Therefore, it is of intuition, an innate hankering for home,
A sweet returning to the well, from which our spirit flowed,
That we, unconscious of a cause, should bask these darkened souls