Unwelcome insight! Yet there are
Blest times when mystery is laid bare,
Truth shows a glorious face,
While on that isthmus which commands 70
The councils of both worlds, she stands,
Sage Spirits! by your grace.
God, who instructs the brutes to scent
All changes of the element,
Whose wisdom fixed the scale 75
Of natures, for our wants provides
By higher, sometimes humbler, guides,
When lights of reason fail.
FOOTNOTES:
[675] Compare Robert Browning's Bishop Blougram's Apology, ll. 191-197—
... there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,—.
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as Nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, etc.—Ed.
["IN THESE FAIR VALES HATH MANY A TREE"]
Composed 1830.—Published 1835
[Engraven, during my absence in Italy, upon a brass plate inserted in the Stone.—I. F.]
This poem was classed among the "Inscriptions." In 1835 its title was Inscription intended for a Stone in the grounds of Rydal Mount. In 1845, and afterwards, the first line of the poem was its only title.—Ed.