rength![7]

So long as Man fancies that Fortune will live,
Like a bride with her lover, united with Worth;
For her favours, alas! to the mean she will give--
And Virtue possesses no title to earth!
That Foreigner wanders to regions afar,
Where the lands of her birthright immortally are!

So long as Man dreams that, to mortals a gift,
The Truth in her fulness of splendour will shine;
The veil of the goddess no earth-born may lift,
And all we can learn is--to guess and divine!
Dost thou seek, in a dogma, to prison her form?
The spirit flies forth on the wings of the storm!

O, Noble Soul! fly from delusions like these,
More heavenly belief be it thine to adore;
Where the Ear never hearkens, the Eye never sees,
Meet the rivers of Beauty and Truth evermore!
Not _without_ thee the streams--there the Dull seek them;--No!
Look _within_ thee--behold both the fount and the flow!

[7] This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat
obscurely. As Hercules contended in vain against Antaeus, the
Son of Earth,--so long as the Earth gave her giant offspring
new strength in every fall,--so the soul contends in vain with
evil--the natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of
the earth invigorates the enemy for the struggle. And as Antaeus
was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him from the earth and
strangled him while raised aloft, so can the soul slay the
enemy, (the desire, the passion, the evil, the earth's
offspring,) when bearing it from earth itself, and stifling it
in the higher air.

* * * * *

THE WORDS OF BELIEF.

Three Words will I name thee--around and about,
From the lip to the lip, full of meaning, they flee;
But they had not their birth in the being without,
And the heart, not the lip, must their oracle be!
And all worth in the man shall for ever be o'er
When in those Three Words he believes no more.

Man is made FREE!--Man, by birthright, is free,
Though the tyrant may deem him but born for his tool.
Whatever the shout of the rabble may be--
Whatever the ranting misuse of the fool--
Still fear not the Slave, when he breaks from his chain,
For the Man made a Freeman grows safe in his gain.