If Nature put not forth her power About the opening of the flower, Who is it that could live an hour?
His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.
Man’s word is God in man.
From yon blue heaven above us bent, The grand old gardener and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent.
My mind is clouded with a doubt.
But what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.
Here at the quiet limit of the world.
Oh good gray head which all men knew!
For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.
For now the poet cannot die, Nor leave his music as of old, But round him ere he scarce be cold Begins the scandal and the cry.
Faith lives in honest doubt.
Yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away.
Current among men, Like coin, the tinsel clink of compliment.
Though thou wert scattered to the wind, Yet is there plenty of the kind.
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.
And statesmen at her council met Who knew the seasons, when to take Occasion by the hand, and make The bounds of freedom wider yet.
This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse.
That tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew.
Nor is it wiser to weep a true occasion lost, but trim our sails, and let old bygones be.