Vignettes in Verse
neglect, Causing increas'd disquietude and care, Might, by increased disquietude and care, Open the grave for him who gave thee birth! How often and how warmly did'st thou ask, With epithets of fondness, how I dar'd Imagine such a horror, and to one Present, who would have died, or borne extremes Of any hard endurance, not to give The slightest anguish to a parent's breast! Alas! the cruel rashness of reproof—             The busy vigilance of human pride—             Like a too eager partizan, may strike, To ward off danger from his chieftain's head,             A fellow soldier zealous in the cause!           

                        

             As of this world, this visible, wide world, This earth, with all its forests, all its plants, All its deep mines, its rivers, and its seas, Yea! all that breathes, and moves, and clings to life By any subtler impulse, which eludes Our blunted observation:—as of this, All that appears and all that is, so much Remains, in scorn of science, unexplor'd; So, in the not less wond'rous moral world,             The innermost recesses of the mind, We see as little; save, Phoenician like, By petty trade and parley on its coasts, Talk by interpreters, impatient guess, Or careless resting in incertitude, At meanings in a tongue almost unknown; Or so corrupted by this intercourse, That all its native harmony is lost, Its irresistible persuasions o'er! The clearness and the sweetness of its tones, Its loftiness, simplicity and truth.           

                        

             All that we hear is coarse and limited, And yet we sail along and search no more, And look no farther, though the ear is pall'd With the vile din of tame monotony, The taste perverted, judgment led astray, By soul-annihilating idleness, By universal, strengthless poverty, Which leans upon its neighbour for support, And lifts the eye for sanction, or assent, To weakness still more helpless than its own!           

                        

             Two thousand years the sanctuary's veil           


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