With all its devious ways of shame and sin?

What will redeem him from ancestral greeds,

Grey legacies of hate and hoar misdeeds,

Which from the guilty past Man doth inherit—

The past that is bound up with him, and part

Of the pulsations of his inmost heart,

And of the vital motions of his spirit?

Ages mazed in tortuous errors,

Ghostly fears, and haunting terrors,

Minds bewitched that served as mirrors

For the foulest fancies bred

In a fasting hermit's head,

[49]

Such as cast a sickly blight

On all shapes of life and light.

Yea, panting and pursued and stung and driven,

The soul of Man flies on in deep distress,

As once across the world's harsh wilderness

Latona fled, chased by the Queen of heaven;

Flying across the homeless Universe

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