The secret how each virtue might be gained; Who, to receive him back more perfect still, E'en into strangers' arms her favorite gave—    Oh, may'st thou never with degenerate will, Humble thyself to be her abject slave! In industry, the bee the palm may bear; In skill, the worm a lesson may impart; With spirits blest thy knowledge thou dost share, But thou, O man, alone hast art! Only through beauty's morning gate Didst thou the land of knowledge find. To merit a more glorious fate, In graces trains itself the mind. What thrilled thee through with trembling blessed, When erst the Muses swept the chord, That power created in thy breast,     Which to the mighty spirit soared. When first was seen by doting reason's ken, When many a thousand years had passed away, A symbol of the fair and great e'en then, Before the childlike mind uncovered lay. Its blessed form bade us honor virtue's cause,—     The honest sense 'gainst vice put forth its powers, Before a Solon had devised the laws That slowly bring to light their languid flowers. Before Eternity's vast scheme Was to the thinker's mind revealed, Was't not foreshadowed in his dream, Whose eyes explored yon starry field? Urania,—the majestic dreaded one, Who wears a glory of Orions twined Around her brow, and who is seen by none     Save purest spirits, when, in splendor shrined, She soars above the stars in pride, Ascending to her sunny throne,—    Her fiery chaplet lays aside, And now, as beauty, stands alone; While, with the Graces' girdle round her cast, She seems a child, by children understood; For we shall recognize as truth at last, What here as beauty only we have viewed. When the Creator banished from his sight Frail man to dark mortality's abode, And granted him a late return to light, Only by treading reason's arduous road,—    When each immortal turned his face away, She, the compassionate, alone Took up her dwelling in that house of clay, With the deserted, banished one. With drooping wing she hovers here Around her darling, near the senses' land, And on his prison-walls so drear Elysium paints with fond deceptive hand. While soft humanity still lay at rest, Within her tender arms extended, No flame was stirred by bigots' murderous zest, No guiltless blood on high ascended. The heart that she in gentle fetters binds, Views duty's slavish escort scornfully; Her path of light, though fairer far it winds, Sinks in the sun-track of morality. Those who in her chaste service still remain, No grovelling thought can tempt, no fate affright; The spiritual life, so free from stain, Freedom's sweet 

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