“ An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk : from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

“He dried his wings : like gauze they grew : Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew A living flash of light he flew."

I said, “ When first the world began,
Young Nature thro' five cycles ran,
And in the sixth she moulded man.

“She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and, above the rest, Dominion in the head and breast.”

Thereto the silent voice replied ; “ Self-blinded are you by your pride : Look up thro' night : the world is wide.

“ This truth within thy mind rehearse,
That in a boundless universe
Is boundless better, boundless worse.

“ Think you this mould of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres ?”

It spake, moreover, in my mind :
“ Tho' thou wert scatter'd to the wind,
Yet is there plenty of the kind."

Then did my response clearer fall : “No compound of this earthly ball Is like another, all in all.”

To which he answer'd scoffingly ; “Good soul ! suppose I grant it thee, Who'll weep for thy deficiency ?

“ Or will one beam be less intense,
When thy peculiar difference
Is cancell'd in the world of sense ?”

I would have said, “ Thou canst not know,"
But my full heart, that work'd below,
Rain'd thro' my sight its overflow.

Again the voice spake unto me : “ Thou art so steep'd in misery, Surely 'twere better not to be.

“ Thine anguish will not let thee sleep, Nor any train of reason keep : Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep."

I said, “ The years with change advance :
If I make dark my countenance,
I shut my life from happier chance.

“Some turn this sickness yet might take, Ev'n yet.” But he: “ What drug can make A wither'd palsy cease to shake ? ”

I wept, “ Tho' I should die, I know
That all about the thorn will blow
In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;

“ And men, thro' novel spheres of thought Still moving after truth long sought, Will learn new things when I am not.”

“ Yet,” said the secret voice, “ some time, Sooner or later, will gray prime Make thy grass hoar with early rime.

“Not less swift souls that yearn for light, Rapt after heaven's starry flight, Would sweep the tracts of day and night.

“ Not less the bee would range her cells, The furzy prickle fire the dells, The foxglove cluster dappled bells.”

I said that “all the years invent;
Each month is various to present
The world with some development.

“Were this not well, to bide mine hour, Tho' watching from a ruin’d tower How grows the day of human power ?”

“ The highest-mounted mind,” he said, “Still sees the sacred morning spread The silent summit overhead.

“Will thirty seasons render plain Those lonely lights that still remain, Just breaking over land and main ?