The goal is ever; all things tend; Faiths must waver; Love shall mend; Never issue come to rest-- Earthen course, or starry span, Will of God, or heart of man-- Pillowed not upon His breast. GREATNESS. O, thou, the fierce englamored, Hence, at never cease, invoked of man, Who, in the vast procession of the sybil days, Holds up the light he fain would follow, but may not conceive; Whose boundless charter and whose nameless goal outpasseth Time:-- Hast thou, on sufferance of thy liege, the Truth The Same, unwearied on whose fiat waits the mutinous Dark, Whose breath, withal, fans bright the spheres, Concords the music of their millioned primes; Whose utter Essence, tho' in substance clad, Yon skies contain not, tho' the heart may hold:-- Hast thou, the warrant winked-at, yet the trust, supreme, On behalf of privilege that might all beseech-- Some love past limit, save its ever self-- Hast thou, thus, wandered from those shores afar, Thy starry synods and the hosting lights, To meet thine image in these mortal ways, So fangled, paltried, and so bitter small-- Thine mighty image, which no shadow frets-- Such slave to glozing aspect and rude things of Here, So pent in durance to the marble law, whose nurse are grim coercion and the bloody hand? But, shalt thou not change it, till its lines enlarge, False take-offs dwindle, and their craft stand out, Nor mate vain-glory for vile thrift of both, And fierce engendering of their dwarfish breed? Shalt thou not change it, let Fame's note come true; For her brazen trumpet the small silvery flute, Which draws its heart-strains from the pith of Just, And winds accordant with the patient soul? Shall its gloried flame not whiter burn, The snuff and dross attract no more, Set lurid off thy streaming torch, Whose glow and essence than the sun-paths fed, Outpeers the lustre of their myriad fount, The solemn, fiery-bearing, the uncompassed Night? Yea, shalt thou not change it, bid thine features grow, The lines more matching, scope and plan more true, Dispel refraction and all hemming False, Which, girt with mortal tribulation, hang Their warping shadows twixt the Light and thee? Shall Great be greater not, tho' it lowly comes, The reward o'ertook not ere the Right say well? Shalt thou sink hellward not the sorry law, Which bids rude Strength--be it brain, or brawn's-- Sit, lofty scorning, by the counseling heart, So unaccompanied place its monstrous tribute at vain Feet of pride, and brutish idols of the adoring sense, On specious plea of covetous ambition--all its rage to have and wield-- Give wage to sorrow than be frankly served By lasting wisdom and the patient hope, While Policy and Smug Expedience wink Fresh Cues at all?