Hold it up sternly--see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?) Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step, Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, Words babble, hearing and touch callous, No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex; Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, Such a result so soon--and from such a beginning! Gods Lover divine and perfect Comrade, Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain, Be thou my God. Thou, thou, the Ideal Man, Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving, Complete in body and dilate in spirit, Be thou my God. O Death, (for Life has served its turn,) Opener and usher to the heavenly mansion, Be thou my God. Aught, aught of mightiest, best I see, conceive, or know, (To break the stagnant tie--thee, thee to free, O soul,) Be thou my God. All great ideas, the races’ aspirations, All heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts, Be ye my Gods. Or Time and Space, Or shape of Earth divine and wondrous, Or some fair shape I viewing, worship, Or lustrous orb of sun or star by night, Be ye my Gods. Germs Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts, The ones known, and the ones unknown, the ones on the stars, The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped, Wonders as of those countries, the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants, whatever they may be, Splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations and effects, Such-like, and as good as such-like, visible here or anywhere, stand provided for a handful of space, which I extend my arm and half enclose with my hand, That containing the start of each and all, the virtue, the germs of all. Thoughts Of ownership--as if one fit to own things could not at pleasure enter upon all, and incorporate them into himself or herself; Of vista--suppose some sight in arriere through the formative chaos, presuming the growth, fulness, life, now attain’d on the journey, (But I see the road continued, and the journey ever continued;) Of what was once lacking on earth, and in due time has become supplied--and of what will yet be supplied, Because all I see and know I believe to have its main purport in what will yet be supplied. When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer