Abject of sinners is that sensitive, The flesh, amenable to stripes, miscalled Incorrigible: such title do we give To the poor shrinking stuff wherewith we are walled; And, taking it for Nature, place in ban Our Mother, as a Power wanton-willed, The shame and baffler of the soul of man, The recreant, reptilious. Do thou build Thy mind on her foundations in earth’s bed; Behold man’s mind the child of her keen rod, For teaching how the wits and passions wed To rear that temple of the credible God; Sacred the letters of her laws, and plain, Will shine, to guide thy feet and hold thee firm: Then, as a pathway through a field of grain, Man’s laws appear the blind progressive worm, That moves by touch, and thrust of linking rings The which to endow with vision, lift from mud To level of their nature’s aims and springs, Must those, the twain beside our vital flood, Now on opposing banks, the twain at strife (Whom the so rosy ferryman invites To junction, and mid-channel over Life, Unmasked to the ghostly, much asunder smites) Instruct in deeper than Convenience, In higher than the harvest of a year. Only the rooted knowledge to high sense Of heavenly can mount, and feel the spur For fruitfullest advancement, eye a mark Beyond the path with grain on either hand, Help to the steering of our social Ark Over the barbarous waters unto land. For us the double conscience and its war, The serving of two masters, false to both, Until those twain, who spring the root and are The knowledge in division, plight a troth Of equal hands: nor longer circulate A pious token for their current coin, To growl at the exchange; they, mate and mate, Fair feminine and masculine shall join Upon an upper plane, still common mould, Where stamped religion and reflective pace A statelier measure, and the hoop of gold Rounds to horizon for their soul’s embrace. Then shall those noblest of the earth and sun Inmix unlike to waves on savage sea. But not till Nature’s laws and man’s are one, Can marriage of the man and woman be. V He passed her through the sermon’s dull defile. Down under billowy vapour-gorges heaved The city and the vale and mountain-pile. She felt strange push of shuttle-threads that weaved. A new land in an old beneath her lay; And forth to meet it did her spirit rush, As bride who without shame has come to say, Husband, in his dear face that caused her blush.