There is a pleasing dread in the fashion of all mysteries, For hope is mixed therein and fear; who shall divine their issues? Even the orphan, wandering by night, lost on dreary moors, Is sensible of some vague bliss amidst his shapeless terrors; The buoyancy of instant expectation, spurring on the mind to venture, Overbeareth, in its energy, the cramp and the chill of apprehension. There is a solitary pride, when the heart, in new importance, Writeth gladly on its archives, the secrets none other men have seen: And there is a caged terror, evermore wrestling with the mind, When crime hath whispered his confession, and the secrets are written there in blood: The village maiden is elated at the tenderly confided tale: The bandit's wife with sickening fear guessed the premeditated murder: The sage, with triumph on his brow, hideth up his deep discovery; The idlest clown shall delve all day, to find a hidden treasure. For mystery is man's life; we wake to the whisperings of novelty: And what, though we lie down disappointed? we sleep, to wake in hope. The letter, or the news, the chances and the changes, matters that may happen, Sweeten or embitter daily life with the honey-gall of mystery. For we walk blindfold,--and a minute may be much,--a step may reach the precipice; What earthly loss, what heavenly gain, may not this day produce? Levelled of Alps and Andes, without its valleys and ravines, How dull the face of earth, unfeatured of both beauty and sublimity: And so, shorn of mystery, beggared in its hopes and fears, How flat the prospect of existence, mapped by intuitive foreknowledge. Praise God, creature of earth, for the mercies linked with secresy, That spices of uncertainty enrich the cup of life; Praise God, His hosts on high, for the mysteries that make all joy; What were intelligence with nothing more to learn, or heaven, in eternity of sameness? To number every mystery were to sum the sum of all things: None can exhaust a theme, whereof God is example and similitude. Nevertheless, take a garland from the garden, a handful from the harvest, Some scattered drops of spray from the ceaseless mighty cataract. Whence are we,--whither do we tend,--how do we feel, and reason? How strange a thing is man, a spirit saturating clay! When doth soul make embryos immortal,--how do they rank hereafter,-- And will the unconscious idiot be quenched in death as nothing? In essence immaterial, are these minds, as it were, thinking machines? For, to understand may but rightly be to use a mechanism all possess, So that in reading or hearing of another, a man shall seem unto himself To be recollecting images or arguments, native and congenial to his mind: And yet, what shall we say,--who can arede the riddle? The brain may be clockwork, and mind its spring, mechanism quickened by a spirit.