This narrative, my Friend! hath chiefly told Of intellectual power, fostering love, 45 Dispensing truth, and, over men and things, Where reason yet might hesitate, diffusing Prophetic sympathies of genial faith: So was I favoured--such my happy lot-- Until that natural graciousness of mind 50 Gave way to overpressure from the times And their disastrous issues. What availed, When spells forbade the voyager to land, That fragrant notice of a pleasant shore Wafted, at intervals, from many a bower 55 Of blissful gratitude and fearless love? Dare I avow that wish was mine to see, And hope that future times _would_ surely see, The man to come, parted, as by a gulph, From him who had been; that I could no more 60 Trust the elevation which had made me one With the great family that still survives To illuminate the abyss of ages past, Sage, warrior, patriot, hero; for it seemed That their best virtues were not free from taint 65 Of something false and weak, that could not stand The open eye of Reason. Then I said, "Go to the Poets, they will speak to thee More perfectly of purer creatures;--yet If reason be nobility in man, 70 Can aught be more ignoble than the man Whom they delight in, blinded as he is By prejudice, the miserable slave Of low ambition or distempered love?" In such strange passion, if I may once more 75 Review the past, I warred against myself-- A bigot to a new idolatry-- Like a cowled monk who hath forsworn the world, Zealously laboured to cut off my heart From all the sources of her former strength; 80 And as, by simple waving of a wand, The wizard instantaneously dissolves Palace or grove, even so could I unsoul As readily by syllogistic words Those mysteries of being which have made, 85 And shall continue evermore to make, Of the whole human race one brotherhood. What wonder, then, if, to a mind so far Perverted, even the visible Universe Fell under the dominion of a taste 90 Less spiritual, with microscopic view Was scanned, as I had scanned the moral world?