In Godhead rise, thither flow back All loves, which, as they keep or lack. In their return, the course assign'd, Are virtue or sin. Love's every kind. Lofty or low, of spirit or sense, Desire is, or benevolence. He who is fairer, better, higher Than all His works, claims all desire, And in His Poor, His Proxies, asks Our whole benevolence: He tasks, Howbeit, His People by their powers; And if, my Children, you, for hours, Daily, untortur'd in the heart, Can worship, and time's other part Give, without rough recoils of sense, To the claims ingrate of indigence, Happy are you, and fit to be Wrought to rare heights of sanctity, For the humble to grow humbler at. But if the flying spirit falls flat, After the modest spell of prayer That saves the day from sin and care, And the upward eye a void descries, And praises are hypocrisies, And, in the soul, o'erstrain'd for grace, A godless anguish grows apace; Or, if impartial charity Seems, in the act, a sordid lie, Do not infer you cannot please God, or that He His promises Postpones, but be content to love No more than He accounts enough. Account them poor enough who want Any good thing which you can grant; And fathom well the depths of life In loves of Husband and of Wife, Child, Mother, Father; simple keys To what cold faith calls mysteries. 3 The love of marriage claims, above All other kinds, the name of love, As perfectest, though not so high As love which Heaven with single eye Considers. Equal and entire, Therein benevolence, desire, Elsewhere ill-join'd or found apart, Become the pulses of one heart, Which now contracts, and now dilates, And, both to the height exalting, mates Self-seeking to self-sacrifice. Nay, in its subtle paradise (When purest) this one love unites All modes of these two opposites, All balanced in accord so rich Who may determine which is which? Chiefly God's Love does in it live, And nowhere else so sensitive; For each is all that the other's eye, In the vague vast of Deity, Can comprehend and so contain As still to touch and ne'er to strain The fragile nerves of joy. And then 'Tis such a wise goodwill to men And politic economy As in a prosperous State we see, Where every plot of common land Is yielded to some private hand To fence about and cultivate. Does narrowness its praise abate? Nay, the infinite of man is found But in the beating of its bound, And, if a brook its banks o'erpass, 'Tis not a sea, but a morass. 4