Classic Poem

What is the chain which draws us back again,
And lifts man up unto his first creation?
Nothing in him his own heart can restrain
His reason lives a captive to temptation;
Example is corrupt; precepts are mixed;
All fleshly knowledge frail, and never fixed.

It is a light, a gift, a grace inspired;
A spark of power, a goodness of the Good
Desire in him, that never is desired;
An unity, where desolation stood;
In us, not of us, a Spirit not of earth,
Fashioning the mortal to immortal birth.


Sense of this God, by fear, the sensual have,
Distressed Nature crying unto Grace;
For sovereign reason then becomes a slave,
And yields to servile sense her sovereign place,
When more or other she affects to be
Than seat or shrine of this Eternity.

Yea, Prince of Earth let Man assume to be,
Nay more—of Man let Man himself be God,
Yet without God, a slave of slaves is he;
To others, wonder; to himself, a rod;
Restless despair, desire, and desolation;
The more secure, the more abomination.

Then by affecting power, we cannot know him.
By knowing all things else, we know him less.
Nature contains him not. Art cannot show him.
Opinions idols, and not God, express.
Without, in power, we see him everywhere;
Within, we rest not, till we find him there.

Then seek we must; that course is natural—
For owned souls to find their owner out.
Our free remorses when our natures fall—
When we do well, our hearts made free from doubt—
Prove service due to one Omnipotence,
And Nature of religion to have sense.

Questions again, which in our hearts arise—
Since loving knowledge, not humility—
Though they be curious, godless, and unwise,
Yet prove our nature feels a Deity;
For if these strifes rose out of other grounds,
Man were to God as deafness is to sounds.


Yet in this strife, this natural remorse,
If we could bend the force of power and wit
To work upon the heart, and make divorce
There from the evil, which preventeth it,
In judgment of the truth we should not doubt
Good life would find a good religion out.