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.
If a fair proportion of it were equal to this, the poem would be a fine
one, not for its poetry, but for its spiritual metaphysics. I think the
fourth and fifth of the stanzas I have given, profound in truth, and
excellent in utterance.
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