_The Elixir_ was an imagined liquid sought by the old physical
investigators, in order that by its means they might turn every common
metal into gold, a pursuit not quite so absurd as it has since appeared.
They called this something, when regarded as a solid, _the Philosopher's
Stone_. In the poem it is also called a _tincture_.
THE ELIXIR.
Teach me, my God and King,
In all things thee to see;
And what I do in anything,
To do it as for thee;
Not rudely, as a beast,
To run into an action;
But still to make thee prepossest,
And give it his perfection. _its._
A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye;
Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heaven spy.
All may of thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture--_for thy sake_-- _its._
Will not grow bright and clean.
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.
This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.
With a conscience tender as a child's, almost diseased in its tenderness,
and a heart loving as a woman's, his intellect is none the less powerful.
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