Of all my seeking this is all my gain:
No agony of any mortal brain
   Shall wrest the secret of the life of man;
The Search has taught me that the Search is vain.

Yet sometimes on a sudden all seems clear—
Hush! hush! my soul, the Secret draweth near;
   Make silence ready for the speech divine—
If Heaven should speak, and there be none to hear!

Yea! sometimes on the instant all seems plain,
The simple sun could tell us, or the rain;
   The world, caught dreaming with a look of heaven,
Seems on a sudden tip-toe to explain.

Like to a maid who exquisitely turns
A promising face to him who, waiting, burns
   In hell to hear her answer— so the world
Tricks all, and hints what no man ever learns.

Now, if a Muse cannot run when she is unfetter’d, ‘tis a sign she has but little speed.

Thus rag’d the goddess; and, with fury fraught,
The restless regions of the storms she sought,
Where, in a spacious cave of living stone,
The tyrant Æolus, from his airy throne,
With pow’r imperial curbs the struggling winds,
And sounding tempests in dark prisons binds.

I hate to see prudence clinging to the green suckers of youth; ‘tis like ivy round a sapling, and spoils the growth of the tree.