1. Happy the feet that shining truth has led
With her own hand to tread the path she please,
To see her native luster round her spread,
Without a veil, without a shade,
All beauty and all light, as in herself she is.
2. Our senses cheat us with the pressing crowds
Of painted shapes they thrust upon the mind:
The truth they show lies wrapped in sevenfold shrouds;
Our senses cast a thousand clouds
On unenlightened souls, and leave them doubly blind.
3. I hate the dust that fierce disputers raise,
And lose the mind in a wild maze of thought:
What empty triflings, and what subtle ways,
To fence and guard my rule and rote!
Our God will never charge us, That we know them not.
4. Touch, heavenly Word, O touch these curious souls;
Since I have heard but one soft hint from thee,
From all the vain opinions of the schools
(That pageantry of knowing fools)
I feel my powers released, and stand divinely free.
5. 'Twas this almighty Word that all things made:
He grasps whole nature in his single hand;
All the eternal truths in him are laid;
The ground of all things, and their head;
The circle where they move, and center where they stand.
6. Without his aid I have no sure defense
From troops of errors that besiege me round;
But he that rests his reason and his sense
Fast here, and never wanders hence,
Unmovable he dwells upon unshaken ground.
7. Infinite Truth, the life of my desires,
Come from the sky, and join thyself to me;
I'm tired with hearing, and this reading tires;
But never tired of telling thee,
'Tis thy fair face alone my spirit burns to see.
8. Speak to my soul, alone, no other hand
Shall mark my path out with delusive art:
All nature silent in his presence stand;
Creatures, be dumb at his command,
And leave his single voice to whisper to my heart.
9. Retire, my soul, within thyself retire,
Away from sense and every outward show:
Now let my thoughts to loftier themes aspire;
My knowledge now on wheels of fire
May mount and spread above, surveying all below.
10. The Lord grows lavish of his heavenly light,
And pours whole floods on such a mind as this;
Fled from the eyes she gains a piercing fight;
She dives into the infinite,
And sees unutterable things in that unknown abyss.
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