For they are Powers; and hence the highest bliss
  That flesh can know is theirs—­the consciousness
  Of Whom they are, habitually infused 115
  Through every image and through every thought,
  And all affections by communion raised
  From earth to heaven, from human to divine;
  Hence endless occupation for the Soul,
  Whether discursive or intuitive; [C] 120
  Hence cheerfulness for acts of daily life,
  Emotions which best foresight need not fear,
  Most worthy then of trust when most intense
  Hence, amid ills that vex and wrongs that crush
  Our hearts—­if here the words of Holy Writ 125
  May with fit reverence be applied—­that peace
  Which passeth understanding, that repose
  In moral judgments which from this pure source
  Must come, or will by man be sought in vain.

    Oh! who is he that hath his whole life long 130
  Preserved, enlarged, this freedom in himself? 
  For this alone is genuine liberty: 
  Where is the favoured being who hath held
  That course unchecked, unerring, and untired,
  In one perpetual progress smooth and bright?—­135
  A humbler destiny have we retraced,
  And told of lapse and hesitating choice,
  And backward wanderings along thorny ways: 
  Yet—­compassed round by mountain solitudes,
  Within whose solemn temple I received 140
  My earliest visitations, careless then
  Of what was given me; and which now I range,
  A meditative, oft a suffering man—­
  Do I declare—­in accents which, from truth
  Deriving cheerful confidence, shall blend 145
  Their modulation with these vocal streams—­
  That, whatsoever falls my better mind,
  Revolving with the accidents of life,
  May have sustained, that, howsoe’er misled,
  Never did I, in quest of right and wrong, 150
  Tamper with conscience from a private aim;
  Nor was in any public hope the dupe
  Of selfish passions; nor did ever yield
  Wilfully to mean cares or low pursuits,
  But shrunk with apprehensive jealousy 155
  From every combination which might aid
  The tendency, too potent in itself,
  Of use and custom to bow down the soul
  Under a growing weight of vulgar sense,
  And substitute a universe of death 160
  For that which moves with light and life informed,
  Actual, divine, and true.  To fear and love,
  To love as prime and chief, for there fear ends,
  Be this ascribed; to early intercourse,
  In presence of sublime or beautiful forms, 165
  With the adverse principles of pain and joy—­
  Evil, as one is rashly named by men
  Who know not what they speak.  By