As little as informs an infant’s fist
     Clenched at the sneeze!  Thou wouldst but have us be
     Good sons of mother soil, whereby to grow
     Branching on fairer skies, one stately tree;
     Broad of the tilth for flowering at the Court: 
     Which is the tree bound fast to wave its tress;
     Of strength controlled sheer beauty to bestow. 
     Ambrosial heights of possible acquist,
     Where souls of men with soul of man consort,
     And all look higher to new loveliness
     Begotten of the look:  thy mark is there;
     While on our temporal ground alive,
     Rightly though fearfully thou wieldest sword
     Of finer temper now a numbered learn
     That they resisting thee themselves resist;
     And not thy bigger joy to smite and drive,
     Prompt the dense herd to butt, and set the snare
     Witching them into pitfalls for hoarse shouts. 
     More now, and hourly more, and of the Lord
     Thou lead’st to, doth this rebel heart discern,
     When pinched ascetic and red sensualist
     Alternately recurrent freeze or burn,
     And of its old religions it has doubts. 
     It fears thee less when thou hast shown it bare;
     Less hates, part understands, nor much resents,
     When the prized objects it has raised for prayer,
     For fitful prayer;—­repentance dreading fire,
     Impelled by aches; the blindness which repents
     Like the poor trampled worm that writhes in mire; —
     Are sounded by thee, and thou darest probe
     Old institutions and establishments,
     Once fortresses against the floods of sin,
     For what their worth; and questioningly prod
     For why they stand upon a racing globe,
     Impeding blocks, less useful than the clod;
     Their angel out of them, a demon in.

     This half-enlightened heart, still doomed to fret,
     To hurl at vanities, to drift in shame
     Of gain or loss, bewailing the sure rod,
     Shall of predestination wed thee yet. 
     Something it gathers of what things should drop
     At entrance on new times; of how thrice broad
     The world of minds communicative; how
     A straggling Nature classed in school, and scored
     With stripes admonishing, may yield to plough
     Fruitfullest furrows, nor for waxing tame
     Be feeble on an Earth whose gentler crop
     Is its most living, in the mind that steers,
     By Reason led, her way of tree and flame,
     Beyond the genuflexions and the tears;
     Upon an Earth that cannot stop,
     Where upward is the visible aim,
     And ever we espy the greater God,
     For simple pointing at a good adored: 
     Proof of the closer neighbourhood.  Head on,
     Sword of the many, light of the few! untwist
     Or cut our tangles till fair space is won
     Beyond a briared wood