Page:What cheer, or, Roger Williams in banishment (1896).pdf/165

 XXXII.

"God gave man reason, that his soul might be Free as his glance that spans the universe; All things around him prompt inquiry free,  All do his reason to research coerce; The Heavens, the Earth, the many breeding sea,  All have their shapes and qualities to nurse The soul's aspirings, and, from blooming youth To ripe old age, provoke the quest of truth.

XXXIII.

"Truth! I would know thee wert thou e'er so bad, Bad as thy persecutors deem or fear, Wert thou in more than Gorgon terrors clad,  Thy glance a death to every feeling dear; Taught thou that God a demon's passions had,  That Earth is Hell, and that the damned dwell here, And death the end of all;—still would I know The total Curse—the sum of being's woe.

XXXIV.

"Yet fear not this, for each new truth reveals Of God a nearer and a brighter view; Anticipation lags behind, and feels  How mean her thought at each discovery new; Her stars were stones fired in revolving wheels—  Truth! thine are worlds self-moved the boundless through Who checks man's Reason in her heavenward flight, Would shroud, O God! thy glorious works in night!

XXXV.

"Whence didst thou learn that the Almighty's plan Required thy wisdom to protect and save, That, when he sent his Gospel down to man,  Thou to defend it must the soul enslave,