How loathing’s germ is longing, grief wooes joy,
’Tis but a comment on the hurrying world;
Man knows such shiftings and is only coy
To match them to the stage, whereon he’s hurl’d:
But thou, immutable substance of all beauty,
Shalt yet defeat the purpose of this change,
Shalt purge the essence of its vestment sooty,
And guide its explorations quick and strange;
Thou shalt inhabit and invest a soul,
Whose myriad, intricate voices know one tone;
And I, where’er wavers my wintry pole,
Shall hail that music’s influence as my own:
All Beauty, and all Love radiate from thee,
Thou centre of my soul’s full harmony.