Written in Butler's Sermons
Affections, Instincts, Principles, and Powers,
Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control—
So men, unravelling God’s harmonious whole,
Rend in a thousand shreds this life of ours.
Vain labour! Deep and broad, where none may see,
Spring the foundations of that shadowy throne
Where man’s one nature, queen-like, sits alone,
Centred in a majestic unity;
And rays her powers, like sister-islands seen
Linking their coral arms under the sea,
Or cluster’d peaks with plunging gulfs between
Spann’d by aerial arches all of gold,
Whereo’er the chariot wheels of life are roll’d
In cloudy circles to eternity.
