Blessed are they that have not seen!

by Arthur Hugh Clough

O happy they whose hearts receive
The implanted word with faith; believe
Because their fathers did before,
Because they learnt, and ask no more
High triumphs of convictions wrought,
And won by individual thought.
The joy, delusive oft, but keen,
Of having with our own eyes seen,
What if they have not felt nor known?
An amplitude instead they own,
By no self-binding ordinance prest
To toil in labour they detest:
By no deceiving reasoning tied
Or this or that way to decide.

O happy they! above their head
The glory of the unseen is spread;
Their happy heart is free to range
Thro’ largest tracts of pleasant change;
Their intellects encradled lie
In boundless possibility.
For impulses of varying kinds
The Ancient Home a lodging finds
Each appetite our nature breeds,
It meets with viands for its needs.

O happy they! nor need they fear
The wordy strife that rages near:
All reason wastes by day, and more,
Will instinct in a night restore.
O happy, so their state but give
A clue by which a man can live;
O blest, unless ’tis proved by fact
A dream impossible to act.