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Through meaner powers and secondary things
Effulgent, as through clouds that veil his blaze.
For all that meets the bodily sense I deem
Symbolical, one mighty alphabet
For infant minds; and we in this low world
Placed with our backs to bright Reality,
That we may learn with young unwounded ken
The substance from its shadow. Infinite Love,
Whose Latence is the plenitude of All,
Thou with retracted Beams, and Self-eclipse
Veiling revealest thy eternal Sun.[errata 1])
But some there are who deem themselves most free
When they within this gross and visible sphere
Chain down the winged thought, scoffing ascent
Proud in their meanness: and themselves they cheat
With noisy emptiness of learned phrase,
Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences,
Self-working tools, uncaused effects, and all
Those blind Omniscients, those Almighty Slaves,
Untenanting creation of its God.
But properties are God: the naked mass
(If mass there be, fantastic Guess or Ghost)
Acts only by its inactivity.
Here we pause humbly. Others boldlier think
That as one body seems the aggregate
Errata
