How ardently for it! How many ships have sail’d and sunk for it! How many travelers started from their homes and ne’er return’d! How much of genius boldly staked and lost for it! What countless stores of beauty, love, ventur’d for it! How all superbest deeds since Time began are traceable to it⁠—and shall be to the end! How all heroic martyrdoms to it! How, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the earth! How the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every age and land, have drawn men’s eyes, Rich as a sunset on the Norway coast, the sky, the islands, and the cliffs, Or midnight’s silent glowing northern lights unreachable.

Haply God’s riddle it, so vague and yet so certain, The soul for it, and all the visible universe for it, And heaven at last for it.