Blessed are they that have not seen!

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.