Extract from Prometheus

Our thoughts are boundless, though our frames are frail,
Our souls immortal, though our limbs decay;
Though darken'd in this poor life by a veil
Of suffering, dying matter, we shall play
In truth's eternal sunbeams; on the way
To heaven's high capitol our cars shall roll;
The temple of the Power whom all obey,
That is the mark we tend to, for the soul
Can take no lower flight, and seek no meaner goal.
I feel it — though the flesh is weak, I feel
The spirit has its energies untamed
By all its fatal wanderings; time may heal
The wounds which it has suffer'd; folly claim'd
Too large a portion of its youth; ashamed
Of those low pleasures, it would leap and fly,
And soar on wings of lightning, like the famed
Elijah, when the chariot, rushing by,
Bore him with steeds of fire triumphant to the sky.
We are as barks afloat upon the sea,
Helmless and oarless, when the light has fled,
The spirit, whose strong influence can free
The drowsy soul, that slumbers in the dead
Cold night of mortal darkness; from the bed
Of sloth he rouses at her sacred call,
And, kindling in the blaze around him shed,
Rends with strong effort sin's debasing thrall,
And gives to God his strength, his heart, his mind, his all.
Our home is not on earth; although we sleep,
And sink in seeming death a while, yet, then,
The awakening voice speaks loudly, and we leap
To life, and energy, and light, again;
We cannot slumber always in the den
Of sense and selfishness; the day will break,
Ere we forever leave the haunts of men;
Even at the parting hour the soul will wake,
Nor, like a senseless brute, its unknown journey take.
How awful is that hour, when conscience stings
The hoary wretch, who, on his death-bed hears,
Deep in his soul, the thundering voice that rings,
In one dark, damning moment, crimes of years,
And, screaming like a vulture in his ears,
Tells, one by one, his thoughts and deeds of shame,
How wild the fury of his soul careers!
His swart eye flashes with intensest flame,
And like the torture's rack the wrestling of his frame.