And a _God_ there is--a steadfast Will,
However the human shrinketh!
High over space and time He still,
The live Thought, doth what He thinketh;
And though all things keep circling, to change confined,
He keeps, in all changes, a changeless mind.

These three words cherish--of meaning full:
From mouth to mouth send them faring;
For, although they spring from no sect or school,
Your hearts them witness are bearing;
And man is never of worth bereft
While yet he has faith in those three words left.

Three words there are of weighty sound,
And from good men's lips they hail us;
But a tinkling cymbal, a drum's rebound,
For help or for comfort they fail us!
His Life's fruit away he forfeit flings
Who catches after those shadows of things;

Who still believes in a Golden Age,
Where the Right and the Good reign in splendour:
The Right and the Good war ever must wage--
Their foe will never surrender;
And chok'st thou him not in the upper air,
His strength he will still on the earth repair.

Who yet believes that Fortune, the jilt,
To the noble will bind herself ever: