[Lyric] Seven Sonnets IV (Arthur Hugh Clough)

But if, as (not by what the soul desired
Swayed in the judgment) wisest men have thought,
And (furnishing the evidence it sought)
Man's heart hath ever fervently required,
And story, for that reason deemed inspired,
To every clime, in every age, hath taught;
If in this human complex there be aught
Not lost in death, as not in birth acquired,
O then, though cold the lips that did convey
Rich freights of meaning, dead each living sphere
Where thought abode and fancy loved to play,
Thou, yet we think, somewhere somehow still art,
And satisfied with that the patient heart
The where and how doth not desire to hear.