In Phoebus' world, in knowledge as in song,
All things are bright. Bright beams the radiant sun;
Clear runs and pure his bright Castalian fountain.
Whate'er thou canst not clearly say thou know'st not.
Twin-born with thought is word on lips of man;
That which is darkly said is darkly thought;
For wisdom true is like the diamond,
A drop that's petrified of heavenly light;
The purer that it is, the more its value,
The more the daylight shines and glitters through it.
The ancients builded unto Truth a temple,
A fair rotunda, light as heaven's vault.
And freely poured the sunshine from all sides
Into its open round; the winds of heaven
Amid its ranks of pillars gayly gambolled.
But now instead we build a Tower of Babel,
A heavy, barbarous structure. Darkness peeps
From out its deep and narrow grated casements.
Unto the sky the tower was meant to reach,
But hitherto we've only had confusion.
As in the realm of thought, in that of song
It is; and poesy is e'er transparent .
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