Thus I my hope on unknown truth lay; yet
How but by hope do I the unknown truth get?
XXXII.
When I have sense of what to sense appears,
Sense is sense ere 'tis mine or mine in me is.
When I hear, Hearing, ere I do hear, hears.
When I see, before me abstract Seeing sees.
I am part Soul part I in all I touch--
Soul by that part I hold in common with all,
And I the spoiled part, that doth make sense such
As I can err by it and my sense mine call.
The rest is wondering what these thoughts may mean,
That come to explain and suddenly are gone,
Like messengers that mock the message' mien,
Explaining all but the explanation;
As if we a ciphered letter's cipher hit
And find it in an unknown language writ.
XXXIII.
He that goes back does, since he goes, advance,
Though he doth not advance who goeth back,
And he that seeks, though he on nothing chance,
May still by words be said to find a lack.
This paradox of having, that is nought
In the world's meaning of the things it screens,
Is yet true of the substance of pure thought
And there means something by the nought it means.
For thinking nought does on nought being confer,
As giving not is acting not to give,
And, to the same unbribed true thought, to err
Is to find truth, though by its negative.
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