Unto what pinnacles of desperate heights
  Do good men climb to seize their good!
  What abnegation to all mortal joys,
  What vast abstraction from the world is theirs!
  O what insane abuses, desperate pangs,
  Annihilations of the Self, soul-suicides,
  They wreak upon themselves to purchase---God!
  A God to guide through these poor temporal days
  Their comings, goings, workings of the heart,
  Obsess, indeed, their natures utterly;
  Meanwhile preparing, as in recompense,
  Mansions celestial for their timeless bliss.
  And to what end this Holiness; this God
  That arrogates their intellect and soul?
  To none! Their offered lives are not so grand,
  So active, or so sweet as many a one's
  That is undedicate, being reason-swayed;
  And their sole mission is to drag, entice
  And push mankind to those same cloudy crags
  Where they first breathed the madness-giving air
  That made them feel as angels, that are less than men.