That problem which concerns me most—about
Which I have entertained the gravest doubt—
Is, bluntly stated, ‘Have I got a soul?’
And, soulhood granted, while millenniums roll,
Will it inhabit some congenial clime,
Detached from thoughts indigenous to Time,—
Anonymous in what we name ‘the Whole’?

‘O Soul, consider what you are,’ I say;
‘How seldom you exert your white authority
On the bemused and sense-instructed way
In which your apparatus spends his day:
Regard the overwhelming mob-majority
Of mundane apprehensions which compose
One week-day of what Ego feels and knows.’
…

Souls have their Sunday morning, belled and bright;
And in the night they move in landless light
(Skulls thus affirm their legend.) Souls arise
Through flames of martyrdom, absolved and wise,
And those who moved in gloom regain their sight.

‘The starry heavens above me,’ someone said,
‘And the moral law within me, these are things
Which fill my mind with admiration.’ . . . Head
And heart, thus prompted, feel aware of wings
And soaring Gothic-aisled imaginings . . .
Soul, will you feel like that when I am dead?