"To-day's brief passion limits their range;
It seethes with the morrow for us and more.
They are perfect--how else? They shall never change:
We are faulty--why not? We have time in store."[B]

[Footnote B: _Old Pictures in Florence_.]

Prior to the period when a sceptical philosophy came down like a blight,
and destroyed the bloom of his art and faith, he thus recognized that
growing knowledge was an essential condition of growing goodness.
Pompilia shone with a glory that mere knowledge could not give (if there
were such a thing as _mere_ knowledge).

"Everywhere
I see in the world the intellect of man,
That sword, the energy his subtle spear,
The knowledge which defends him like a shield--
Everywhere; but they make not up, I think,
The marvel of a soul like thine, earth's flower
She holds up to the softened gaze of God."[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1013-1019.]

But yet she recognized with patient pain the loss she had sustained for
want of knowledge.

"The saints must bear with me, impute the fault
To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance,
Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year
Nor recognize the orb which Spring-flowers know."[B]