Thomas Hardy - To Sincerity lyrics

O sweet sincerity! - Where modern methods be What scope for thine and thee? Life may be sad past saying, Its greens for ever graying, Its faiths to dust decaying; And youth may have foreknown it, And riper seasons shown it, But custom cries: "Disown it: "Say ye rejoice, though grieving, Believe, while unbelieving, Behold, without perceiving!" - Yet, would men look at true things, And unilluded view things, And count to bear undue things, The real might mend the seeming, Facts better their foredeeming, And Life its disesteeming.