Claiming as prize the woof of price—for why?
The Master was a thief, purloined the same,
Or paid for it out of the common bag! (1530)
Can it be this is end and outcome, all
I take with me to show as stewardship’s fruit,
The best yield of the latest time, this year
The seventeen-hundredth since God died for man?
Is such effect proportionate to cause?
And still the terror keeps on the increase
When I perceive…how can I blink the fact?
That the fault, the obduracy to good,
Lies not with the impracticable stuff
Whence man is made, his very nature’s fault, (1540)
As if it were of ice, the moon may gild
Not melt, or stone, ’twas meant the sun should warm
Not make bear flowers,—nor ice nor stone to blame:
But it can melt, that ice, and bloom, that stone,
Impassible to rule of day and night!
This terrifies me, thus compelled perceive
Whatever love and faith we looked should spring
At advent of the authoritative star,
Which yet lie sluggish, curdled at the source,—
These have leapt forth profusely in old time, (1550)
These still respond with promptitude to-day,
At challenge of—what unacknowledged powers
O’ the air, what uncommissioned meteors, warmth
By law, and light by rule should supersede?
For see this priest, this Caponsacchi, stung
At the first summons,—“Help for honour’s sake,
“Play the man, pity the oppressed!”—no pause,
How does he lay about him in the midst,
Strike any foe, right wrong at any risk,
All blindness, bravery and obedience!—blind? (1560)
Ay, as a man would be inside the sun,
Delirious with the plenitude of light
Should interfuse him to the finger-ends—
Let him rush straight, and how shall he go wrong?
Where are the Christians in their panoply?
The loins we girt about with truth, the breasts
Righteousness plated round, the shield of faith,
The helmet of salvation, and that sword
O’ the Spirit, even the word of God,—where these?
Slunk into corners! Oh, I hear at once (1570)
Hubbub of protestation! “What, we monks
“We friars, of such an order, such a rule,
“Have not we fought, bled, left our martyr-mark
“At every point along the boundary- line
“’Twixt true and false, religion and the world,
“Where this or the other dogma of our Church
“Called for defence?” And I, despite myself,
How can I but speak loud what truth speaks low,
“Or better than the best, or nothing serves!
“What boots deed, I can cap and cover straight (1580)
“With such another doughtiness to match,
“Done at an instinct of the natural man?”
Immolate body, sacrifice soul too,—
Do not these publicans the same? Outstrip!
Or else stop race, you boast runs neck and neck,
You with the wings, they with the feet,—for shame!
Oh, I remark your diligence and zeal!
Five years long, now, rounds faith into my ears,
“Help thou, or Christendom is done to death!”
Five years since, in the Province of To- kien, (1590)
Which is in China as some people know,
Maigrot, my Vicar Apostolic there,
Having a great qualm, issues a decree.
Alack, the converts use as God’s name, not
Tien-chu but plain Tien or else mere Shang-ti,
As Jesuits please to fancy politic,
While, say Dominicans, it calls down fire,—
For Tien means heaven, and Shang-ti, supreme prince,
While Tien-chu means the lord of heaven: all cry,
“There is no business urgent for despatch (1600)
“As that thou send a legate, specially
“Cardinal Tournon, straight to Pekin, there
“To settle and compose the difference!”
So have I seen a potentate all fume
For some infringement of his realm’s just right,
Some menace to a mud-built straw-thatched farm
O’ the frontier, while inside the mainland lie,
Quite undisputed-for in solitude,
Whole cities plague may waste or famine sap:
What if the sun crumble, the sands encroach, (1610)
While he looks on sublimely at his ease?
How does their ruin touch the empire’s bound?
Where is the gloriously-decisive change,
The immeasurable metamorphosis
Of human clay to divine gold, we looked
Should, in some poor sort, justify the price?
Had a mere adept of the Rosy Cross
Spent his life to consummate the Great Work,
Would not we start to see the stuff it touched (1620)
Yield not a grain more than the vulgar got
By the old smelting-process years ago?
If this were sad to see in just the sage
Who should profess so much, perform no more,
What is it when suspected in that Power
Who undertook to make and made the world,
Devised and did effect man, body and soul,
Ordained salvation for them both, and yet…
Well, is the thing we see, salvation?
Put no such dreadful question to myself,
Within whose circle of experience burns
The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness,—God:
I must outlive a thing ere know it dead:
When I outlive the faith there is a sun,
When I lie, ashes to the very soul,—
Someone, not I, must wail above the heap,
“He died in dark whence never morn arose.”
While I see day succeed the deepest night—
How can I speak but as I know?—my speech (1640)
Must be, throughout the darkness, “It will end:”
“The light that did burn, will burn!” Clouds obscure—
But for which obscuration all were bright?
Too hastily concluded! Sun-suffused,
A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze,—
Better the very clarity of heaven:
The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear.
What but the weakness in a faith supplies
The incentive to humanity, no strength
Absolute,
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