Classic Poem

This aged man, this old heresiarch,
Would in his pleasant parlour often sit,
Until the setting light made gentler dark;
And with Sir Mano talk with pleasant wit:
Or with me also, if it happened so;
For he to conference would all admit.
And he would bid his Rhetian wine to flow,
Which he, from Virgil, boasted not to vie
With the Falernian, more than he outgo
That divine master in philosophy
For of the ancients still he made his song,
Whose books to hold in fear and enmity,
Their store of fables full of lust and wrong,
I have been still instructed by my rule,
Nor ever were they suffered us among:
Though Gerbert, it is certain, and the school
Of men less strict, in favour held the same,
Till some said that in love their hearts were cool
But that old sophister put off all shame,
Teaching what seemed against our holy faith,
To turn the world back from the Christian name
" Behold, " said he, " this age so full of death!
This age is full of woe; this age is sick,
Discoloured, as a fish that gasps for breath
" Beside the waters, where it darted quick.
It cannot breathe the air of heaven fine;
But cast it back into the water thick,
" And it revives 'mid the delicious brine —
So ye, who live this age of woe and fear,
Too high are lifted on the shore divine.
" Ye wait the coming of the thousandth year,
And fly from nature's sea to gasp of heaven,
Believing that the end of all is near
" Would ye breathe heaven, and be with angels even,
Being yet men? Or think ye that your eyes
Can leave that strife to which ye all are given,
" And see the true heaven-colours in yon skies,
Unmixed with bloody fire, black specks and motes,
And what else in true sight are maladies?
" Not so: the shoal that in the ocean floats
Sees better the fair sky through waters grey,
With lazy eyes set in their shagreen coats.
" Plunge down again: back to your deep, away!
Find life within the succourable wave,
Nor struggle thence, where nature bids you stay
" So in the glimmering vastness shall ye have
Heaven's pictures, or of cloud or vacancy,
Moving above you in their pageant brave
" Ye, who can think for all, hearken to me.
This age is writ in woe, in horror sealed,
Because true bounds no more observed be, —
" Those chancels of the universal field
Of thought and action, which the old sages raised
And left, of man for ever to be held.
" A thousand years the Grecian sages gazed
On happiness, on virtue, on the best,
On all those actions for which men are praised
" Then one arose, the master of the rest,
Grave Aristotle, whom ye too revere,
And to all questions laid his searching test.
" He meted limits with his line severe;
By reason studying both the soul and things:
And sweet the fields he fenced with knowledge clear:
The soul may enter there, and fold her wings
In peace. What know ye more, that ye should dare
Mix his firm thoughts with vain imaginings?
" Uproot the landmarks, which he planted there,
With theologic reasons, and insert
Cognitions, sanctions of religion, where
" Only those seeds of Truth grow without hurt
Which man in his own being still may find,
And which by being known to good convert,
" And need no other force? Why make all blind
By mixing these with what religion gives
As to a being not to earth confined? "
But what he said of Him who ever lives, —
That God being known the highest entity,
Whom science for her utmost term receives,
No further than that word needs man to pry,
Since more than that to science cannot be; —
Frustrating therefore all theology; —
Of this no more shall be set forth by me,
But that the man forgot in arguing so
That man's best study out of reach set he,
And all the other sciences laid low: —
If the infinite perfection severed be
From man's pursuit, nought profits man to know
No more, I say, shall be set forth by me:
But rather toward the human arts I turn,
Where I of his discourse may be more free. —
" Poetry sighs from out her buried urn,
With her fair sisters, who were once alive —
Dig in this soil; the streets ye tread upturn,
" A thousand things from burial ye shall rive, —
Long broken marbles large and mild and sweet;
Old walls, whereon the colours yet survive:
" A world of death is trodden by your feet.
Seek in the homes of books — fear not to seek —
And wondrous are the things that ye shall meet:
" The Roman Muses telling of the Greek
With native voice, in measures fair and full,
Ere that the last return themselves to speak
" Then shall ye know in ways how wonderful
The tracts of all the arts of old were laid,
Which change can alter not, nor time annul.
" They are the best: they, like the hills, were made
At once with mighty sweep, ever to last,
By those who first to shape their forms essayed.
" Walk therefore in the footsteps of the past,
As they once walked, who only added more
To fill the spaces of those outlines vast
" Left by their fathers, who did first explore:
Ere on the world came that great change of mind,
Altering the face of things that was before,
" Dipping the world in ruin, making blind
The eyes that saw so clear, in miseries
Drowning the long-stored gatherings of mankind.
" This eateth up all health with strange disease:
And now, behold, this iron age doth wait
To see the end! Truly the end it sees:
" For all is gone that blesses mortal state;
This age of dark religion, in whose frown
Man sees on earth the heaven he fears to hate:
" Man, shuddering at the clouds that thicken down,
Might yet be happy, wretched though he be,
And bid those floods, his seedling hopes that drown,
" Roll back into the illimitable sea,
Nor have with their dark storm his sky bewept,
If but religion kept her own degree
— " Her own degree if but religion kept,
Usurping not the arts and sciences,
Which she by aidance false hath overstepped
" She hath her own domain, and great she is,
Which to diminish, that be far from me:
Nay, rather I establish her, I wis,
" More than the others who cry heresy;
And what she is, perchance, know more than they
Yea, rather would I name her Piety,
" And to be most divine of all would say,
And teach the things to her which appertain:
Nor was she known, how great, before Christ's day.
" Then heaven to earth descending made her plain:
And truth it is that not by any sage
That wrote of duty, neither by the strain
" Of poet carried through the Muse's rage,
Was pity shown to misery and pain.
Their work was not to alleviate nor assuage
" And Moral Virtue, neither may she deign
To mortal griefs, being raised on rectitude,
To point how man may happiness obtain.
" Well she instructs the already wise and good:
But if this man or that incurably
Fail of her mark, being ignorant and lewd,
" Or otherwise in mind or bodily
Unfit for duties, pity shows she none,
Nor bears the load of imbecility:
" But out of hope she setteth such an one.
So be it: she herself is justified
By her own laws in her conclusion.
" Let her alone; be it her part to guide
To her own mark the capable and strong:
Nor let Religion touch her proper pride
" The arts, and all Apollo's learned throng
Teach life to man; and their own use they have:
But they accept unhappiness and wrong
" The half of their domain: without the grave
And mournful part of life what were they all?
'tis theirs to paint, not punish: show, not save
" And Contemplation, which doth man recal
To high beginnings, and is man's last force
To apprehend the things celestial,
" Must her own ladder bring, nor have recourse
To aught of outward or supernal aid:
For what is in the stream was in the source.
" What man his own by his own thought hath made
That only in his science he may know;
And by that instrument new realms invade
" Man's own wings bear him whither he would go:
His arts, his thought, to strict conclusions bent,
Only take heed of weakness, pain, and woe,
" As what is either to them aliment,
Or else what hostile in the world is found,
Their perfect operation to prevent
" But, lo, Religion from beyond the bound
Of art and thought enters our mortal state,
Piteous of man, and takes her special ground.
" What man in man sees but with awe or hate
She makes her own by right; the wretch she sees
Not to destroy, but to compassionate:
" Not for the spectacle of tragedies,
But for the hand of help: weakness and pain
Her province are; her art to succour these
" If ye knew this, such godliness were gain:
Nor would ye mix her with the functions right.
Of the arts and sciences, to make all vain;
" Nor would it be too simple and too trite
To call her mercy and humanity,
Since she was only seen by heaven's own light;
" Neither by science was it given to see,
Nor by man's art, how main this principle,
How lofty piteousness and charity.
" The arts and sciences their fields kept well,
Defenced with the walls that round them rose,
Of old time, high and indestructible.
" But, as a door new opened in a close,
Showing a garden fair beyond the wall
Which customarily the scene doth close,
" Delights the gazer, till more usual
The view becomes; and, mingled with the rest,
Alone no longer doth the eye enthral:
" Even so Religion seen at first was best,
And from all else was counted separate,
And her especial function manifest:
" But long counfounded since her primal date,
Zealots and bigots with contentious rage
Into her speech their ignorance translate:
" These blot with tears and blood her lovely page;
So that her name is sorrow now and fear:
Nor doth she now man's highest thoughts engage:
" For they must worship less, who would revere "
Thus mixing half truths in faith's mysteries
(As others since) spake that old sophister:
And whoso hearkened to his subtleties
Found them most sweet; and, in delusion wound,
The vulgar framed of them worse blasphemies
He let the water out, which ran around
For in all lands, whither his words had course,
Perverters vile did presently abound:
Robbers, who seized church goods without remorse:
New lights, who still were crying charity,
And took the poor men's dues by fraud or force:
Wretches, who called religion piety,
And into every vilest trespass ran:
These through his words their crimes did multiply
Such only good Vilgardus did to man.