Classic Poem

Without ,—dull sky and howling sea,
And the head of St. Gildas' savage abbey,
Wrapped in thought as man can be,
Pacing his cloister absently;
Within,—the mutinous gray monks, met
Where no taper ever raised
The blackness of the oubliette,
Whisper, raging and amazed,
How the lethal dish, though set
For Abelard, had missed its way.
They could only watch and pray.
He might yet be graveward sent
With poison in the Sacrament.
And Abelard, the golden tongue
Of student Paris and Corbeil,
Guide of the insurgent young,
By Soissons Synod forced to lay
His book on fire, for that they
Smelt Sabellian heresy,—
Abelard, who ever taught
The fierce integrity of thought,
Walks his cloister musingly.
But he does not think on these,
Nor on peerless Héloïse
Single-souled enough to win
Triumph at love's wakeful throne.
Halfway love made his love sin.
Piety he madly cast
Over the exhausted past,
A cloak like parchment dry and thin.
He is true to thought alone.
So he paces, challenging the dead.
Augustine spake sooth? But St. Paul said
Quite the opposite; if Gregory
Wrote by inspiration, then Jerome
Wrote by something else; they disagree.
Athanasius here and Isidore
There—a contradiction— Sic et Non .
Heeding not love's scourge and doom's
Behind, while cloudily before
Excommunication looms,
He walks his cloister musingly.