This text is part of:
[190] Methinks I see that reverend form,
Which all of us so well know:
He rises up to speak; he jogs
The presidential elbow.
‘Good friends,’ he says, “you reap a field
I sowed in self-denial,
For toleration had its griefs
And charity its trial.
Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas More,
To him must needs be given
Who heareth heresy and leaves
The heretic to Heaven!
I hear again the snuffled tones,
I see in dreary vision
Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritual bores,
And prophets with a mission.
Each zealot thrust before my eyes
His Scripture-garbled label;
All creeds were shouted in my ears
As with the tongues of Babel.
Scourged at one cart-tail, each denied
The hope of every other;
Each martyr shook his branded fist
At the conscience of his brother!—
How cleft the dreary drone of man
The shriller pipe of woman,
As Gorton led his saints elect,
Who held all things in common!
Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1888-89.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.