Then thou with thy furies outgrown,
     Not as Cybele’s beast will thy head lash tail
     So praeter-determinedly thermonous,
     Nor thy cause be an Attis far fled. 
     Thou under stress of the strife
     Shalt hear for sustainment supreme
     The cry of the conscience of Life: 
     Keep the young generations in hail,
     and bequeath them no tumbled house!

     There hast thou the sacred theme,
     Therein the inveterate spur,
     Of the Innermost.  See her one blink
     In vision past eyeballs.  Not thee
     She cares for, but us.  Follow her. 
     Follow her, and thou wilt not sink. 
     With thy soul the Life espouse: 
     This Life of the visible, audible, ring
     With thy love tight about; and no death will be;
     The name be an empty thing,
     And woe a forgotten old trick: 
     And battle will come as a challenge to drink;
     As a warrior’s wound each transient sting. 
     She leads to the Uppermost link by link;
     Exacts but vision, desires not vows. 
     Above us the singular number to see;
     The plural warm round us; ourself in the thick,
     A dot or a stop:  that is our task;
     Her lesson in figured arithmetic,
     For the letters of Life behind its mask;
     Her flower-like look under fearful brows.

     As for thy special case, O my friend, one must think
     Massilia’s victim, who held the carouse
     For the length of a carnival year,
     Knew worse:  but the wretch had his opening choice. 
     For thee, by our law, no alternatives were: 
     Thy fall was assured ere thou camest to a voice. 
     He cancelled the ravaging Plague,
     With the roll of his fat off the cliff. 
     Do thou with thy lean as the weapon of ink,
     Though they call thee an angler who fishes the vague
     And catches the not too pink,
     Attack one as murderous, knowing thy cause
     Is the cause of community.  Iterate,
     Iterate, iterate, harp on the trite: 
     Our preacher to win is the supple in stiff: 
     Yet always in measure, with bearing polite: 
     The manner of one that would expiate
     His share in grandmotherly Laws,
     Which do the dark thing to destroy,
     Under aspect of water so guilelessly white
     For the general use, by the devils befouled.

     Enough, poor prodigal boy! 
     Thou hast listened with patience; another had howled. 
     Repentance is proved, forgiveness is earned. 
     And ’tis bony:  denied thee thy succulent half
     Of the parable’s blessing, to swineherd returned: 
     A Sermon thy slice of the Scriptural calf! 
     By my faith, there is feasting to come,
     Not the less, when our Earth we have seen
     Beneath and on surface, her deeds and designs: 
     Who gives us the man-loving