| The Two Questions |
| |
“A riddling world!” one cried.
“If pangs must be, would God that they were sent
To the impure, the cruel, and passed aside
The holy innocent!”
|
| |
But I, “Ah no, no, no!
Not the clean heart transpierced; not tears that fall
For a child’s agony; nor a martyr’s woe;
Not these, not these appal.
|
| |
“Not docile motherhood,
Dutiful, frequent, closed in all distress;
Not shedding of the unoffending blood;
Not little joy grown less;
|
| |
“Not all-benign old age
With dotage mocked; not gallantry that faints
And still pursues; not the vile heritage
Of sin’s disease in saints;
|
| |
“Not these defeat the mind.
For great is that abjection, and august
That irony. Submissive we shall find
A splendour in that dust.
|
| |
“Not these puzzle the will;
Not these the yet unanswered question urge.
But the unjust stricken; but the hands that kill
Lopped; but the merited scourge;
|
| |
“The sensualist at fast;
The merciless felled; the liar in his snares.
The cowardice of my judgment sees, aghast,
The flail, the chaff, the tares.”
|