XX
I said, Sordino was a Catholic,
But more than that, a true philosopher,
And at this sight within himself he mused:
“How is the Gospel of the Christ abused
By those who should its saving love confer,
Upon a world with sin and hatred sick!”
“The light of love changed into flames of hell,
The praise of joy to wails of agony,
The cross into a fetish of dark fear,
Around the which the fiendish demons leer,
While erring souls are shackled to the tree,
And fagots blaze amid the rabble’s yell.”
“How terrible is zeal without true knowledge;
How awful bigotry, born by religion!
How black is priestcraft, bred by selfishness,
Before whose judgment-seat there’s no redress
For any sympathizer with rebellion
Against the schemes of Jesuitic college!”
His tender-heartedness aroused such thought;—
He paused, and crossed himself, perhaps he sinned,—
In thinking thus, and carried thus away
By that sad spectacle, and then did say,
Within himself: “May be the fellow grinned,
Because his faith a glory to him brought.”
“Was that the motive which led him to suffer?
Then was he despicable more than they
Who brazed themselves his dirty flesh to fry,
Then was his smoke a stench beneath the sky,
His ashes unfit for his country’s clay,
He, not a martyr, but a worthless duffer.”
“If pride, quite obstinate, of fancied light,
Diviner, truer than of mother church,
Did actuate the Protestants to die,
Then there is justice in the people’s cry,
For such an arrogance the truth will smirch,
And rob its scepter of celestial right.”
Thus did philosopher and churchman speak,
And now the poet whispered: “Peace be still!
Where are thy chimes? All England needs their tone
Of harmony to make the people one;
Thy golden chimes! At last their music will
Interpret all which men through suff’ring seek.”