XIX.
ON THE SEPULCHRE OF CHRIST.
No. I.
O tu ch' ami la parte.
O you who love the part more than the whole,
And love yourself more than all human kind,
Who persecute good men with prudence blind
Because they combat your malign control,
See Scribes and Pharisees, each impious school,
Each sect profane, o'erthrown by his great mind,
Whose best our good to Deity refined,
The while they thought Death triumphed o'er his soul.
Deem you that only you have thought and sense,
While heaven and all its wonders, sun and earth,
Scorned in your dullness, lack intelligence?
Fool! what produced you? These things gave you birth:
So have they mind and God. Repent; be wise!
Man fights but ill with Him who rules the skies.
XX.
ON THE SEPULCHRE OF CHRIST.
No. 2.
Quinci impara a stupirti.
Here bend in boundless wonder; bow your head:
Think how God's deathless Mind, that men might be
Robed in celestial immortality
(O Love divine!), in flesh was raimented:
How He was killed and buried; from the dead
How He arose to life with victory,
And reigned in heaven; how all of us shall be
Glorious like Him whose hearts to His are wed:
How they who die for love of reason, give
Hypocrites, tyrants, sophists—all who sell
Their neighbours ill for holiness—to hell:
How the dead saint condemns the bad who live;
How all he does becomes a law for men;
How he at last to judge shall come again!