APOLOGY BY PARADOX.
Non é brutto il Demon.
The Devil's not so ugly as they paint;
He's well with all, compact of courtesy:
Real heroism is real piety:
Before small truth great falsehoods shrink and faint
If pots stain worse than pipkins, it were quaint
To charge the pipkins with impurity:
Freedom I crave: who craves not to be free?
Yet life that must be feigned for, leaves a taint.
Ill conduct brings repentance?—If you prate
This wise to me, why prate not thus to all
Philosophers and prophets, and to Christ?
Not too much learning, as some arrogate,
But the small brains of dullards have sufficed
To make us wretched and the world enthrall.
LII.
THE SOUL'S APOLOGY.
Ben sei mila anni.
Six thousand years or more on earth I've been:
Witness those histories of nations dead,
Which for our age I have illustrated
In philosophic volumes, scene by scene.
And thou, mere mite, seeing my sun serene
Eclipsed, wilt argue that I had no head
To live by.—Why not try the sun instead,
If nought in fate unfathomed thou hast seen?
If wise men, whom the world rebukes, combined
With tyrant wolves, brute beasts we should become.
The sage, once stoned for sin, you canonise.
When rennet melts, much milk makes haste to bind.
The more you blow the flames, the more they rise,
Bloom into stars, and find in heaven their home.
LIII.
TO GOD ON PRAYER.
Tu che Forza ed Amor.