Which is heathenism and atheism beautifully combined. He goes on, still in his atheistic vein, when Edith bids him listen to the nightingales:
“Their anthems of no church, how sweet they are!
Nor kingly priest, nor priestly king to cross
Their billings ere they nest.”
And again, when Gurth brings news of the pope’s favoring William’s cause, Harold laughs and says of it:
“This was old human laughter in old Rome
Before a Pope was born, when that which reign’d
Call’d itself God—a kingly rendering
Of 'Render unto Cæsar.’”
Harold must have lately risen from a perusal of Mr. Gladstone’s pamphlet on Vaticanism when he spoke thus, so we pardon his aberration. That pamphlet is too strong for weak intellects.