Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/205

 My words are guiltless of the bigot's sense! My soul has fire to mingle with the fire Of all these souls, within or out of doors Of Rome's Church or another. I believe In one priest, and one temple, with its floors Of shining jasper, gloom'd at morn and eve By countless knees of earnest auditors; And crystal walls, too lucid to perceive,— That none may take the measure of the place And say, "so far the porphyry; then, the flint— To this mark, mercy goes, and there, ends grace," While still the permeable crystals hint At some white starry distance, bathed in space! I feel how nature's ice-crusts keep the dint Of undersprings of silent Deity; I hold the articulated gospels, which Show Christ among us, crucified on tree; I love all who love truth, if poor or rich In what they have won of truth possessively! No altars and no hands defiled with pitch Shall scare me off, but I will pray and eat With all these—taking leave to choose my ewers And say at last, "Your visible Churches cheat Their inward types; and if a Church assures Of standing without failure and defeat, That Church both fails and lies!"

To leave which lures Of wider subject through past years,—behold, We come back from the Popedom to the Pope, To ponder what he must be, ere we are bold