Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Heinemann Volume 3).djvu/223

 You are not ask'd to promise sin? Souls do not grow more hard to save Because the Country profits too; With due discretion and despatch Two masters' bidding you may do; You were not made a priest, to snatch Peter or Harry's single soul Out of the torments of the lake; But that the Parish as a whole Might of the shower of grace partake; And, the whole Parish saved, it's clear, You save every Parishioner. The State is (what you hardly dream) Exactly half republican: Liberty held in strictest ban, Equality in high esteem. Yet is Equality never won But by destroying More and Less,— And it is that you have not done! Nay, you have striven to express And emphasise unlikenesses That slumber'd hitherto unknown. Men, mere Church-members till of late, To Personalities are grown. That does no service to the State; And thus it is, each Parish rate, Each offering to the common good, Is from unwilling niggards bled; The Church no longer is the hood That fits alike on every head.

O, vistas infinite unfold!

Don't be cast down; no gain in that