r
Transcend the creature whom His gifts sustain!
And here, if sneering casuist blaspheme,
And to divided nature's sovereign,
Ascribe, in nature's opposite extreme
Like eminence, and nature's God aver
In evil, even as in good, supreme,--
Heed not, or ask if man's Artificer
With His own work, in virtue matched, can prove
At once more holy and unholier?

'Yet since all good is fruit of love, and love
Worketh no ill, how still doth ill abound?
Is't haply that with love a rival strove?

Mark well this parable. In chosen ground
Only good seed a husbandman had sown,
Yet when the blade sprang up, therewith he found
Tares that amid the stifled wheat had grown.
Then knew he well, how, entering unawares,
This, while men slept, an enemy had done.
And 'tis an enemy who, scattering tares
Amid the corn sown in Creation's field,
With deadly coil the growing plant ensnares.
And no mean enemy, nor one unsteeled
For bold defiance, nor reduced to cower
Ever in covert ambuscade concealed,
But at whose hest the ravening hell-hounds scour
A wasted world, while himself prowls to seek,
Like roaring lion, whom he may devour,
And upon whom his rancorous wrath to wreak,
Sniffing the tainted steam of slaughter's breath,
And lulled by agony's despairing shriek.
For it is he who hath the power of death,
Even the devil, by whom entereth sin
Into the world, and death engendereth:
Yea! by whom entereth whatsoe'er within
Warreth against the spirit,--sordid greed,
Pride, carnal lust, envy to lust akin,
And malice, and deceit, whose treacheries breed
Strife between brethren, and the faith o'erthrow
Of many, and the duped deserters lead,
Beneath the banner of their deadliest foe,
In rebel arms a Parent to defy,
Whom, by His gifts alone, His children know.

'Not less that Parent marks with pitying eye
The blinded rage that rivets its own chain:
Not less to His own glorious liberty
Seeks, from corruption's bondage, to regain
His erring children,--by device, or lewd,
Or threatening, lured, or goaded to their bane:
Not less to overcome evil with good
Labours, and shall therewith all things subdue
Unto Himself--but hath not yet subdued.

And wherefore? wherefore tarrieth He, while through
Eden, by daring foray oft defaced,
Marauding fiends malignant raid pursue,