No More Learning

Ah, not thus. Yet--could I not help? --
Why talk we? What thing should I say to thee
To pierce the pride of lust wrapping thy heart?
How show thee that, as in maidens unloved
There is virginity to make their sex
Shrink like a wound from eyes of love untimely,
So in a woman who hath learnt herself
By her own beauty sacred in the clasp
Of him whom her desire hath sacred made,
There is a fiercer and more virgin wrath
Against all eyes that come desiring her?

[_A Psalm of many voices strikes their ears, and through
the street pass old men chanting, followed and
answered by a troop of young men_.

_Chorus: Old Men_.
Wilt thou not examine our hearts, O Lord God of our strength?
Wilt thou still be blindly trying us? Wilt thou not at length
Believe the crying of our words, that never our knees have bent
To foreign gods, nor any Jewish mouth or brain hath sent
Prayers to beseech the favour of abominable thrones
Worshipt by the heathen men with furnaces, wounds, and groans?

_Young Men_.
And what good in our lives, strength or delighted glee,
Hath God paid to purchase our purity?
Though lust starve in our flesh, still he devises fire
To prove our lives pure as his fierce desire.
With huge heathenish tribes roaring exultant here,
Jewry fights as maid with a ravisher:
Tribes who better than we deal with the gods their lords,
For they pleasantly sin, yet the gods sharpen and drive their swords.

_Old Men_.
Hast thou not tried us enough, Jehovah? Hast thou found any fire
Will draw from our hearts a smoke of burn'd idolatrous desire?
There is none in us, Lord: no other God in us but thee;
Only thy fires make our clean souls glitter with agony.
Pure we are, pure in our prayers, pure our souls look to thee, Lord;
And to be shewn to the world devoured by evil is our reward.

_Young Men_.
We whose hearts were alone giving our God renown,
Under the wheels of hell we are fallen down!
False the heaven we built, fashion'd of purity;
'Tis heathen heavens, made out of sin, stand high.
Come, make much of our God! Comfort his ears with song,
Lest his pride the gods with their laughter wrong,
Seeing, huddled as beasts held by a fearful night
Full of lions and hunger, his folk crouch to the heathen might.

_Old Men_.
Jehovah, still we refrain from crying to the infamous gates
That open easily into the heavens thy mind of jealousy hates.
Power is in them: hast thou no power? Wilt thou not beware
Lest thy mood now press our minds to venturous despair?

_Young Men_.
Fool'd, fool'd, fool'd are our lives, held by the world in jeer;
With crazed eyes we behold veils of enormous fear
Hiding dreadfully those marvellous gates and stairs
Where the heathen delighted with sin throng with their prosperous prayers.

_Old Men_.