No More Learning

Proceed,--I listen.

_Abbot_. 'Tis said thou holdest converse with the things
Which are forbidden to the search of man;
That with the dwellers of the dark abodes,
The many evil and unheavenly spirits
Which walk the valley of the Shade of Death,
Thou communest. I know that with mankind,
Thy fellows in creation, thou dost rarely 40
Exchange thy thoughts, and that thy solitude
Is as an Anchorite's--were it but holy.

_Man_. And what are they who do avouch these things?

_Abbot_. My pious brethren--the scared peasantry--
Even thy own vassals--who do look on thee
With most unquiet eyes. Thy life's in peril!

_Man_. Take it.

_Abbot_. I come to save, and not destroy:
I would not pry into thy secret soul;
But if these things be sooth, there still is time
For penitence and pity: reconcile thee 50
With the true church, and through the church to Heaven.

_Man_. I hear thee.
This is my reply--whate'er
I may have been, or am, doth rest between
Heaven and myself--I shall not choose a mortal
To be my mediator--Have I sinned
Against your ordinances? prove and punish! [154]

_Abbot_. My son! I did not speak of punishment,[155]
But penitence and pardon;--with thyself
The choice of such remains--and for the last,
Our institutions and our strong belief 60
Have given me power to smooth the path from sin
To higher hope and better thoughts; the first
I leave to Heaven,--"Vengeance is mine alone! "
So saith the Lord, and with all humbleness
His servant echoes back the awful word.

_Man_. Old man! there is no power in holy men,
Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form
Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast,
Nor agony--nor, greater than all these,
The innate tortures of that deep Despair, 70
Which is Remorse without the fear of Hell,
But all in all sufficient to itself
Would make a hell of Heaven--can exorcise
From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense
Of its own sins--wrongs--sufferance--and revenge
Upon itself; there is no future pang
Can deal that justice on the self--condemned
He deals on his own soul.

_Abbot_. All this is well;
For this will pass away, and be succeeded
By an auspicious hope, which shall look up 80
With calm assurafice to that blessed place,
Which all who seek may win, whatever be
Their earthly errors, so they be atoned:
And the commencement of atonement is
The sense of its necessity. Say on--
And all our church can teach thee shall be taught;
And all we can absolve thee shall be pardoned.

_Man_. When Rome's sixth Emperor[156] was near his last,
The victim of a self-inflicted wound,
To shun the torments of a public death[bd] 90
From senates once his slaves, a certain soldier,
With show of loyal pity, would have stanched
The gushing throat with his officious robe;
The dying Roman thrust him back, and said--
Some empire still in his expiring glance--
"It is too late--is this fidelity? "

_Abbot_. And what of this?