“Is this indeed a burthen for late days, And may I help to bear it with you all, Using my weakness which becomes your strength? For if a babe were born inside this grot, {340} Grew to a boy here, heard us praise the sun, Yet had but yon sole glimmer in light’s place,-- One loving him and wishful he should learn, Would much rejoice himself was blinded first Month by month here, so made to understand {345} How eyes, born darkling, apprehend amiss: I think I could explain to such a child There was more glow outside than gleams he caught, Ay, nor need urge ‘I saw it, so believe!’ It is a heavy burthen you shall bear {350} In latter days, new lands, or old grown strange, Left without me, which must be very soon. What is the doubt, my brothers? Quick with it! I see you stand conversing, each new face, Either in fields, of yellow summer eves, {355} On islets yet unnamed amid the sea; Or pace for shelter ‘neath a portico Out of the crowd in some enormous town Where now the larks sing in a solitude; Or muse upon blank heaps of stone and sand {360} Idly conjectured to be Ephesus: And no one asks his fellow any more ‘Where is the promise of His coming?’ but ‘Was He revealed in any of His lives, As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul?’ {365} -- 346. darkling: an old adverbial form; in the dark. See ‘Paradise Lost’, III. 39. “O, wilt thou darkling leave me?” Sh’s ‘M. N. D.’, II. 2. 86; “So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.” ‘Lear’, I. 4. 237; also ‘A. and C.’, IV. 15. 10. 353. What is the doubt, my brothers?: He addresses his brothers of the far future. The eight following verses are very beautiful. 362-365. The question, “Where is the promise of His coming?” asked in John’s own day, gives place in the far future to which the ken of the dying Apostle extends, to the question whether God was indeed revealed in Christ, ‘As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul’, or whether, man having already love in himself, Christ were not a mere projection from man’s inmost mind (v. 383)? If so there is nothing to fall back on but force, or natural law. This anticipated questioning and reasoning extends from v. 370 to v. 421. --