Yet I could weep to hear the wretches sing! There rolls the organ anthem down the aisle, And thousand voices join in its acclaim. All they are happy—they are on their knees; Round and above them stare the images Of antique saints and martyrs. Censers steam With their Arabian charge of frankincense, And every heart, with inward fingers, counts A blissful rosary of pious prayer! Why should they perish then? Is’t yet too late? O shame, Firmilian, on thy coward soul! What! thou, the poet!—thou, whose mission ’tis To send vibration down the chord of time, Until its junction with eternity— Thou, who hast dared and pondered and endured, Gathering by piecemeal all the noble thoughts And fierce sensations of the mind—as one Who in a garden culls the wholesome rose, And binds it with the deadly nightshade up; Flowers not akin, and yet, by contrast kind— Thou, for a touch of what these mundane fools Whine of as pity, to forego thine aim, And never feel the gnawing of remorse, Like the Promethean vulture on the spleen, That shall instruct thee to give future voice To the unuttered agonies of Cain! Thou, to compare, with that high consequence The breath of some poor thousand knights and knaves, Who soaring, in the welkin, shall expire! Shame, shame, Firmilian! on thy weakness, shame! ORGAN _and_ CHOIR. Auro dato violari Virgines prohibuit: Far in fame, vas in mari Servat et distribuit: Qui timebant naufragari Nautis opem tribuit. FIRMILIAN. A right good saint he seems, this Nicholas! And over-worked too, if the praise be just, Which these, his votaries, quaver as his claim. Yet it is odd he should o’erlook the fact That underneath this church of his are stored Some twenty barrels of the dusky grain, The secret of whose framing, in an hour Of diabolic jollity and mirth, Old Roger Bacon wormed from Belzebub! He might keep better wardship for his friends; But that to me is nothing. Now’s the time! Ha! as I take the matchbox in my hand, A spasm pervades me, and a natural thrill As though my better genius were at hand, And strove to pluck me backwards by the hair. I must be resolute. Lose this one chance, Which bears me to th’ Acropolis of guilt, And this, our age, foregoes its noblest song. I must be speedy—