Hunger and a whip: with these we tame wild beasts. So, to tame us, God continually keeps our hearts hungry for love, and continually lashes our souls with the thongs of relentless circumstance. Star-drops lingering after sunlight's rain. The earth, a grain of pollen dropped in the vast calyx of Heaven. Our beliefs needed pruning, that they might bring forth more fruit: and so Science came. I, the artist, fought with a Knight that was cased in a mail of gold; and my weapon, with all my art, would not penetrate his armor. Gold is a soft metal, but makes the hardest hauberk of all. What shall I do to pierce this covering? For I am hungry for this man, this business man of stocks and drygoods, and now it seems as if there were no pleasure nor hope nor life for me until I win him to my side. My Desire is round, It is a great globe. If my desire were no bigger than this world It were no bigger than a pin's head. But this world is to the world I want As a cinder to Sirius. I am startled at the gigantic suggestions in this old story of the Serpent who introduces knowledge to man in Eden. How could the Jew who wrote Genesis have known the sadness that ever comes with learning—as if wisdom were still the protégé of the Devil. On the advantage of reducing facts—like fractions—to a common denominator. We explain: but only in terms of x and y, which are themselves symbols of we know not what, graphs of mystery. We establish relations betwixt this and that mystery. We reduce x and y to a common denominator, so that we can add them together, and make a scientific generalization, or subtract them, and make a scientific analysis: but more we can not do. The mystery is still a mystery, and this is all the material out of which we must weave our life. I had a dog, And his name was not _Fido_, but _Credo_. (In America they shorten his name to "_Creed_.") My child fell into the water: Then in plunged Credo, and brought me out my child, My beloved One, Brought him out, truly, But lo, in my Child's throat and in his limbs, In the throat and the limbs of the child of man, Credo's teeth had bitten deep. (A good dog but a stern one was _Credo_) And my child, though sound, Was scarred in his beautiful face And was maimed in his manful limbs For life, alas, for life. Thus _Credo_ saved and scarred and maimed The Son of Man, my Child.