Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud; Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll; I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. --William Ernest Henley. RELIGION AND DOCTRINE He stood before the Sanhedrim: The scowling rabbis gazed at him. He recked not of their praise or blame; There was no fear, there was no shame, For one upon whose dazzled eyes The whole world poured its vast surprise. The open heaven was far too near His first day's light too sweet and clear, To let him waste his new-gained ken On the hate-clouded face of men. But still they questioned, Who art thou? What hast thou been? What art thou now? Thou art not he who yesterday Sat here and begged beside the way, For he was blind. "_And I am he; For I was blind, but now I see._" He told the story o'er and o'er; It was his full heart's only lore; A prophet on the Sabbath day Had touched his sightless eyes with clay, And made him see who had been blind, Their words passed by him like the wind Which raves and howls, but cannot shock The hundred-fathom-rooted rock. Their threats and fury all went wide; They could not touch his Hebrew pride. Their sneers at Jesus and his band, Nameless and homeless in the land, Their boasts of Moses and his Lord, All could not change him by one word. "_I know not what this man may be, Sinner or saint; but as for me One thing I know: that I am he Who once was blind, and now I see._" They were all doctors of renown, The great men of a famous town With deep brows, wrinkled, broad, and wise Beneath their wide phylacteries; The wisdom of the East was theirs, And honor crowned their silvery hairs. The man they jeered, and laughed to scorn Was unlearned, poor, and humbly born; But he knew better far than they What came to him that Sabbath day; And what the Christ had done for him He knew, and not the Sanhedrim. --John Hay. THE OLD STOIC Riches I hold in light esteem, And Love I laugh to scorn; And lust of fame was but a dream, That vanished with the morn. And, if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty!" Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 'Tis all that I implore, In life and death a chainless soul And courage to endure. --Emily Bronte.