Count what goes To making up a pope, before he wear That triple crown. We pass the world-wide throes Which went to make the popedom,--the despair Of free men, good men, wise men; the dread shows Of women's faces, by the faggot's flash Tossed out, to the minutest stir and throb O' the white lips, the least tremble of a lash, To glut the red stare of a licensed mob; The short mad cries down oubliettes, and plash So horribly far off; priests, trained to rob, And kings that, like encouraged nightmares, sat On nations' hearts most heavily distressed With monstrous sights and apophthegms of fate-- We pass these things,--because "the times" are prest With necessary charges of the weight Of all this sin, and "Calvin, for the rest, Made bold to burn Servetus. Ah, men err!"-- And so do _churches_! which is all we mean To bring to proof in any register Of theological fat kine and lean: So drive them back into the pens! refer Old sins (with pourpoint, "quotha" and "I ween") Entirely to the old times, the old times; Nor ever ask why this preponderant Infallible pure Church could set her chimes Most loudly then, just then,--most jubilant, Precisely then, when mankind stood in crimes Full heart-deep, and Heaven's judgments were not scant. Inquire still less, what signifies a church Of perfect inspiration and pure laws Who burns the first man with a brimstone-torch, And grinds the second, bone by bone, because The times, forsooth, are used to rack and scorch! What _is_ a holy Church unless she awes The times down from their sins? Did Christ select Such amiable times to come and teach Love to, and mercy? The whole world were wrecked If every mere great man, who lives to reach A little leaf of popular respect, Attained not simply by some special breach In the age's customs, by some precedence In thought and act, which, having proved him higher Than those he lived with, proved his competence In helping them to wonder and aspire.