And think of those foredoom'd in Dante's pit, Who, sunk at bottom of the loathly slough, Made the black mud up-bubble with their sighs; And all because they were unkind to Mirth, And went with smoky heart and gloomy brow The while they lived upon the pleasant earth In the sweet air that rallies to the sun, And ne'er so much as smiled or gave God thanks: Surely a sparkle of the Frenchman's fun Had rescued all their souls. A. I think I see The Deity who in this Heaven abides, _Le bon Dieu_, holding both his aching sides, With radiant face of Pan, ruddy and hairy: Give him his famous whistles and goat-shanks, And then present him to Alighieri. B. Nay, 'twixt the Frenchman and the Florentine I ask no truce, grave Dante weaving well His dark-eyed thought into a song divine, Drawing high poetry from heaven and hell-- And him who lightly mockt at all in turn. A. It follow'd from his mundane thought of art That he contemn'd religion: his concern Was comfort, taste, and wit: he had no heart For man's attempt to build and beautify His home in Nature; so he set all by That wisdom had evolved with purpose kind; Stamped it as folly, or as fraud attacked; Never discerning how his callow zest Was impiously defiling his own nest; Whereas the least philosophy may find The truths are the ideas; the sole fact Is the long story of man's growing mind. B. Upon your thistle now I see my fig-- Béranger thought of Voltaire as a seer, A latter-day John Baptist in a wig; A herald of that furious gospel-storm Of words and blood, that made the nations fear; When sickening France adulterously sinn'd With Virtue, and went mad conceiving wind. He ranks him with those captains of reform, Luther and Calvin; who, whate'er they taught, Led folk from superstition to free thought. A. They did. But whence or whither led Voltaire? The steward with fifty talents given in charge, Who spent them on himself, and liv'd at large; His only virtue that he did not hide The pounds, but squander'd them to serve his pride; His praise that, cunning in his generation, He of the heavenly treasure did not spare To win himself an earthly habitation. B. Deny him not this laurel, nor to France The apostolate of modern tolerance: Their Theseus he, who slew the Minotaur, The Dragon Persecution, in which war He tipp'd the shafts that made the devil bleed; And won a victory that hath overcome Many misdoings in a well-done deed; And more, I think, the mind of Christ revealing, Yea, more of common-sense and human feeling Than all the Creeds and Bulls of Christendom. A.