Its green leaves Image the hope that through His Passion we, After this winter of our mortal life, May find the beauty of an eternal spring In heaven." Praise me the martyr, out of whose agonies Some great new hope is born, but not the fool Who starves his heart to prove what eyes can see And intellect confirm throughout the world. Why must he follow the idiot schoolboy code, Torture his soul to reinforce the sight Of those that closed their eyes and would not see. To your own men of science, fifty turns Of the thumbscrew would not prove that earth revolved. Call it Italian subtlety if you will, I say his intricate cause could not be won By blind heroics. Much that his enemies challenged Was not yet wholly proven, though his mind Had leapt to a certainty. He must leave the rest To those that should come after, swift and young,-- Those runners with the torch for whom he longed As his deliverers. Had he chosen death Before his hour, his proofs had been obscured For many a year. His respite gave him time To push new pawns out, in the blindfold play Of those last months, and checkmate, not the Church But those that hid behind her. He believed His truth was all harmonious with her own. How could he choose between them? Must he die To affirm a discord that himself denied? On many a point, he was less sure than we: But surer far of much that we forget The movements that he saw he could but judge By some fixed point in space. He chose the sun. Could this be absolute? Could he then be sure That this great sun did not with all its worlds Move round a deeper centre? What became Of your Copernicus then? Could he be sure Of any unchanging centre, whence to judge This myriad-marching universe, but one-- The absolute throne of God. Affirming this Eternal Rock, his own uncertainties Became more certain, and although his lips Breathed not a syllable of it, though he stood Silent as earth that also seemed so still, The very silence thundered, _yet it moves_!