Confused and stupefied by bugbears vain.
Most wonderful! with its own hand it ties
And gags itself--gives itself death and war
For pence doled out by kings from its own store.
Its own are all things between earth and heaven;
But this it knows not; and if one arise
To tell this truth, it kills him unforgiven.



XXVI.

_CONSCIENCE._

_Seco ogni coif a è doglia._


All crime is its own torment, bearing woe
To mind or body or decrease of fame;
If not at once, still step by step our name
Or blood or friends or fortune it brings low.
But if our will do not resent the blow,
We have not sinned. That penance hath no blame
Which Magdalen found sweet: purging our shame,
Self-punishment is virtue, all men know.
The consciousness of goodness pure and whole
Makes a man fully blest; but misery
Springs from false conscience, blinded in its pride.
This Simon Peter meant when he replied
To Simon Magus, that the prescient soul