Six thousand years or more on earth I've been:
Witness those histories of nations dead,
Which for our age I have illustrated
In philosophic volumes, scene by scene.
And thou, mere mite, seeing my sun serene
Eclipsed, wilt argue that I had no head
To live by.--Why not try the sun instead,
If nought in fate unfathomed thou hast seen?
If wise men, whom the world rebukes, combined
With tyrant wolves, brute beasts we should become.
The sage, once stoned for sin, you canonise.
When rennet melts, much milk makes haste to bind.
The more you blow the flames, the more they rise,
Bloom into stars, and find in heaven their home.



LIII.

_TO GOD ON PRAYER._

_Tu che Forza ed Amor._


O Thou, who, mingling Force and Love, dost draw
And guide the complex of all entities,
Framed for that purpose; whence our reason sees
In supreme Fate the synthesis of Law;