From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad You offer their refinement. Fool or knave? Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave When there's a thousand diamond weights between? So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find, Profess themselves indignant, scandalized At thus being held unable to explain How a superior man who disbelieves 410 May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way! It's through my coming in the tail of time, Nicking the minute with a happy tact. Had I been born three hundred years ago They'd say, "What's strange? Blougram of course believes;" And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course." But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet How can he?" All eyes turn with interest. Whereas, step off the line on either side— You, for example, clever to a fault, 420 The rough and ready man who write apace, Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less— You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares? Lord So-and-so—his coat bedropped with wax, All Peter's chains about his waist, his back Brave with the needlework of Noodledom— Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares? But I, the man of sense and learning too, The able to think yet act, the this, the that, I, to believe at this late time of day! 430 Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt. —Except it's yours! Admire me as these may, You don't. But whom at least do you admire? Present your own perfection, your ideal, Your pattern man for a minute—oh, make haste, Is it Napoleon you would have us grow? Concede the means; allow his head and hand, (A large concession, clever as you are) Good! In our common primal element Of unbelief (we can't believe, you know— 440 We're still at that admission, recollect!) Where do you find—apart from, towering o'er The secondary temporary aims Which satisfy the gross taste you despise— Where do you find his star?—his crazy trust God knows through what or in what? it's alive And shines and leads him, and that's all we want. Have we aught in our sober night shall point Such ends as his were, and direct the means Of working out our purpose straight as his, 450 Nor bring a moment's trouble on success With after-care to justify the same? —Be a Napoleon, and yet disbelieve— Why, the man's mad, friend, take his light away! What's the vague good o' the world, for which you dare With comfort to yourself blow millions up? We neither of us see it! we do see The blown-up
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