Nor fear to soil his knees with graveyard ground,

If haply there some flower of truth be found.

For human nature is an earthy fruit,

Mired at the stem and fleshy at the root,

And thrives with folly's mixon best o'erlaid,

Nor less divinely so, when all is said.

Brave lives are lived, and worthy deeds are done

Each virtuous day, 'neath the all-pitying sun;

6

But these are not the most, perhaps not even

The surest road to our soul's modern heaven.

The best of us are creatures of God's chance

(Call it His grace), which works deliverance;

The rest mere pendulums 'twixt good and ill,

Like soldiers marking time while standing still.

'Tis all their strategy, who have lost faith

In things Divine beyond man's life and death,

Pleasure and pain. Of heaven what know we,

Save as unfit for angels' company,

Say rather hell's? We cling to sins confessed,

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