The Three Taverns | Page 7

Before we see,
Meanwhile, we suffer; and I come to you,
At last,

through many storms and through much night.
Yet whatsoever I have undergone,
My keepers in this instance are not
hard.
But for the chance of an ingratitude,
I might indeed be curious
of their mercy,
And fearful of their leisure while I wait,
A few
leagues out of Rome. Men go to Rome,
Not always to return -- but
not that now.
Meanwhile, I seem to think you look at me
With eyes
that are at last more credulous
Of my identity. You remark in me

No sort of leaping giant, though some words
Of mine to you from
Corinth may have leapt
A little through your eyes into your soul.
I
trust they were alive, and are alive
Today; for there be none that shall
indite
So much of nothing as the man of words
Who writes in the
Lord's name for his name's sake
And has not in his blood the fire of
time
To warm eternity. Let such a man --
If once the light is in him
and endures --
Content himself to be the general man,
Set free to
sift the decencies and thereby
To learn, except he be one set aside

For sorrow, more of pleasure than of pain;
Though if his light be not
the light indeed,
But a brief shine that never really was,
And fails,
leaving him worse than where he was,
Then shall he be of all men
destitute.
And here were not an issue for much ink,
Or much
offending faction among scribes.
The Kingdom is within us, we are told;
And when I say to you that
we possess it
In such a measure as faith makes it ours,
I say it with
a sinner's privilege
Of having seen and heard, and seen again,
After
a darkness; and if I affirm
To the last hour that faith affords alone

The Kingdom entrance and an entertainment,
I do not see myself as
one who says
To man that he shall sit with folded hands
Against the
Coming. If I be anything,
I move a driven agent among my kind,

Establishing by the faith of Abraham,
And by the grace of their
necessities,
The clamoring word that is the word of life
Nearer than
heretofore to the solution
Of their tomb-serving doubts. If I have
loosed
A shaft of language that has flown sometimes
A little higher

than the hearts and heads
Of nature's minions, it will yet be heard,

Like a new song that waits for distant ears.
I cannot be the man that I
am not;
And while I own that earth is my affliction,
I am a man of
earth, who says not all
To all alike. That were impossible,
Even as
it were so that He should plant
A larger garden first. But you today

Are for the larger sowing; and your seed,
A little mixed, will have, as
He foresaw,
The foreign harvest of a wider growth,
And one
without an end. Many there are,
And are to be, that shall partake of it,

Though none may share it with an understanding
That is not his
alone. We are all alone;
And yet we are all parcelled of one order --

Jew, Gentile, or barbarian in the dark
Of wildernesses that are not so
much
As names yet in a book. And there are many,
Finding at last
that words are not the Word,
And finding only that, will flourish aloft,

Like heads of captured Pharisees on pikes,
Our contradictions and
discrepancies;
And there are many more will hang themselves
Upon
the letter, seeing not in the Word
The friend of all who fail, and in
their faith
A sword of excellence to cut them down.
As long as there are glasses that are dark --
And there are many -- we
see darkly through them;
All which have I conceded and set down

In words that have no shadow. What is dark
Is dark, and we may not
say otherwise;
Yet what may be as dark as a lost fire
For one of us,
may still be for another
A coming gleam across the gulf of ages,

And a way home from shipwreck to the shore;
And so, through pangs
and ills and desperations,
There may be light for all. There shall be
light.
As much as that, you know. You cannot say
This woman or
that man will be the next
On whom it falls; you are not here for that.

Your ministration is to be for others

The firing of a rush that may
for them
Be soon the fire itself. The few at first
Are fighting for the
multitude at last;
Therefore remember what Gamaliel said
Before
you, when the sick were lying down
In streets all night for Peter's
passing shadow.
Fight, and say what you feel; say more than words.

Give men to know that even their days of earth
To come are more

than ages that are gone.
Say what you feel, while you have time to
say it.
Eternity will answer for itself,
Without your intercession; yet
the way
For many is a long one, and as dark,
Meanwhile, as dreams
of hell. See not your toil
Too much, and if I be away from you,

Think of me as a brother to yourselves,
Of many blemishes. Beware
of stoics,
And give your left hand