Chapter VI

“Renounce the world! “Were that a mighty hardship? Plan “A pleasant life, and straight some man “Beside you, with, if he thought fit, “Abundant means to compass it, “Shall turn deliberate aside “To try and live as, if you tried “You clearly might, yet most despise. “One friend of mine wears out his eyes, “Slighting the stupid joys of sense, “In patient hope that, ten years hence, “‘Somewhat completer,’ he may say, “‘My list of _coleoptera_!’ “While just the other who most laughs “At him, above all epitaphs “Aspires to have his tomb describe “Himself as sole among the tribe “Of snuffbox-fanciers, who possessed “A Grignon with the Regent’s crest. “So that, subduing, as you want, “Whatever stands predominant “Among my earthly appetites “For tastes and smells and sounds and sights, “I shall be doing that alone, “To gain a palm-branch and a throne, “Which fifty people undertake “To do, and gladly, for the sake “Of giving a Semitic guess, “Or playing pawns at blindfold chess.”

The stanza which follows gives the speaker’s answer, ending with this striking passage:—

“Renounce the world!”—Ah, were it done By merely cutting one by one Your limbs off, with your wise head last, How easy were it!—how soon past, If once in the believing mood!

To which the other replies by reproaching him for ingratitude to God, who really asks us to give up nothing that is good, but only to observe such moderation in our pleasures that life is all the more enjoyable, while sorrow almost disappears, transfigured in the light of love. This answer has such a ring of the true metal in it, that the speaker begins his rejoinder with the question, “Do you say this, or I?” and then proceeds (in a passage of wonderful power) to expose the superficiality of the view he is endeavouring to support.