What shall be the substance of my shrift?
Adam in the garden, I am to new-name all the beasts of the field and all the gods in the sky.
I am to invite men drenched in Time to recover themselves and come out of time, and taste their native immortal air.
I am to fire with what skill I can the artillery of sympathy and emotion.
I am to indicate constantly, though all unworthy, the Ideal and Holy Life, the life within life, the Forgotten Good, the Unknown Cause in which we sprawl and sin.
I am to try the magic of sincerity, that luxury permitted only to kings and poets.
I am to celebrate the spiritual powers in their infinite contrast to the mechanical powers and the mechanical philosophy of this time.
I am to console the brave sufferers under evils whose end they cannot see, by appeals to the great optimism, self-affirmed in all bosoms.
Leave a Reply