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| WHAT! wilt thou throw thy stone of malice now, | |
| Thou dare to scoff at him with scorn or blame? | |
| He is a thousand times more great than thou; | |
| Thou, with thy narrower mind and lower aim, | |
| Wilt thou chide him and not be checked by shame? | 5 |
| |
| He hath done evil—God forbid my sight | |
| Should falter where I gaze with loving eye, | |
| That I should fail to know the wrong from right. | |
| He hath done evil—let not any tie | |
| Of birth or love draw moral sense awry. | 10 |
| |
| And though my trust in him is yet full strong | |
| I may not hold him guiltless, in the dream | |
| That wrong forgiven is no longer wrong, | |
| And, looking on his error, fondly deem | |
| That he in that he erreth doth but seem. | 15 |
| |
| I do not sooth me with a vain belief; | |
| He hath done evil, therefore is my thought | |
| Of him made sadness with no common grief. | |
| But thou, what good or truth has in thee wrought | |
| That thou shouldst hold thee more than him in aught? | 20 |
| |
| He will redeem his nature, he is great | |
| In inward purpose past thy power to scan, | |
| And he will bear his meed of evil fate | |
| And lift him from his fall a nobler man, | |
| Hating his error as a great one can. | 25 |
| |
| And what art thou to look on him and say | |
| ‘Ah! he has fallen whom they praised, but know | |
| My foot is sure’? Upon thy level way | |
| Are there the perils of the hills of snow? | |
| Yea, he has fallen, but wherefore art thou low? | 30 |
| |
| Speak no light word of him, for he is more | |
| Than thou canst know—and ever more to me, | |
| Though he has lessened the first faith I bore, | |
| Than thou in thy best deeds couldst ever be; | |
| Yea, though he fall again, not low like thee. | 35 |
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