Sonnet LII.

_THE SOUL'S APOLOGY._
_Ben sei mila anni._
Six thousand years or more on earth I've been:
Witness those histories of nations dead,
Which for our age I have illustrated
In philosophic volumes, scene by scene.
And thou, mere mite, seeing my sun serene
Eclipsed, wilt argue that I had no head
To live by.--Why not try the sun instead,
If nought in fate unfathomed thou hast seen?
If wise men, whom the world rebukes, combined
With tyrant wolves, brute beasts we should become.
The sage, once stoned for sin, you canonise.
When rennet melts, much milk makes haste to bind.
The more you blow the flames, the more they rise,
Bloom into stars, and find in heaven their home.