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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=118223" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Shadow (a Fragment)</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I dreamed a dream: I dreamt that I espied,<br>Upon a stone that was not rolled aside,<br>A Shadow sit upon a grave—a Shade,<br>As thin, as unsubstantial, as of old<br>Came, the Greek poet told,<br>To lick the life-blood in the trench Ulysses made—<br>As pale, as thin, and said:<br>‘I am the Resurrection of the Dead.<br>The night is past, the morning is at hand,<br>And I must in my proper semblance stand,<br>Appear brief space and vanish,—listen, this is true,<br>I am that Jesus whom they slew.’<br>And shadows dim, I dreamed, the dead apostles came,<br>And bent their heads for sorrow and for shame—<br>Sorrow for their great loss, and shame<br>For what they did in that vain name.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And in long ranges far behind there seemed<br>Pale vapoury angel forms; or was it cloud? that kept<br>Strange watch; the women also stood beside and wept.<br> And Peter spoke the word:<br>‘O my own Lord,<br>What is it we must do?<br>Is it then all untrue?<br>Did we not see, and hear, and handle Thee,<br>Yea, for whole hours<br>Upon the Mount in Galilee,<br>On the lake shore, and here at Bethany,<br>When Thou ascended to Thy God and ours?’<br>And paler still became the distant cloud,<br>And at the word the women wept aloud.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the Shade answered, ‘What ye say I know not;<br>  But it is true<br>  I am that Jesus whom they slew,<br>Whom ye have preached, but in what way I know not.’</div><div style="margin:10px 0">. . . . .</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the great World, it chanced, came by that way,<br>And stopped, and looked, and spoke to the police,<br>And said the thing, for order’s sake and peace,<br>Most certainly must be suppressed, the nuisance cease.<br>His wife and daughter must have where to pray,<br>And whom to pray to, at the least one day<br>In seven, and something sensible to say.<br>Whether the fact so many years ago<br>Had, or not, happened, how was he to know?<br>Yet he had always heard that it was so.<br>As for himself, perhaps it was all one;<br>And yet he found it not unpleasant, too,<br>On Sunday morning in the roomy pew,<br>To see the thing with such decorum done.<br>As for himself, perhaps it was all one;<br>Yet on one’s death-bed all men always said<br>It was a comfortable thing to think upon<br>The atonement and the resurrection of the dead.<br>So the great World as having said his say,<br>Unto his country-house pursued his way.<br>And on the grave the Shadow sat all day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">. . . . .</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the poor Pope was sure it must be so,<br>Else wherefore did the people kiss his toe?<br>The subtle Jesuit cardinal shook his head,<br>And mildly looked and said,<br>It mattered not a jot<br>Whether the thing, indeed, were so or not;<br>Religion must be kept up, and the Church preserved,<br>And for the people this best served..<br>And then he turned, and added most demurely,<br>‘Whatever may befal,<br>We Catholics need no evidence at all,<br>The holy father is infallible, surely!’<br>And English canons heard,<br>And quietly demurred.<br>Religion rests on evidence, of course,<br>And on inquiry we must put no force.<br>Difficulties still, upon whatever ground,<br>Are likely, almost certain, to be found.<br>The Theist scheme, the Pantheist, one and all,<br>Must with, or e’en before, the Christian fall.<br>And till the thing were plainer to our eyes,<br>To disturb faith was surely most unwise.<br>As for the Shade, who trusted such narration?<br>Except, of course, in ancient revelation.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And dignitaries of the Church came by.<br>It had been worth to some of them, they said,<br>Some hundred thousand pounds a year a head.<br>If it fetched so much in the market, truly,<br>’Twas not a thing to be given up unduly.<br>It had been proved by Butler in one way,<br>By Paley better in a later day;<br>It had been proved in twenty ways at once,<br>By many a doctor plain to many a dunce;<br>There was no question but it must be so.<br>And the Shade answered, that He did not know;<br>He had no reading, and might be deceived,<br>But still He was the Christ, as He believed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And women, mild and pure,<br>Forth from still homes and village schools did pass,<br>And asked, if this indeed were thus, alas,<br>What should they teach their children and the poor?<br>The Shade replied, He could not know,<br>But it was truth, the fact was so.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">. . . . .<br>. . . . .</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who had kept all commandments from his youth<br>Yet still found one thing lacking—even Truth:<br>And the Shade only answered, ‘Go, make haste,<br>Enjoy thy great possessions as thou may’st.’</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Arthur+Hugh+Clough">Arthur Hugh Clough</a><div class=q>
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