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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341519" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Theology in Extremis: Or a soliloquy that may have been delivered in India, June, 1857</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;They would have spared life to any of their English prisoners who should consent to profess Mahometanism, by repeating the usual short formula; but only one half-caste cared to save himself in that way.&quot; -- Extract from an Indian newspaper.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>MORITURUS LOQUITUR. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oft in the pleasant summer years, <br>Reading the tales of days bygone,<br>I have mused on the story of human tears,<br>All that man unto man had done,<br>Massacre, torture, and black despair;<br>Reading it all in my easy-chair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Passionate prayer for a minute's life;<br>Tortured crying for death as rest;<br>Husband pleading for child or wife,<br>Pitiless stroke upon tender breast.<br>Was it all real as that I lay there<br>Lazily stretched on my easy-chair?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Could I believe in those hard old times,<br>Here in this safe luxurious age?<br>Were the horrors invented to season rhymes,<br>Or truly is man so fierce in his rage?<br>What could I suffer, and what could I dare?<br>I who was bred to that easy-chair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They were my fathers, the men of yore,<br>Little they recked of a cruel death;<br>They would dip their hands in a heretic's gore,<br>They stood and burnt for a rule of faith.<br>What would I burn for, and whom not spare?<br>I, who had faith in an easy-chair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now do I see old tales are true,<br>Here in the clutch of a savage foe;<br>Now shall I know what my fathers knew,<br>Bodily anguish and bitter woe,<br>Naked and bound in the strong sun's glare,<br>Far from my civilized easy-chair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now have I tasted and understood<br>That old world feeling of mortal hate;<br>For the eyes all round us are hot with blood;<br>They will kill us coolly -- they do but wait;<br>While I, I would sell ten lives, at least,<br>For one fair stroke at that devilish priest</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Just in return for the kick he gave,<br>Bidding me call on the prophet's name;<br>Even a dog by this may save<br>Skin from the knife, and soul from the flame;<br>My soul! if he can let the prophet burn it,<br>But life is sweet if a word may earn it.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A bullock's death, and at thirty years!<br>Just one phrase, and a man gets off it;<br>Look at that mongrel clerk in his tears<br>Whining aloud the name of the prophet;<br>Only a formula easy to patter,<br>And, God Almighty, what can it matter?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;Matter enough,&quot; will my comrade say<br>Praying aloud here close at my side,<br>&quot;Whether you mourn in despair alway,<br>Cursed for ever by Christ denied;<br>Or whether you suffer a minute's pain<br>All the reward of Heaven to gain.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not for a moment faltereth he,<br>Sure of the promise and pardon of sin;<br>Thus did the martyrs die, I see,<br>Little to lose and muckle to win;<br>Death means Heaven, he longs to receive it,<br>But what shall I do if I don't believe it?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Life is pleasant, and friends may be nigh,<br>Fain would I speak one word and be spared;<br>Yet I could be silent and cheerfully die,<br>If I were only sure God cared;<br>If I had faith, and were only certain<br>That light is behind that terrible curtain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But what if He listeth nothing at all<br>Of words a poor wretch in his terror may say?<br>That mighty God who created all<br>To labour and live their appointed day;<br>Who stoops not either to bless or ban,<br>Weaving the woof of an endless plan.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He is the Reaper, and binds the sheaf,<br>Shall not the season its order keep?<br>Can it be changed by a man's belief?<br>Millions of harvests still to reap;<br>Will God reward, if I die for a creed,<br>Or will He but pity, and sow more seed?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Surely He pities who made the brain,<br>When breaks that mirror of memories sweet,<br>When the hard blow falleth, and never again<br>Nerve shall quiver nor pulse shall beat;<br>Bitter the vision of vanishing joys;<br>Surely He pities when man destroys.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here stand I on the ocean's brink,<br>Who hath brought news of the further shore?<br>How shall I cross it? Sail or sink,<br>One thing is sure, I return no more;<br>Shall I find haven, or aye shall I be<br>Tossed in the depths of a shoreless sea?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They tell fair tales of a far-off land,<br>Of love rekindled, of forms renewed;<br>There may I only touch one hand<br>Here life's ruin will little be rued;<br>But the hand I have pressed and the voice I have heard,<br>To lose them for ever, and all for a word?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now do I feel that my heart must break<br>All for one glimpse of a woman's face;<br>Swiftly the slumbering memories wake<br>Odour and shadow of hour and place;<br>One bright ray through the darkening past<br>Leaps from the lamp as it brightens last,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Showing me summer in western land<br>Now, as the cool breeze murmureth <br>In leaf and flower -- And here I stand<br>In this plain all bare save the shadow of death;<br>Leaving my life in its full noonday,<br>And no one to know why I flung it away.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why? Am I bidding for glory's roll?<br>I shall be murdered and clean forgot;<br>Is it a bargain to save my soul?<br>God, whom I trust in, bargains not;<br>Yet for the honour of English race,<br>May I not live or endure disgrace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ay, but the word, if I could have said it,<br>I by no terrors of hell perplext;<br>Hard to be silent and have no credit<br>From man in this world, or reward in the next;<br>None to bear witness and reckon the cost<br>Of the name that is saved by the life that is lost.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I must be gone to the crowd untold<br>Of men by the cause which they served unknown,<br>Who moulder in myriad graves of old;<br>Never a story and never a stone<br>Tells of the martyrs who die like me,<br>Just for the pride of the old countree.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Alfred+Comyn+Lyall">Alfred Comyn Lyall</a><div class=q>
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