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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=381426" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Three Taverns</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns.—(Acts xxviii, 15)</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Herodion, Apelles, Amplias,<br>And Andronicus? Is it you I see—<br>At last? And is it you now that are gazing<br>As if in doubt of me? Was I not saying <br>That I should come to Rome? I did say that;<br>And I said furthermore that I should go <br>On westward, where the gateway of the world <br>Lets in the central sea. I did say that, <br>But I say only, now, that I am Paul— <br>A prisoner of the Law, and of the Lord<br>A voice made free. If there be time enough <br>To live, I may have more to tell you then <br>Of western matters. I go now to Rome, <br>Where Cæsar waits for me, and I shall wait, <br>And Cæsar knows how long. In Cæsarea<br>There was a legend of Agrippa saying <br>In a light way to Festus, having heard <br>My deposition, that I might be free, <br>Had I stayed free of Cæsar; but the word <br>Of God would have it as you see it is—<br>And here I am. The cup that I shall drink <br>Is mine to drink—the moment or the place <br>Not mine to say. If it be now in Rome, <br>Be it now in Rome; and if your faith exceed <br>The shadow cast of hope, say not of me<br>Too surely or too soon that years and shipwreck, <br>And all the many deserts I have crossed <br>That are not named or regioned, have undone <br>Beyond the brevities of our mortal healing <br>The part of me that is the least of me.<br>You see an older man than he who fell <br>Prone to the earth when he was nigh Damascus, <br>Where the great light came down; yet I am he <br>That fell, and he that saw, and he that heard. <br>And I am here, at last; and if at last<br>I give myself to make another crumb <br>For this pernicious feast of time and men— <br>Well, I have seen too much of time and men <br>To fear the ravening or the wrath of either. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yes, it is Paul you see—the Saul of Tarsus<br>That was a fiery Jew, and had men slain <br>For saying Something was beyond the Law, <br>And in ourselves. I fed my suffering soul <br>Upon the Law till I went famishing, <br>Not knowing that I starved. How should I know,<br>More then than any, that the food I had— <br>What else it may have been—was not for me? <br>My fathers and their fathers and their fathers <br>Had found it good, and said there was no other, <br>And I was of the line. When Stephen fell,<br>Among the stones that crushed his life away, <br>There was no place alive that I could see <br>For such a man. Why should a man be given <br>To live beyond the Law? So I said then, <br>As men say now to me. How then do I<br>Persist in living? Is that what you ask? <br>If so, let my appearance be for you <br>No living answer; for Time writes of death <br>On men before they die, and what you see <br>Is not the man. The man that you see not—<br>The man within the man—is most alive; <br>Though hatred would have ended, long ago, <br>The bane of his activities. I have lived, <br>Because the faith within me that is life <br>Endures to live, and shall, till soon or late,<br>Death, like a friend unseen, shall say to me <br>My toil is over and my work begun. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">How often, and how many a time again, <br>Have I said I should be with you in Rome! <br>He who is always coming never comes,<br>Or comes too late, you may have told yourselves; <br>And I may tell you now that after me, <br>Whether I stay for little or for long, <br>The wolves are coming. Have an eye for them, <br>And a more careful ear for their confusion<br>Than you need have much longer for the sound <br>Of what I tell you—should I live to say <br>More than I say to Cæsar. What I know <br>Is down for you to read in what is written; <br>And if I cloud a little with my own<br>Mortality the gleam that is immortal, <br>I do it only because I am I— <br>Being on earth and of it, in so far <br>As time flays yet the remnant. This you know; <br>And if I sting men, as I do sometimes,<br>With a sharp word that hurts, it is because <br>Man’s habit is to feel before he sees; <br>And I am of a race that feels. Moreover, <br>The world is here for what is not yet here <br>For more than are a few; and even in Rome,<br>Where men are so enamored of the Cross <br>That fame has echoed, and increasingly, <br>The music of your love and of your faith <br>To foreign ears that are as far away <br>As Antioch and Haran, yet I wonder<br>How much of love you know, and if your faith <br>Be the shut fruit of words. If so, remember <br>Words are but shells unfilled. Jews have at least <br>A Law to make them sorry they were born <br>If they go long without it; and these Gentiles,<br>For the first time in shrieking history, <br>Have love and law together, if so they will, <br>For their defense and their immunity <br>In these last days. Rome, if I know the name, <br>Will have anon a crown of thorns and fire<br>Made ready for the wreathing of new masters, <br>Of whom we are appointed, you and I,— <br>And you are still to be when I am gone, <br>Should I go presently. Let the word fall, <br>Meanwhile, upon the dragon-ridden field<br>Of circumstance, either to live or die; <br>Concerning which there is a parable, <br>Made easy for the comfort and attention <br>Of those who preach, fearing they preach in vain. <br>You are to plant, and then to plant again<br>Where you have gathered, gathering as you go; <br>For you are in the fields that are eternal, <br>And you have not the burden of the Lord <br>Upon your mortal shoulders. What you have <br>Is a light yoke, made lighter by the wearing,<br>Till it shall have the wonder and the weight <br>Of a clear jewel, shining with a light <br>Wherein the sun and all the fiery stars <br>May soon be fading. When Gamaliel said <br>That if they be of men these things are nothing<br>But if they be of God, they are for none <br>To overthrow, he spoke as a good Jew, <br>And one who stayed a Jew; and he said all. <br>And you know, by the temper of your faith, <br>How far the fire is in you that I felt<br>Before I knew Damascus. A word here, <br>Or there, or not there, or not anywhere, <br>Is not the Word that lives and is the life; <br>And you, therefore, need weary not yourselves <br>With jealous aches of others. If the world<br>Were not a world of aches and innovations, <br>Attainment would have no more joy of it. <br>There will be creeds and schisms, creeds in creeds, <br>And schisms in schisms; myriads will be done <br>To death because a farthing has two sides,<br>And is at last a farthing. Telling you this, <br>I, who bid men to live, appeal to Cæsar. <br>Once I had said the ways of God were dark, <br>Meaning by that the dark ways of the Law. <br>Such is the Glory of our tribulations;<br>For the Law kills the flesh that kills the Law, <br>And we are then alive. We have eyes then; <br>And we have then the Cross between two worlds— <br>To guide us, or to blind us for a time, <br>Till we have eyes indeed. The fire that smites<br>A few on highways, changing all at once, <br>Is not for all. The power that holds the world <br>Away from God that holds himself away— <br>Farther away than all your works and words <br>Are like to fly without the wings of faith—<br>Was not, nor ever shall be, a small hazard <br>Enlivening the ways of easy leisure <br>Or the cold road of knowledge. When our eyes <br>Have wisdom, we see more than we remember; <br>And the old world of our captivities<br>May then become a smitten glimpse of ruin, <br>Like one where vanished hewers have had their day <br>Of wrath on Lebanon. Before we see, <br>Meanwhile, we suffer; and I come to you, <br>At last, through many storms and through much night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet whatsoever I have undergone, <br>My keepers in this instance are not hard. <br>But for the chance of an ingratitude, <br>I might indeed be curious of their mercy, <br>And fearful of their leisure while I wait,<br>A few leagues out of Rome. Men go to Rome, <br>Not always to return—but not that now. <br>Meanwhile, I seem to think you look at me <br>With eyes that are at last more credulous <br>Of my identity. You remark in me<br>No sort of leaping giant, though some words <br>Of mine to you from Corinth may have leapt <br>A little through your eyes into your soul. <br>I trust they were alive, and are alive <br>Today; for there be none that shall indite<br>So much of nothing as the man of words <br>Who writes in the Lord’s name for his name’s sake <br>And has not in his blood the fire of time <br>To warm eternity. Let such a man— <br>If once the light is in him and endures—<br>Content himself to be the general man, <br>Set free to sift the decencies and thereby <br>To learn, except he be one set aside <br>For sorrow, more of pleasure than of pain; <br>Though if his light be not the light indeed,<br>But a brief shine that never really was, <br>And fails, leaving him worse than where he was, <br>Then shall he be of all men destitute. <br>And here were not an issue for much ink, <br>Or much offending faction among scribes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Kingdom is within us, we are told; <br>And when I say to you that we possess it <br>In such a measure as faith makes it ours, <br>I say it with a sinner’s privilege <br>Of having seen and heard, and seen again,<br>After a darkness; and if I affirm <br>To the last hour that faith affords alone <br>The Kingdom entrance and an entertainment, <br>I do not see myself as one who says <br>To man that he shall sit with folded hands<br>Against the Coming. If I be anything, <br>I move a driven agent among my kind, <br>Establishing by the faith of Abraham, <br>And by the grace of their necessities, <br>The clamoring word that is the word of life<br>Nearer than heretofore to the solution <br>Of their tomb-serving doubts. If I have loosed <br>A shaft of language that has flown sometimes <br>A little higher than the hearts and heads <br>Of nature’s minions, it will yet be heard,<br>Like a new song that waits for distant ears. <br>I cannot be the man that I am not; <br>And while I own that earth is my affliction, <br>I am a man of earth, who says not all <br>To all alike. That were impossible.<br>Even as it were so that He should plant <br>A larger garden first. But you today <br>Are for the larger sowing; and your seed, <br>A little mixed, will have, as He foresaw, <br>The foreign harvest of a wider growth,<br>And one without an end. Many there are, <br>And are to be, that shall partake of it, <br>Though none may share it with an understanding <br>That is not his alone. We are all alone; <br>And yet we are all parcelled of one order—<br>Jew, Gentile, or barbarian in the dark <br>Of wildernesses that are not so much <br>As names yet in a book. And there are many, <br>Finding at last that words are not the Word, <br>And finding only that, will flourish aloft,<br>Like heads of captured Pharisees on pikes, <br>Our contradictions and discrepancies; <br>And there are many more will hang themselves <br>Upon the letter, seeing not in the Word <br>The friend of all who fail, and in their faith<br>A sword of excellence to cut them down. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">As long as there are glasses that are dark— <br>And there are many—we see darkly through them; <br>All which have I conceded and set down <br>In words that have no shadow. What is dark<br>Is dark, and we may not say otherwise; <br>Yet what may be as dark as a lost fire <br>For one of us, may still be for another <br>A coming gleam across the gulf of ages, <br>And a way home from shipwreck to the shore;<br>And so, through pangs and ills and desperations, <br>There may be light for all. There shall be light. <br>As much as that, you know. You cannot say <br>This woman or that man will be the next <br>On whom it falls; you are not here for that.<br>You ministration is to be for others <br>The firing of a rush that may for them <br>Be soon the fire itself. The few at first <br>Are fighting for the multitude at last; <br>Therefore remember what Gamaliel said<br>Before you, when the sick were lying down <br>In streets all night for Peter’s passing shadow. <br>Fight, and say what you feel; say more than words. <br>Give men to know that even their days of earth <br>To come are more than ages that are gone.<br>Say what you feel, while you have time to say it. <br>Eternity will answer for itself, <br>Without your intercession; yet the way <br>For many is a long one, and as dark, <br>Meanwhile, as dreams of hell. See not your toil<br>Too much, and if I be away from you, <br>Think of me as a brother to yourselves, <br>Of many blemishes. Beware of stoics, <br>And give your left hand to grammarians; <br>And when you seem, as many a time you may,<br>To have no other friend than hope, remember <br>That you are not the first, or yet the last. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The best of life, until we see beyond <br>The shadows of ourselves (and they are less <br>Than even the blindest of indignant eyes<br>Would have them) is in what we do not know. <br>Make, then, for all your fears a place to sleep <br>With all your faded sins; nor think yourselves <br>Egregious and alone for your defects <br>Of youth and yesterday. I was young once;<br>And there’s a question if you played the fool <br>With a more fervid and inherent zeal <br>Than I have in my story to remember, <br>Or gave your necks to folly’s conquering foot, <br>Or flung yourselves with an unstudied aim,<br>More frequently than I. Never mind that. <br>Man’s little house of days will hold enough, <br>Sometimes, to make him wish it were not his, <br>But it will not hold all. Things that are dead <br>Are best without it, and they own their death<br>By virtue of their dying. Let them go,— <br>But think you not the world is ashes yet, <br>And you have all the fire. The world is here <br>Today, and it may not be gone tomorrow; <br>For there are millions, and there may be more,<br>To make in turn a various estimation <br>Of its old ills and ashes, and the traps <br>Of its apparent wrath. Many with ears <br>That hear not yet, shall have ears given to them, <br>And then they shall hear strangely. Many with eyes<br>That are incredulous of the Mystery <br>Shall yet be driven to feel, and then to read <br>Where language has an end and is a veil, <br>Not woven of our words. Many that hate <br>Their kind are soon to know that without love<br>Their faith is but the perjured name of nothing. <br>I that have done some hating in my time <br>See now no time for hate; I that have left, <br>Fading behind me like familiar lights <br>That are to shine no more for my returning,<br>Home, friends, and honors,—I that have lost all else <br>For wisdom, and the wealth of it, say now <br>To you that out of wisdom has come love, <br>That measures and is of itself the measure <br>Of works and hope and faith. Your longest hours<br>Are not so long that you may torture them <br>And harass not yourselves; and the last days <br>Are on the way that you prepare for them, <br>And was prepared for you, here in a world <br>Where you have sinned and suffered, striven and seen.<br>If you be not so hot for counting them <br>Before they come that you consume yourselves, <br>Peace may attend you all in these last days— <br>And me, as well as you. Yes, even in Rome. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, I have talked and rested, though I fear<br>My rest has not been yours; in which event, <br>Forgive one who is only seven leagues <br>From Cæsar. When I told you I should come, <br>I did not see myself the criminal <br>You contemplate, for seeing beyond the Law<br>That which the Law saw not. But this, indeed, <br>Was good of you, and I shall not forget; <br>No, I shall not forget you came so far <br>To meet a man so dangerous. Well, farewell. <br>They come to tell me I am going now—<br>With them. I hope that we shall meet again, <br>But none may say what he shall find in Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Edwin+Arlington+Robinson">Edwin Arlington Robinson</a><div class=q>
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Herodion, Apelles, Amplias,
And Andronicus? Is it you I see—
At last? And is it you now that are gazing
As if in doubt of me?..."></div>
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