Isaiah and Paul and John and Augustine and
Luther are wrung with the consciousness of it. Indeed, the antithesis
between flesh and spirit is too familiar in religious literature to
need any recounting. It is more vividly brought home to us from
the nonprofessional, the disinterested and involuntary testimony of
secular writing. Was there ever such a cry of revolt on the part of
the trapped spirit against the net and slough of natural values and
natural desires as runs through the sonnets of William Shakespeare? We
remember the 104th:
"Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Foiled by these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,
Painting thine outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss
And let that pine to aggravate thy store,
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross
Within be fed, without be rich no more--"
Or turn to our contemporary poet, James Stephens:
"Good and bad are in my heart
But I cannot tell to you
For they never are apart
Which is the better of the two.
I am this: I am the other
And the devil is my brother
And my father he is God
And my mother is the sod,
Therefore I am safe, you see
Owing to my pedigree.
Pages:
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142