“Let a man contend to the uttermost
  For his life’s set prize, be it what it will!

  “The counter our lovers staked was lost
  As surely as if it were lawful coin: 
  And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

  “Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin
  Though the end in sight was a vice, I say. 
  You, of the virtue (we issue join)
  How strive you?—­’De te fabula!’"[A]

[Footnote A:  The Statue and the Bust.]

Indifference and spiritual lassitude are, to the poet, the worst of sins.  “Go!” says the Pope to Pompilia’s pseudo-parents,

  “Never again elude the choice of tints! 
  White shall not neutralize the black, nor good
  Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: 
  Life’s business being just the terrible choice."[B]

[Footnote B:  The Ring and the Book—­The Pope, 1235-1238.]

In all the greater characters of The Ring and the Book, this intensity of vigour in good and evil flashes out upon us.  Even Pompilia, the most gentle of all his creations, at the first prompting of the instinct of motherhood, rises to the law demanding resistance, and casts off the old passivity.

  “Dutiful to the foolish parents first,
  Submissive next to the bad husband,—­nay,
  Tolerant of those meaner miserable
  That did his hests, eked out the dole of pain “;[C]

[Footnote C:  Ibid., 1052-1055.]

she is found

  “Sublime in new impatience with the foe.”

  “I did for once see right, do right, give tongue
  The adequate protest:  for a worm must turn
  If it would have its wrong observed by God. 
  I did spring up, attempt to thrust aside
  That ice-block ’twixt the sun and me, lay low
  The neutralizer of all good and truth."[A]

[Footnote A:  The Ring and the Book—­Pompilia, 1591-1596.]

  “Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare,
  At foe from head to foot in magic mail,
  And off it withered, cobweb armoury
  Against the lightning!  ’Twas truth singed the lies
  And saved me."[B]

[Footnote B:  Ibid., 1637-1641.]

Beneath the mature wisdom of the Pope, amidst the ashes of old age, there sleeps the same fire.  He is as truly a warrior priest as Caponsacchi himself, and his matured experience only muffles his vigour.  Wearied with his life-long labour, we see him gather himself together “in God’s name,” to do His will on earth once more with concentrated might.

                                    “I smite
  With my whole strength once more, ere end my part,
  Ending, so far as man may, this offence."[C]

[Footnote C:  The Ring and the Book—­The Pope, 1958-1960.]