Admonishes:  then back he sinks at once
To ashes, who was very fire before,
In sedulous recurrence to his trade
Whereby he earneth him the daily bread;
And studiously the humbler for that pride,
Professedly the faultier that he knows 200
God’s secret, while he holds the thread of life. 
Indeed the especial marking of the man
Is prone submission to the heavenly will—­
Seeing it, what it is, and why it is. 
’Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last
For that same death, which must restore his being
To equilibrium, body loosening soul
Divorced even now by premature full growth: 
He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live
So long as God please, and just how God please. 210
He even seeketh not to please God more
(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please. 
Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach
The doctrine of his sect whate’er it be,
Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do: 
How can he give his neighbour the real ground,
His own conviction?  Ardent as he is—­
Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old
“Be it as God please” reassureth him. 
I probed the sore as thy disciple should:  220
“How, beast,” said I, “this stolid carelessness
Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march
To stamp out like a little spark thy town,
Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?”
He merely looked with his large eyes on me,
The man is apathetic, you deduce? 
Contrariwise, he loves both old and young,
Able and weak, affects the very brutes
And birds—­how say I? flowers of the field—­
As a wise workman recognizes tools 230
In a master’s workshop, loving what they make. 
Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb: 
Only impatient, let him do his best,
At ignorance and carelessness and sin—­
An indignation which is promptly curbed: 
As when in certain travel I have feigned
To be an ignoramus in our art
According to some preconceived design,
And happed to hear the land’s practitioners
Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, 240
Prattle fantastically on disease,
Its cause and cure—­and I must hold my peace!

Thou wilt object—­Why have I not ere this
Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene
Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,
Conferring with the frankness that befits? 
Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech
Perished in a tumult many years ago,
Accused—­our learning’s fate—­of wizardry,
Rebellion, to the setting up a rule 250
And creed prodigious as described to me. 
His death, which happened when the earthquake fell
(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss
To occult learning in our lord the sage
Who lived there in the pyramid alone deg.),