XVIII. DEAD LANGUAGE.

‘ Thou dost not wisely, Bard.

A double voice is Truth's, to use at will:

One, with the abysmal scorn of good for ill,

Smiting the brutish ear with doctrine hard,

Wherein She strives to look as near a lie

As can comport with her divinity;

The other tender-soft as seem

The embraces of a dead Love in a dream.

These thoughts, which you have sung

In the vernacular,

Should be, as others of the Church's are,

Decently cloak'd in the Imperial Tongue.

Have you no fears

Lest, as Lord Jesus bids your sort to dread,

Yon acorn-munchers rend you limb from limb,

You, with Heaven's liberty affronting theirs!’

So spoke my monitor; but I to him,

‘ Alas, and is not mine a language dead?’