In the Eyes of the Wise
And, if in this liar’s designs, a wise man might find
some wisdom-wielding youth, too learned for his age,
and opposite him, a time-worn sage—an aged man, whose innocence
is an unlearned child’s ignorance; he wears his folly about him.
—And how dreadful is that?
That a man should be old
and, being sinned against, not sin again;
But clasp the sinner's hands and sing
to him the sinner’s hymn:—how even saints were once of sin,
and in every man’s another chance for benevolence.
—Oh, and how dreadful is that?
This, the wise man says, is the essence of adolescence—
And to that intellectual end, the learned youth affects his revenge:
To extend one’s pain upon his captors,
Not heal them in some merciful rapture!
To define mercy as divine naïvety—that is truly right and just,
But for his sins to be washed away, unpunished, now that is ludicrous.
—And lo, just how beautiful is that?
So although he knows himself superior, go and give that wise man a mirror—
That when he looks upon himself, he will know his thoughts inferior:
But what he sees, he fears—and cannot rightly believe—“is this truly me?”
Then every year at once accosts him, and dark depression falls upon him,
til’ even his arrogance falls prey to fallacy, as sadness rots and taunts him—
And he wonders if a man so blind as him has ever really seen,
or has ever truly been, so hopelessly enslaved to reason?
Since the aged man, he sees, has youthfulness in degrees,
his skin is like paradise, and his smile never flees;
How the aged man’s happiness lies in ignorance, the wise man thinks,
is perhaps the fault of his innocence—perhaps not, but who can say?
In meeting his gaze, the aged man starts to say:
“This is no worthy cure—and to think so is absurd!
For to look upon some sinner with contempt, and let mercy be exempt,
the birth of another sinner is assured:
Yet another sinner’s birth ensured.”
For a sin against a sinner absolves neither party,
nor that which a single man’s mercy might ensure—
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