The Complete Poetical Works. Томас Харди

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      The Respectable Burgher

       on “The Higher Criticism”

       Table of Contents

      Since Reverend Doctors now declare

       That clerks and people must prepare

       To doubt if Adam ever were;

       To hold the flood a local scare;

       To argue, though the stolid stare,

       That everything had happened ere

       The prophets to its happening sware;

       That David was no giant-slayer,

       Nor one to call a God-obeyer

       In certain details we could spare,

       But rather was a debonair

       Shrewd bandit, skilled as banjo-player:

       That Solomon sang the fleshly Fair,

       And gave the Church no thought whate’er;

       That Esther with her royal wear,

       And Mordecai, the son of Jair,

       And Joshua’s triumphs, Job’s despair,

       And Balaam’s ass’s bitter blare;

       Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace-flare,

       And Daniel and the den affair,

       And other stories rich and rare,

       Were writ to make old doctrine wear

       Something of a romantic air:

       That the Nain widow’s only heir,

       And Lazarus with cadaverous glare

       (As done in oils by Piombo’s care)

       Did not return from Sheol’s lair:

       That Jael set a fiendish snare,

       That Pontius Pilate acted square,

       That never a sword cut Malchus’ ear

       And (but for shame I must forbear)

       That — — did not reappear! . . .

       —Since thus they hint, nor turn a hair,

       All churchgoing will I forswear,

       And sit on Sundays in my chair,

       And read that moderate man Voltaire.