Rupert Chawner Brooke

The True Beatitude

                  (Bouts-Rimes)

   They say when the Great Prompter's hand shall ring
    Down the last curtain upon earth and sea,
    All the Good Mimes will have eternity
   To praise their Author, worship love and sing;
   Or to the walls of Heaven wandering
    Look down on those damned for a fretful d----,
    Mock them (all theologians agree
   On this reward for virtue), laugh, and fling

   New sulphur on the sin-incarnadined . . .
    Ah, Love! still temporal, and still atmospheric,
     Teleologically unperturbed,
   We share a peace by no divine divined,
    An earthly garden hidden from any cleric,
     Untrodden of God, by no Eternal curbed.