| |
| LONG pored Saint Austin o’er the sacred page, | |
| And doubt and darkness overspread his mind; | |
| On God’s mysterious being thought the Sage, | |
| The Triple Person in one Godhead joined. | |
| The more he thought, the harder did he find | 5 |
| To solve the various doubts which fast arose; | |
| And as a ship, caught by imperious wind, | |
| Tosses where chance its shattered body throws, | |
| So tossed his troubled soul, and nowhere found repose. | |
| |
| Heated and feverish, then he closed his tome, | 10 |
| And went to wander by the ocean-side, | |
| Where the cool breeze at evening loved to come, | |
| Murmuring responsive to the murmuring tide; | |
| And as Augustine o’er its margent wide | |
| Strayed, deeply pondering the puzzling theme, | 15 |
| A little child before him he espied: | |
| In earnest labor did the urchin seem, | |
| Working with heart intent close by the sounding stream. | |
| |
| He looked, and saw the child a hole had scooped, | |
| Shallow and narrow in the shining sand, | 20 |
| O’er which at work the laboring infant stooped, | |
| Still pouring water in with busy hand. | |
| The saint addressed the child in accents bland: | |
| “Fair boy,” quoth he, “I pray what toil is thine? | |
| Let me its end and purpose understand.” | 25 |
| The boy replied: “An easy task is mine, | |
| To sweep into this hole all the wide ocean’s brine.” | |
| |
| “O foolish boy!” the saint exclaimed, “to hope | |
| That the broad ocean in that hole should lie!” | |
| “O foolish saint!” exclaimed the boy; “thy scope | 30 |
| Is still more hopeless than the toil I ply, | |
| Who think’st to comprehend God’s nature high | |
| In the small compass of thine human wit! | |
| Sooner, Augustine, sooner far, shall I | |
| Confine the ocean in this tiny pit, | 35 |
| Than finite minds conceive God’s nature infinite!” | |
| |
