Why seek so late? If not his own, why rob
45 Bandit-like? and why ply with words unknown
So oft throughout Law’s rein a People still
Lingering ’neath the Law? If, too, he comes
To pity and to succour all combined,
And to re-elevate men vanquisht quite
50 By death’s funereal weight, and to release
Spirit from flesh’s bond obscene, whereby
The inner man (iniquitously dwarfed)
Is held in check; why, then, so late appear
His ever-kindness, duteous vigilance?
55 How comes it that he ne’er at all before
Offered himself to any, but let slip
Poor souls in numbers? and then with his mouth
Seeks to regain another’s subjects: ne’er
Expected; not known; sent into the orb.
60 Seeking the “ewe” he had not lost before,
The Shepherd ought to have disrobed himself
Of flesh, as if his victor-self withal
Had ever been a spirit, and as such
Willed to rescue all expelled souls,
65 Without a body, everywhere, and leave
The spoiled flesh to earth; wholly to fill
The world on one day equally with corpses
To leave the orb void; and to raise the souls
To heaven. Then would human progeny
70 At once have ceased to be born; nor had
Thereafter any scion of your kith
Been born, or spread a new pest o’er the orb.
Or (since at that time none of all these things
Is shown to have been done) he should have set
75 A bound to future race; with solid heart
Nuptial embraces would he, in that case
Have sated quite; made men grow torpid, reft
Of fruitful seed; made irksome intercourse
With female sex; and closed up inwardly
80 The flesh’s organs genital: our mind
Had had no will, no potent faculty
Our body: after this the “inner man”
Could withal, joined with blood, have been infused
And cleaved to flesh, and would have ever been
85 Perishing. Ever perishes the “ewe:”
And is there then no power of saving her?
Since man is ever being born beneath
Death’s doom, what is the Shepherd’s work, if thus