for thence we have discovered that
there's a world of capability for joy, spread round about us,
meant for us, inviting us; and still the soul craves all,
and still the flesh replies, "Take no jot more than ere you climbed
the tower to look abroad! Nay, so much less, as that fatigue
has brought deduction to it." After expatiating on this sad state
of man, he arrives at the same conclusion as the King in his letter:
"I agree in sum, O King, with thy profound discouragement,
who seest the wider but to sigh the more. Most progress
is most failure! thou sayest well."

And now he takes up the last point of the King's letter, that he,
the King, holds joy not impossible to one with artist-gifts,
who leaves behind living works. Looking over the sea, as he writes,
he says, "Yon rower with the moulded muscles there, lowering the sail,
is nearer it that I." He presents with clearness, and with
rigid logic, the DILEMMA of the growing soul; shows the vanity
of living in works left behind, and in the memory of posterity,
while he, the feeling, thinking, acting man, shall sleep in his urn.
The horror of the thought makes him dare imagine at times
some future state unlimited in capability for joy, as this is
in DESIRE for joy. But no! Zeus had not yet revealed such a state;
and alas! he must have done so were it possible!

He concludes, "Live long and happy, and in that thought die,
glad for what was! Farewell." And then, as a matter
of minor importance, he informs the King, in a postscript,
that he cannot tell his messenger aright where to deliver what he bears
to one called Paulus. Protos, it must be understood, having heard
of the fame of Paul, and being perplexed in the extreme,
has written the great apostle to know of his doctrine.
But Cleon writes that it is vain to suppose that a mere barbarian Jew,
one circumcised, hath access to a secret which is shut from them,
and that the King wrongs their philosophy in stooping to inquire
of such an one. "Oh, he finds adherents, who does not.
Certain slaves who touched on this same isle, preached him and Christ,
and, as he gathered from a bystander, their doctrines could be held
by no sane man."

There is a quiet beauty about this poem which must insinuate itself
into the feelings of every reader. In tone it resembles
the `Epistle of Karshish, the Arab Physician'. The verse
of both poems is very beautiful. No one can read these two poems,
and `Bishop Blougram's Apology'