did give, as ye have the written word:
But when, beholding that love everywhere,
He reasons, `Since such love is everywhere, {505}
And since ourselves can love and would be loved,
We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not',--
How shall ye help this man who knows himself,
That he must love and would be loved again,
Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ, {510}
Rejecteth Christ through very need of Him?
The lamp o'erswims with oil, the stomach flags
Loaded with nurture, and that man's soul dies.

"If he rejoin, `But this was all the while
A trick; the fault was, first of all, in thee, {515}
Thy story of the places, names and dates,
Where, when, and how the ultimate truth had rise,
--Thy prior truth, at last discovered none,
Whence now the second suffers detriment.
What good of giving knowledge if, because {520}
O' the manner of the gift, its profit fail?
And why refuse what modicum of help
Had stopped the after-doubt, impossible
I' the face of truth--truth absolute, uniform?
Why must I hit of this and miss of that, {525}
Distinguish just as I be weak or strong,
And not ask of thee and have answer prompt,
Was this once, was it not once?--then and now
And evermore, plain truth from man to man.
Is John's procedure just the heathen bard's? {530}
Put question of his famous play again
How for the ephemerals' sake, Jove's fire was filched,
And carried in a cane and brought to earth:
THE FACT IS IN THE FABLE, cry the wise,
MORTALS OBTAINED THE BOON, SO MUCH IS FACT, {535}
THOUGH FIRE BE SPIRIT AND PRODUCED ON EARTH.
As with the Titan's, so now with thy tale:
Why breed in us perplexity, mistake,
Nor tell the whole truth in the proper words?'

--
514-539. John anticipates another objection that will be made
to his Gospel, namely, that so many things therein are not cleared up,
that the whole truth is not told in the proper words,
the sceptic claiming that everything should have been so proved

"That the probation bear no hinge nor loop
To hang a doubt on";

that all after-doubt, impossible in the face of truth--truth absolute,
uniform, might have been stopped.

523. Had stopped: would have stopped.

530. the heathen bard's: Aeschylus'.

531. famous play: `Prometheus Bound