Classic Poem

FALSE SEEMING would have ended his discourse,
Though no annoyance showed the God of Love
But rather gave him this encouragement:
" Tell us, all shame aside, explicitly
How you, a holy hermit, as your clothes
Denote, engage in such disgraceful tricks? "
" That's what I seem, but I'm a hypocrite. "
" You go about advising abstinence. "
" True! But with finest food and wine I fill
My paunch, as is befitting a divine. "
" Yet poverty you preach! "
" But wealth has power;
And, howsoe'er I feign that I am poor,
I make no point of being really so.
One hundred thousand times would I prefer
The friendship of the King of France to that
Of any poor man, though he were as good.
When I see naked beggars quake with cold,
On stinking dunghills making plaint and moan,
I intermeddle not in their affairs.
If they are carried to the Hospital,
They go uncomforted by me; for they
Who are not worth an oyster will not feed
My mouth with any alms. What can he give
Who after eating licks his very knife?
Much more agreeable and wise it is
To go to visit some rich usurer;
I comfort him in hope to get his gold.
If evil death should make an end of him,
I'd gladly convoy him unto his grave.
If I'm reproved because I leave the poor
Alone, know you how then I make excuse?
I by my cloak let it be understood
That rich men are more sinful than the poor
And I must counsel those in greatest need.
However, souls endure as great a loss
From poverty as from excess of wealth;
One and the other rob it equally.
Riches and poverty are both extremes;
Sufficiency's the mean where virtue lives.
In Proverbs, chapter thirty, Solomon
Delivers us a text upon this point:
" Guard me, O God, by thine omnipotence
From riches and from beggary alike";
For if a rich man thinks too much of wealth
So he upon this folly sets his heart
That his Creator he forgets. So how
Can one fight poverty and sin at once?
A liar and a thief he needs must be,
Or God lied when he suffered Solomon
To pen for him the text you here have read.
I swear that there is written in no book,
At least not in the Bible that we have,
That Christ or His apostles when on earth
Were ever seen to beg their bread; for they
Would not be mendicants for anything.
Thus taught the masters of divinity
In Paris formerly. Custodians
Of souls, God's shepherds, might enforce demands,
In fullness of their power, but never beg.
After the crucifixion of their Lord,
Disciples to their manual toil returned;
And, by their labor, nothing more or less,
They patiently procured their sustenance,
Living in huts — not palaces or halls —
And gave the poor whate'er surplus they had.
" An able-bodied man should gain his bread
By labor manual and corporal,
Unless he ample patrimony have,
However much he wishes to serve God
And be religious. This should all men do
Save in some cases which I now recall
And will recount to you when I have time.
The Scriptures say that one should further go
And sell his all and work for livelihood
If perfect in his virtue he would be.
The lazy loafer who haunts others' boards
Is a deceiver, living but by lies.
Nor can he reasonably excuse himself
On grounds that he must pray; for it is right,
At all events, that he God's service leave
To make provision for his various needs:
To eat, to sleep, and other things to do.
Our orisons may rest while we're at work;
The truthful Scriptures all agree in this.
" Justinian, who wrote the ancient codes,
Forbids that any able-bodied man
In any manner stoop to beg his bread,
Provided he can find a means of gain.
Rather than countenance such evil ways,
One should such villain hale before the court
And see him flogged. One acts not as he should
Who thus accepts an alms, unless he have
A license that abates the penalty.
I don't see how such license can be got
Unless a prince has been deceived, or how
He rightfully can have the power to grant.
I say not this in order to define
The power of princes; I no question make
Whether their sway extends to such a case.
I should not get myself mixed up in this;
But, by the letter of the law, I think
That one who eats the alms which ought to go
To people spent and feeble, naked, poor,
Covered with sores and old, unfit to earn
Their bread because they are too weak to work,
His own damnation eats, depriving them,
Unless Adam's Creator has told lies.
" Remember, when Christ told the rich young man
To sell his goods, give alms, and follow Him,
He meant not he should in His service live
By beggary. That was not His intent.
Rather that he should labor with his hands
He meant, and follow Jesus in good works.
Saint Paul bid the apostles to procure
Necessities of life by their own toil.
Mendicancy he banned when thus he said:
" Work with your hands; on no one else depend."
He'd not have one of them demand an alms
From those they preached to, nor the gospel sell.
He feared their asking would to taking turn;
For there are many donors in this world
Who give, to tell the truth, because ashamed
To make refusal; or because they wish
To rid themselves of precatory bores.
If but solicitation to escape
They make their gift, what can it profit them?
They lose the merit and the gift itself.
The men who heard the preaching of Saint Paul
Begged him for God's sake to accept their gifts;
However, he'd not reach his hand for them,
But gain his livelihood by his own manual toil. "