The Third Part

Summary

In praise of counsel soundly based

On knowledge and discerning taste^a

‘WHO’, SAID THE CYNIC, ‘is the one whose lips

With fine speech and perceptiveness eclipse

Counsel?^b Thou braggest, “Doctrine pure I teach:c

Do I, to mere mankind, address my speech?”^d

The mind of simple folk, who drag their feet^e

When thou theologisest, thou dost treat

As fit for demolition, out of sight,

Claiming “My scheme, fully worked out, is right.”^f

Nay, wisdom is an eyesore: vantage ne’er

Did come of counsel, understanding's wear

Is like to disappointment, fouled with dirt;^g

Why, Scripture's adages themselves assert

God's is the only utterance refined,^h

Desirable. No wisdom do we find

Compares with His, as Lord of truth:^j no sort

Of counsel, no perception, is worth aught.

Indeed, the chief of our anointed kings,

Reckoned amongst our leading sages, sings

The simple-minded God Himself protects.^k

And one who, for his own high road, selects

The gull's way of contempt, who flings asidel

Remonstrance, and ignores advice as guide,

Perchance may rise, as did a peasant once,

To wealth and rank, though he was but a dunce;

His livelihood by toil and moil he earned,^m,1

And but a deaf ear to suggestions turned

Professed by one who, judging him a fool,

By crushing thought his doltishnessⁿ to school.

But, in a storming temper, he despised^o

His high-flown speech, and all that he advised,

As though insight reeled, drunken. But his own

Numskull's purblindness—that, and that alone,

The cause was why his poor estate did mend:^p

His story I rehearse, right to the end.

’Tis told there lived in lands ruled by the Turk

A man who, for his living, used to work

The soil^q—a village-dweller, ranging round

Outlying farms,^r the folds and open ground.

His constant labour had reduced what brain

He ever had, and left him scarcely sane

Enough his left hand from his right to know.^s

For him a three days’ journey^t was to go

To where the merchant princes came to trade.

One year, upon his tenement he made

A plot of saplings, known by those who live

Off silk-production as superlative.