Why must he follow the idiot schoolboy code,
Torture his soul to reinforce the sight
Of those that closed their eyes and would not see.
To your own men of science, fifty turns
Of the thumbscrew would not prove that earth revolved.
Call it Italian subtlety if you will,
I say his intricate cause could not be won
By blind heroics. Much that his enemies challenged
Was not yet wholly proven, though his mind
Had leapt to a certainty. He must leave the rest
To those that should come after, swift and young,--
Those runners with the torch for whom he longed
As his deliverers. Had he chosen death
Before his hour, his proofs had been obscured
For many a year. His respite gave him time
To push new pawns out, in the blindfold play
Of those last months, and checkmate, not the Church
But those that hid behind her. He believed
His truth was all harmonious with her own.
How could he choose between them? Must he die
To affirm a discord that himself denied?
On many a point, he was less sure than we:
But surer far of much that we forget
The movements that he saw he could but judge
By some fixed point in space.
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