At the Judgment-bar stood spirits three:
A thief, a fool and a man of degree,
To whom spake the Judge in his Majesty.
To the shivering thief: "Thy sins are forgiven,
For that to repent thou hast sometime striven;
There be other penitent thieves in Heaven."
To the fool: "Poor fool, thou art free from sin;
To My light thou, too, mayest enter in,
Where Life and Thought shall for thee begin."
To the mirror of others, smug and neat,
With the thoughts and sayings of others replete,
This Judgment rolled from the Judgment-seat:
"Remain thou thyself, a worm to crawl.
Thou, doubly damned, canst not lower fall
Than ne'er to have thought for thyself at all."