The Christian Scholar By the Author of "The Cathedral" [i.e. Isaac Williams] |
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SOCRATES REFUSING TO ESCAPE FROM PRISON. |
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 | The Christian Scholar |  |
82
III. SOCRATES REFUSING TO ESCAPE FROM PRISON.
“If thou injurest us,” I think I hear the Laws saying to me, “if thou injurest us, we shall be angry with thee during life, and after death our sisters, the Laws which are in the unseen world, will not receive thee kindly, knowing that thou hast done what in thee lay to destroy us. Therefore be not persuaded by Crito, but by us.”
“Now such, my dear friend Crito, are the things which I seem to hear, as they who act the Corybantes imagine that they hear musical pipes; and as for myself the din of these things is so loud in mine ears, as to render me incapable of hearing any thing else beside.”
Crito.Sleeping and waking didst thou seem to hear
The melodies of that angelic chime,
Which ever sound beyond the sea of time,
So pure Philosophy had charm'd thine ear,
And deaden'd to the noise of this low sphere;
Nothing to hear but the sweet sound sublime
Of heavenly Laws, which from the ethereal clime
Go forth in Laws that upon earth appear!
For in the breast of God they have their birth,
And though so soil'd in contact with our earth,
Yet are they His own ministers below,
And have celestial voices: which to know
Were better, youthful spirits to o'er-rule,
Than all the harmonies of Plato's school.
| The Christian Scholar | |