Sweet everlasting Love, daughter of God,

Whose dancing deluges the world with light,

Come down and sprinkle wild flowers on your way

And rain down moisture on our barren plains;

Enter the stony provinces of Greece

Where thousands of blaspheming tongues are loose,

And save us from their plague of babbling lies.

Come quickly, since for more than forty years,

Under Constans and Constantius, Valens, Julian,

What have we done but war on one another?

Bishops from Pontus, Media, Thessalonica,

Presbyters come from Africa and Italy,

Deacons from Paphlagonia, Crete and Syria;

Fronto the prefect of Nicopolis;

George of Illyricum and John of Trebizond

Encroaching, with Eusebian Antioch:

Flying about like beetles, meet in Councils

Eternal as the Caesars; where we all

Can now do nothing but re-write the Creed.

And now we can agree, and now it holds

Until we eat or sleep, or the wind changes,

And then we tear it up, recant it scoffingly—

Determine, and undo determinations—

Prohibit, and ignore our prohibitions—

Profit by ambiguities, form parties,

And angling in two Testaments for novelties

Maintain the edge of anger, but forget

The bread of angels, trodden into dust.