When he protested, not too solemnly, 
That for a world?s achieving maintenance 
The crust of overdone divinity 
Lacked aliment, they called it recreance; 
And when he chose through his own glass to scan
Sick Europe, and reduced, unyieldingly, 
The monk within the cassock to the man 
Within the monk, they called it heresy. 

And when he made so perilously bold 
As to be scattered forth in black and white,
Good fathers looked askance at him and rolled 
Their inward eyes in anguish and affright; 
There were some of them did shake at what was told, 
And they shook best who knew that he was right.