Religio Medici
Religio Medici
Original Text
The Poems of Arthur Conan Doyle (1922; John Murray, 1928): 138-39. 21473.35.1 Widener Library Harvard University
2 And God's own worst will fall;
3But, best or worst or last or first,
4 He ordereth it all.
5For all is good, if understood,
6 (Ah, could we understand!)
7And right and ill are tools of skill
8 Held in His either hand.
9The harlot and the anchorite,
10 The martyr and the rake,
11Deftly He fashions each aright,
12 Its vital part to take.
13Wisdom He makes to form the fruit
14 Where the high blossoms be;
15And Lust to kill the weaker shoot,
16 And Drink to trim the tree.
18 Be solid at the core;
19And Plague and Fever, that the whole
20 Be changing evermore.
21He strews the microbes in the lung,
22 The blood-clot in the brain;
23With test and test He picks the best,
24 Then test them once again.
25He tests the body and the mind,
26 He rings them o'er and o'er;
27And if they crack, He throws them back,
28 And fashions them once more.
29He chokes the infant throat with slime,
30 He sets the ferment free;
31He builds the tiny tube of lime
32 That blocks the artery.
33He lets the youthful dreamer store
34 Great projects in his brain,
35Until He drops the fungus spore
36 That smears them out again.
37He stores the milk that feeds the babe,
38 He dulls the tortured nerve;
39He gives a hundred joys of sense
40 Where few or none might serve.
41And still He trains the branch of good
42 Where the high blossoms be,
43And wieldeth still the shears of ill
44 To prune and prune His tree.
Notes
1] Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) wrote a treatise with this name, "the faith of a doctor," in 1643. Back to Line
17] bole: tree trunk. Back to Line
Publication Notes
Songs of the Road (London: Smith, Elder, 1911). See Harold Locke, A Bibliographical Catalogue of the Writings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Tunbridge Wells: D. Webster, 1928): 59.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2005
Rhyme