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ReadingWillow structured literacy program for Australian students
Poetry Library

— Stephen Crane

I stood upon a high place,

And saw, below, many devils

Running, leaping,

And carousing in sin.

…

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adjective

Engaged in or ready for action; characterized by energetic work, thought, or speech.

“The students were very active in class discussions, asking many thoughtful questions.”

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Note X.

43 lines
John Dryden·1631–1700
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Industrious of the needle and the chart,They run full sail to their Japonian mart;Preventing fear, and prodigal of fame,Sell all of Christian to the very name._--P. 179. The author has, a little above, used an argument, much to the honourof the Catholic church--her unceasing diligence in labouring for theconversion of the heathen; a task, in which her missionaries havelaboured with unwearied assiduity, encountering fatigue, danger, andmartyrdom itself, in winning souls to the faith. It has been justlyobjected, that the spiritual instruction of their converts is butslight and superficial; yet still their missionary zeal forms a strongcontrast to the indifference of the reformed churches in this duty.Nothing of the kind has ever been attempted on a great or nationalscale by the church of England, which gives Catholics room to upbraidher clergy with their unambitious sloth in declining the dignity ofbecoming bishops _in partibus infidelium_. The poet goes on to statethe scandalous materials with which it has been the universal customof Britain to supply the population of her colonies; the very dregsand outcasts of humanity being the only recruits whom she destines toestablish the future marts for her commodities. The success of suchmissionaries among the savage tribes, who have the misfortune to beplaced in their vicinity, may be easily guessed: Deliberate and undeceived,The wild men's vices they received,And gave them back their own. _Wordsworth._ On the other hand, the care of the Catholic missionaries was by nomeans limited to the spiritual concerns of those heathen among whomthey laboured: they extended them to their temporal concerns, andsometimes unfortunately occasioned grievous civil dissensions, andmuch bloodshed. Something of this kind took place in Japan; where theChristians, having raised a rebellion against the heathens, (for thebeaten party, as Dryden says, are always rebels to the victors,) wereexterminated, root and branch. This excited such an utter hatred ofCatholic priests, and their religion, that they were prohibited, underthe deepest denunciations of death and confiscation, from landingin Japan. Nevertheless, the severity of this law did not preventthe Hollanders from sharing in the gainful traffic of the island,which they gained permission to do, by declaring, that they were notChristians, (only meaning, we hope, that they were not Catholics,) butDutchmen; and it was currently believed, that, in corroboration oftheir assertion, they were required to trample upon the crucifix, theobject of adoration to those whom the Japanese had formerly known underthe name of Christians.
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