A Proud Member of the Chimney Sweeps' Club!

I hereby declare myself a member of the yet-to-be instituted Chimney Sweeps' Club!
This is in reference to an image from Robert Browning's Bishop Blougram's Apology, in which an atheist and a worldly Bishop discuss religion or the lack of it, and the grey area between faith and doubt, whichever side of the dividing line you fall, or whichever colour of the checker board you happen to have drawn for the game.
  The image is all about the suspense felt watching a boy leap nimbly along the roof ridge - once he falls to one side or the other the spectacle is over; all the interest's in the boy still a-balance on the line between.

   " ... You see lads walk the street
   Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?
   You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;
   Him you must watch - he's sure to fall, yet stands!
   Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
   The honest thief, the tender murderer,
   The superstitious atheist, ....
   ....
   We watch while these in equilibrium keep
   The giddy line midway:  one step aside,
   They're classed and done with.  I, then, keep the line
    ...."

                                                         lines 391-401


   This long poem repays re-reading and re-reading - I find I have marked many passages in it. Not as delicious as "My Last Duchess" or "Fra Lippo Lippi," but if anything richer in resonant images and layers of thought.

Tschüss!

   -Teufel