{408}
{409}
{410}
These experiments in quantitive verse were made in fulfilment of a promise to William Johnson Stone that I would some day test his theory. His premature death converted my consent into a serious obligation. This personal explanation is due to myself for two reasons: because I might otherwise appear firstly as an advocate of the system, secondly as responsible for Stone's determination of the lengths of English syllables. Before writing quantitive verse it is necessary to learn tothinkin quantities. This is no light task, and a beginner requires fixed rules. Except for a few minor details, which I had disputed with Mr. Stone, I was bound to take his rules as he had elaborated them; and it was not until I had made some progress and could think fairly well in his prosody that I seriously criticized it. The two chief errors that I find in it are that he relied too much on the quality of a vowel in determining its syllabic length, and that he regarded thehasalwaysconsonantal in quality. His valuation of theersound is doubtful, but defensible and convenient, and I have never discarded it. My earlier experiments contain therefore a good many 'false quantities', and these, where they could not be very easily (thoughinconsistently) amended, I have left, and marked most of them in the text: a few false quantities do not make a poem less readable. Thus a long mark over a syllable means that Stone reckoned it as long, and that the verse requires it to be so pronounced, but that I regard it as short, or at least asdoubtful. For example on p. 414Rūinis thus written. Of all accented long vowels in 'open' position the longuseems perhaps to retain its quantity best, but there is evidence that Tennyson held it to be shortened, and I do not know whether it might be an exception or go with thĕory, pĭety, pŏetry, &c. Again, where a final syllable should be lengthened or not shortened by position, but lacks its consonantal support, I have put avin the gap: these weak places are chiefly due to my accepting Stone's unchanging valuation ofh. My emancipation from Stone's rules was gradual, so that I have not been able to distinguish definitely my earlier experiments from the later, in which the quantities are such as I have now come to approve of: but my line-for-line paraphrase of Virgil is such a later experiment. It was accompanied in theNew Quarterlyby a long examination of the Virgilian hexameter, to which I would refer any one who is interested in the subject. In these English hexameters I have used and advocate the use of Miltonic elision. The mark ' in the text shows where I have purposely allowed a short syllable to sustain a long place. Though the difficulty of adapting our English syllables to the Greek rules is very great, and even deterrent—for I cannot pretend to have attained to an absolutely consistent scheme—yet the experiments that I have made reveal a vast unexplored field of delicate and expressive rhythms hitherto unknown in our poetry: and this amply rewarded me for my friendly undertaking.
These experiments in quantitive verse were made in fulfilment of a promise to William Johnson Stone that I would some day test his theory. His premature death converted my consent into a serious obligation. This personal explanation is due to myself for two reasons: because I might otherwise appear firstly as an advocate of the system, secondly as responsible for Stone's determination of the lengths of English syllables. Before writing quantitive verse it is necessary to learn tothinkin quantities. This is no light task, and a beginner requires fixed rules. Except for a few minor details, which I had disputed with Mr. Stone, I was bound to take his rules as he had elaborated them; and it was not until I had made some progress and could think fairly well in his prosody that I seriously criticized it. The two chief errors that I find in it are that he relied too much on the quality of a vowel in determining its syllabic length, and that he regarded thehasalwaysconsonantal in quality. His valuation of theersound is doubtful, but defensible and convenient, and I have never discarded it. My earlier experiments contain therefore a good many 'false quantities', and these, where they could not be very easily (thoughinconsistently) amended, I have left, and marked most of them in the text: a few false quantities do not make a poem less readable. Thus a long mark over a syllable means that Stone reckoned it as long, and that the verse requires it to be so pronounced, but that I regard it as short, or at least asdoubtful. For example on p. 414Rūinis thus written. Of all accented long vowels in 'open' position the longuseems perhaps to retain its quantity best, but there is evidence that Tennyson held it to be shortened, and I do not know whether it might be an exception or go with thĕory, pĭety, pŏetry, &c. Again, where a final syllable should be lengthened or not shortened by position, but lacks its consonantal support, I have put avin the gap: these weak places are chiefly due to my accepting Stone's unchanging valuation ofh. My emancipation from Stone's rules was gradual, so that I have not been able to distinguish definitely my earlier experiments from the later, in which the quantities are such as I have now come to approve of: but my line-for-line paraphrase of Virgil is such a later experiment. It was accompanied in theNew Quarterlyby a long examination of the Virgilian hexameter, to which I would refer any one who is interested in the subject. In these English hexameters I have used and advocate the use of Miltonic elision. The mark ' in the text shows where I have purposely allowed a short syllable to sustain a long place. Though the difficulty of adapting our English syllables to the Greek rules is very great, and even deterrent—for I cannot pretend to have attained to an absolutely consistent scheme—yet the experiments that I have made reveal a vast unexplored field of delicate and expressive rhythms hitherto unknown in our poetry: and this amply rewarded me for my friendly undertaking.
{411}
1EPISTLE ITOL. M.WINTRY DELIGHTSNow in wintry delights, and long fireside meditation,'Twixt studies and routine paying due court to the Muses,My solace in solitude, when broken roads barricade meMudbound, unvisited for months with my merry children,Grateful t'ward Providence, and heeding a slander against meLess than a rheum, think of me to-day, dear Līonel, and takeThis letter as some account of Will Stone's versification.We, whose first memories reach half of a century backward,May praise our fortune to have outliv'd so many dangers,—Faultiness of Nature's unruly machinery or man's—;10For, once born, whatever 'tis worth,LIFEis to be held to,Its mere persistence esteem'd as rēal attainment,Its crown of silver reverenc'd as one promise of youthFruiting, of existence one needful purpose accomplish'd:And 'twere worth the living, howe'er unkindly bereft ofThose joys and comforts, throu' which we chiefly regard it:Nay,—set aside the pleasant unhinder'd order of our life,Our happy enchantments of Fortune, easy surroundings,Courteous acquaintance, dwelling in fair homes, the delight ofLong-plann'd excursions, the romance of journeying in landsHistoric, of sēeing their glory, the famous adornments21Giv'n to memorial Earth by man, decorator of all-time,(—As wē saw with virginal eyes travelling to behold them,—)Her gorgeous palaces,vher tow'rs and stately cathedrals;Where the turrets and domes of pictured Tuscany slumber,{412}Or the havoc'd splendours of Rome imperial, or whereGlare the fretted minarets and mosks of trespassing Islam,And old Nilus, amid the mummied suzerainty of Egypt,Glideth, a godly presence, consciously regardless of all things,Save his unending toil and ēternal recollections:—30Set these out of account, and with them too put awayART,Those ravishings of mind, those sensuous intelligences,By whose grace the elect enjoy their sacred aloofnessFrom Life's meagre affairs, in beauty's rēgenerate youthReading immortality's sublime revelation, adoringTheir own heav'nly desire; nor alone in worship assist they,But take, call'd of God, part and pleasure in crēationOf that beauty, the first of His first purposes extoll'd:—Yea, set aside with these allNature'sbeauty, the wildwood'sFlow'ry domain, the flushing, softcrowding loveliness of Spring,40Lazy Summer's burning dīal, the serenely solemn spellsOf Sibylline Autumn, with gay-wing'd Plenty departing;All fair change, whether of seasons or bright recurrent day,Morning or eve; the divine night's wonderous empyrean;High noon's melting azure, his thin cloud-country, the landscapeMountainous or maritime, blue calms of midsummer Ocean,Broad corn-grown champaign goldwaving in invisible wind,Wide-water'd pasture, with shade of whispering aspen;All whereby Nature winneth our love, fondly appearingAs to caress her children, or all that in exaltation50Lifteth aloft our hearts to an unseen glory beyond her:—Put these out of account; yea, more I say, banish alsoFrom the credit sŭm of enjoyment those simpleAFFECTIONS,Whose common exercise informs our natural instinct;That, set in our animal flesh-fabric, of our very lifebloodDraw their subsistence, and even in ungenerous hearts{413}Root, like plants in stony deserts and 'neath pitiless snows.Yea, put away allLove, the blessings and pīetiesvof home,All delicate heart-bonds, vital tendernesses untold,Joys that fear to be named, feelings too holy to gaze on;60And with his inviolate peace-trīumph his passionate warBe forgone, his mighty desire, thrilling ecstasies, ardoursOf mystic reverence, his fierce flame-eager emotions,Idolatrous service, blind faith and ritual of fire.If from us all these things were taken away, (that is all artAnd all beauty whate'er, and all love's varied affection,)Yet would enough subsist in other concerns to suffice us,And feed intelligence, and make life's justification.What this is, if you should ask me, beyond or above the rejoicingIn vegetant or brute existence, answer is easy;70'Tis the reflective effort of mind that, conscious of itself,Fares forth exploring nature for principle and cause,Keenly with all the cunning pleasure and instinct of a hunter,Who, in craft fashioning weapon and sly snare, tracketh afterHis prey flying afield, and that which his arm killeth eateth.History andSCIENCEour playthings are: what an untoldWealth of inexhaustive treasure is stored up for amusement!Shall the amass'd Earth-structure appeal to me less than in earlyChildhood an old fives-ball, whose wraps I wondering unwound,Untwining the ravel'd worsted, that mere rubbish and wasteOf leather and shavings had bound and moulded elastic81Into a perfect sphere? Shall not the celestial earth-ballEqually entertain a mature enquiry, reward ourExamination of its contexture, conglomeratedOf layer'd débris, the erosion of infinite ages?Tho' I lack the wizard Darwin's scīentific insightOn the barren sea-beaches of East Patagonia gazing,{414}I must wond'ring attend, nay learn myself to decipherTime's rich hīeroglyph, with vast elemental pencilScor'd upon Earth's rocky crust,—minute shells slowly collecting90Press'd to a stone, uprais'd to a mountain, again to a fine sandWorn, burying the remains of an alien organic epoch,In the flat accretions of new sedimentary strata;All to be crush'd, crumpled, confused, contorted, abandon'd,Broke, as a child's puzzle is, to be recompos'd with attention;Nature's history-book, which shē hath torn as asham'd of;And lest those pictures onvher fragmentary pagesShould too lightly reveal frustrate Antiquity, hath laidRūin upon rūin, revolution upon revolution:Yet no single atom, no least insignificant grain100But, having order alike of fate, and faulty disorder,Holds a record of Time, very vestiges of the Creation;Which who will not attend scorns blindly the only commandmentsBy God's finger of old inscribed on table of earth-stone.This for me wer' enough: yet confin'd Gēology's fieldCounts not in all Scīence more than the planet to the Cosmos;Where our central Sun, almighty material author,And sustainer, appears as a half-consumed vanishing spark,Bearing along with it, entangled in immensity's onwardSpiral eddies, the blacken'd dust-motes whirl'd off from around it.110But tho' man's microscopical functions measure all thingsBy his small footprints, finger-spans and ticking of clocks,And thereby conceive the immense—such multiple extentAs to defy Idēas of imperative cerebration,—None the less observing, measuring, patiently recording,Hē mappeth out the utter wilderness of unlimited space;Carefully weigheth a weight to the sun, reckoneth for it its pathOf trackless travelling, the precise momentary places{415}Of the planets and their satellites, their annual orbits,Times, perturbations of times, and orbit of orbit.120What was Alexander's subduing of Asia, or thatSheep-worry of Europe, when pigmy Napoleon enter'dHer sovereign chambers, and her kings with terror eclips'd?His footsore soldiers inciting across the ravag'd plains,Thro' bloody fields of death tramping to an ugly disaster?Shows any crown, set above the promise (so rudely accomplisht)Of their fair godlike young faces, a glory to compareWith the immortal olive that circles bold Galileo'sBrows, the laurel'd halovof Newton's unwithering fame?129Or what a child's surmise, how trifling a journey ColumbusAdventur'd, to a land like that which he sail'd from arriving,If compar'd to Bessel's magic divination, awardingMagnificent Siriusvhis dark and invisible bride;Or when Adams by Cam, (more nearly Leverrier in France,)From the minutely measur'd vacillation of Uranus, augur'dWhere his mighty brother Neptune went wandering unnamed,And thro' those thousand-million league-darknesses of spaceDrew him slowly whene'er he pass'd, and slowly released him!Nil admirari!'Tis surely a most shabby thinker139Who, looking on Nature, finds not the reflection appallingAnd if these wonders we must with wonder abandon,Astronomy's Cosmos, the Immense, and those physical lawsThat link mind to matter, laws mutual in revelation,Which measure and analyse Nature's primordial orgasm,Lifegiving omnipotentialLight, its speed to determine,Untwist its rainbow of various earthcoloring rays,Counting strictly to each its own millionth-millimetredWave-length, and mapping out on fray'd diffraction of etherAll the adust elements and furnaced alchemy ofvheav'n;Laws which atone the disorder of infinit observation150With tyrannous numbers and abstract theory, closing{416}Protean Nature with nets of principle exact;Her metamorphoses transmuting by correlation,All heat, all chemical concourse or electrical action,All force and all motion of all matter, or subtle or gross:—If we these wonders, I say, with wonder abandon,Nor can for mental heaviness their high study pursue,Yet no story of adventures or fabulous exploitOf famous'd heroes hath so rōmantic a discourse,As these growing annals of long heav'n-scaling achievementAnd far discoveries, which he whovidly neglecteth161Is but a boor as truly ridiculous as the village clown,In whose thought the pleasant sun-ball performeth a circuitDaily above mother earth, and resteth nightly beneath her.Nor will a man, whose mind respects its own operations,Lightly resign himself to remain in darkness uninform'd,While any true scīence of fact lies easy within reachConcerning Nature's ēternal essential object,Self-matter, embodying substratum of ev'ry relationBoth of Time and Space, at once the machinery and stuffOf those Idēas; carrier, giver, only receiver171Of such perceptions as arise in sensible organs.Now whether each element is a cōherency of equalStrictly symmetric atoms, or among themselves the atoms areLike animals in a herd, having each an identity distinct,—So that atoms of gold compar'd with sulphur or ironAre but as ancient Greeks compar'd with Chinamen and Turks;—Nor whether all elements are untransmutable offspringFrom one kind or more thro' endless eternity changing,Or whether invisibles claim rightly the name of immortals,I make novenquiry; matter minutely divided181Showing a like paradox, with ever-continuous extent,And, as Adam, the atom will pose as a naked assumption:—But since all the knowledge which man was born to attain toHath these only channels, (which must limit and qualifyvit,){417}We shall con the grammar, the material alphabet of life,Yea, ev'n more from error to preserve our inquisitive mind,Than to secure well-bēing against adversity and ill.Surely if all is a flux, 'tis well to look into the flūid,Inspect and question the apparent, shifty behaviour,190Wherein lurketh alone our witness of all physical law,As we read the habits unchanging of invisible things,Their timeless chronicles, the unintelligent ethic of dust:In which dense labyrinth he who was guiding avised me,With caution saying 'Were this globe's area of landWholly cover'd from sight, pack'd close to the watery marginsWith mere empty vessels, I could myself put in each oneSome different substance, and write its formula thereon.'Thus would speak the chemist; and Nature's superabundance,Her vast infinitude of waste vāriety untold,200Asvher immense extent and inconceivable object,Squandering activities throughout ēternity, dwarfethMan's little aim and hour, his doubtful fancy: what are we?Our petty selfseekings, our speedily passing affections?Life having existed so extravagantly before us;Earth bearing so slight a regard or care for us; and allAfter us unconcern'd to remain, strange, beautiful as now.May not an idle echovof an antique pōetry haunt me,'Friendship is all feigning, yeavall loving is folly only'?—Yet doth not very mention of antique pōetry and love210Quickly recall to better motions my dispirited faith?And I see man's discontent as witness assertingHis moral idēal, that, born of Nature, is heir toHer children's titles, which nought may cancel or impugn;Not wer' of all her works man least, but ranking among themHighly or ev'n as best, he wrongs himself to imagineHis soul foe to her aim, or fromvher sanction an outlaw.{418}Nay, but just as man should appear more fully accordantWith things not himself, would they rank withvhim as equals:Judging other creatures he sets them wholly beneath him;His disquīet among manifold and alien objects221Bēing sure evidence, the effect of an understanding,And perception allow'd by Nature solely to himself.Highly then is to be prais'd the resourceful wisdom of our time,That spunged out the written science and thēories of life,And, laying foundation of its knowledge in physical law,Gave it prēeminence o'er all enquiry, erectingSuperstructive of all, bringing ev'ry research to the object,Boldly a new scīence of MAN, from dreamy scholasticImprisoning set free, and inveterate divination,230Into the light of truth, to the touch of history and fact.Since 'the proper study of mankind is man',—nor aforetimeWas the proverb esteem'd as a truism less than it is now,—'Tis strange that the method lay out of sight unaccomplisht,And that we, so late to arrive, should first set a valueOn the delusive efforts of human babyhood; and soWitnessing impatiently the rear of their disappearance,Upgathering the relics and vestiges of primitive man,Should ratifyvinstinct for scīence, look to the darknessFor light, find a knowledge where 'twas most groping or unknown:240While civilization's advances mutely regardingTalk we of old scapegoats, discuss bloodrites, immolations,Worship of ancestors; explain complexities involvedOf tribal marriages, derivation of early religions,Priestly taboos, totems, archaic mysteries of trees,All the devils and dreams abhorr'd of barbarous ages.And 'tis a far escape from wires, wheels and penny papersAnd the worried congestion of our Victorian era,{419}Whose many inventions of world-wide luxury have changedLife's very face:—but enough wē hear of progress, enough have250Our conscious scīence and comforts trumpeted; altho'Hardly can I, who so many years eagerly frequentedBartholomew's fountain, not speak of things to awakenKind oldHippocrates, howe'er hē; slumbereth, entomb'd'Neath the shatter'd winejars and rūined factories of Cos,Or where hē wander'd in Thessalian Larissa:For when his doctrine, which Rome had wisely adopted,Sank lost with the treasures ofvher deep-foundering empire,Novart or scīence grew so contemptible, order'd259So by mere folly, windy caprice, superstition and chance,As boastfulMedicine, with humours fit for a madhouse,Save when some Sydenham, like Samson among the Philistines,Strode bond-bursting along with a smile of genial instinct.Nor when here and there some ray, in darkness arising,Hopefully seem'd to herald the coming dawn, (as when a LaennecOr Jenner invented his meed of worthy remembrance,)Did one mind foresee, one seer foretell the appearanceOf that unexpected daylight that arose upon our time.Who dream'd that living air poison'd ourSURGERY, coatingAll our sheeny weapons with germs of an invisible death,270Till he saw the sterile steel work with immunity, and saveQuickly as its warring scimitars of victory had slain?Saw what school-tradition for nature's kind method admir'd,—In those lifedraining slow cures and bedridden agues,—Forgotten, or condemn'd as want of care in a surgeon?Tho'Medicinemakes not so plain an appeal to the vulgar,Yet she lags not a whit: her pregnant thēory touchesDeeper discoveries,vher more complete revolutionGives promise of wider benefits in larger abundance.Where she nam'd the disease she now separates the bacillus; 280{420}Sets the atoms of offence, those blind and sickly bloodeaters,'Neath lens and daylight, forcing their foul propagations,Which had ever prosper'd in dark impunity unguest,Now to behave in sight, deliver their poisonous extractAnd their strange self-brew'd, self-slaying juice to be handled,Experimented upon, set aside and stor'd to oppose them.So novel and obscure a research, such hard revelationsOf Nature's cabinet,—tho' with fact amply accordant,And by hypothesis much dark difficulty resolving,Are not quickly receiv'd nor approv'd, and sensitive idlers,Venturing in the profound terrible penetralia of life,291Are shock'd byva method that shuns not contaminationWith crūel Nature's most secret processes unmaskt.And yet in all mankind's disappointed history, now firstHavevhis scouts push'd surely withinvhis foul enemies' lines,And his sharpshooters descried their insidious foe,Those swarming parasites, that barely within the detectionOf manifold search-light, have bred, swimming unsuspectedThro' man's brain and limbs, slaying with loathly pollutionHis beauty's children,vhis sweet scīons of affection,300In fev'rous torment and tears, his home desolatingOf their fair innocence, breakingvhis proud passionate heart,And his kindly belief inGod'sgood justice arraigning.With what wildly directed attack, what an armory illjudged,Has he, (alas, poor man,) with what cumbrous machinationSought to defend himself from their Lilliputian onslaught;Aye discharging around him, in obscure night, at a venture,Ev'ry missile whichvhis despair confus'dly imagin'd;His simples, compounds, specifics, chemical therapeutics,Juice of plants, whatever was nam'd in lordly Salerno's310Herbaries and gardens, vipers, snails, all animal filth,Incredible quackeries, the pretentious jugglery of knaves,Green electricities, saints' bones and priestly anointings.Fools! that oppose his one scīentific intelligent hope!Grant us an hundred years, and man shall hold in abeyanceThese foul distempers, and with this world's benefactors{421}ShallPasteurobtain the reward of saintly devotion,His crown hēroic, who fought not destiny in vain.'Tis success that attracts: 'twas therefore so many workersRan pellmell to the schools of Nature in our generation,320While other employments have lack'd their genius and pined.Our fathers' likings wē thought semibarbarous, our artSelf-consciously sickens in qualms of an æsthetic aura,Noisily in the shallows splashing and disporting uninspir'd.Our famed vulgarities whether in speech, taste or amusement,Are not amended: Is it foolish, hoping for a rescue,First to appeal to the strong, for health to the healthy amongst us?—For the Sophists' doctrine thatGraceis dying of old ageI hold in derision, their inkpot thēories of man,Of his cradle of art, his deathbed of algebra;—and see330How Scīence has wrought, since we went idling at Eton,One thing above surmise:—An' if I may dare to remind youHow Vergil praises your lov'd Lucretius, (of whomMy matter and metrevhave set you thinking, as I fear,)In that glory which ends 'et inexorabile fatumSubjecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari':Sounded not most empty to us such boast of a pagan,Strangely to us tutor'd to believe, with faith mediæval,Torture everlasting to be justly the portion of all souls,Nor but by the elects' secret prēdestiny escaped?340If you think to reply,—making this question in answer,—'Did the belief disturb for a moment our pleasure in life?'No.—And men gather in harvest on slopes of an activeVolcano: natheless the terror's ēnormity was there;Now 'tis away: Scīence has pierced man's cloudy common-sense,Dow'rd his homely vision with more expansive an embrace,And the rotten foundation of old superstition exposed.That trouble of Pascal, those vain paradoxes of Austin,Those Semitic parables of Paul, those tomes of Aquinas,{422}All are thrown to the limbo of antediluvian idols,350Only because we learn mankind's true history, and knowThat not at all from a high perfection sinfully man fell,But from baseness arose: We have with sympathy enter'dThose dark caves, his joyless abodes, where with ravening brutes,Bear or filthy hyena, he once disputed a shelter:—That was his Paradise, his garden of Eden,—abandon'dAges since to the drift and drip, the cementing accretionsWhence we now separate his bones buried in the stalagma,His household makeshifts, his hunting tools, his adornments,From the scatter'd skeletons of a lost prehistoric order,360Its mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, the machairodos, and beastsWhose unnamed pastures the immense Atlantic inundates.In what corner of earth lie not dispersed the familiarFlinty relics of his old primitive stone-cutlery? what childKens not now the design, the adapted structure of each oneOf those hand-labor'd chert-flakes, whether axe, chisel, or knife,Spearhead, barb of arrow, rough plane or rudely serrate saw?Stones that in our grandsires' time told no sermon, (awaitingIndestructible, unnumber'd, on chary attention,)From their prēadamite pulpits now cry Revelation.370Not to a Greek his chanted epic had mortal allurement,Conjuring old-world fancies of Ilium and of Olympus,As this story to me, this tale primæval of unsung,Unwritten, ancestral fate and adversity, this siegeOf courage and happiness protracted so many thousandThousand years in a slow persistent victory of brainAnd right hand o'er all the venom'd stings, sharpnesses of fangAnd dread fury whate'er Nature, tirelessly devising,Could develop with tooth, claw, tusk, or horn to oppose them.See now Herakles, who strangled snakes when an infant380Invhis cradle alone; and nought but those petty stonechips{423}For the battle: 'twas wonder above wonders his achievement:Yea, and since he thought as a child 'twas natural invhim,Meeting in existence with purposes antagonistic,Circumstances oppos'd to desire, vast activities, whichThwarted effort, to assume All-might as spiteful against him.Nay, as an artist born, impell'd to devise a religion,—So to relate himself idēally with the immortal,—This quarrel of reason with what displeas'd his affectionsWas not amiss. The desire and love of beauty possess man:Art is of all that beauty the best outwardly presented;391Truth to the soul is merely the best that mind can imagine.No lover ēternal will hold to an older opinionIf but lovelier ideas, with Nature agrēeing,Are to his understanding offer'd.... But enough: 'tis an unsolv'dMystery.—Yet man dreams to flattervhis dēity saying'Beautiful is Nature!' rather 'tis various, endless,And her efforts fertile in error tho' grand in attainment.If wé, while praisingvher scheme and infinite order,Are compell'd to select, our choice condemns the remainder;Nor can wisdom honour those loathly polluting offences,401Whose very names to the Muse are either accursèd or unknown.Nay, if such foul things thou deemest worthy, the fault wasMaking us, O Nature, thy judge and tearful accuser.Turn our thought for awhile to the symphonies of Beethoven,Or the rever'd preludes of mighty Sebastian; Is thereOne work of Nature's contrivance beautiful as these?Judg'd by beauty alone man wins, as sensuous artist;And for other qualities, the spirit's differentia, NatureScarce observes them at all: that keen unfaltering insight,410Wherebyvearthly desire's roaming wildernesses are changedInto a garden a-bloom; its wandering impossible waysInto pillar'd avenues, alleys and fair-flow'ry terrac'd walks,(WhereGodtalks with man, as once 'twas fancied of Eden;)That transcendental supreme interpreting of sense,{424}Rendering intelligence passionate with mystery, linkingSympathy with grandeur, the reserve of dignity with play;Those soul-formalities, the balance held 'twixt the denīalAnd the betrayal of intention, whose masteries invite,Entice, welcome ever, meet, and with kindliness embrace;420Those guarded floodgates of boundless, lovely resources,Whence nothing ill issues, no distraction nor abortionHindering enjoyment, but in easy security flow forthEcstasies of fitness, raptures and harmonies of heav'n.Surely before such work of man, so kindly attemper'd,Nature must be asham'd, had shē not this ready answer,'Fool, and who made thee?'—I shall not seem a deserter,Where in an idle essay my verse to a fancy abandon'dPraiseth others: rather while art and beauty delight us,While hope, faith and love are warm and lively in our hearts,Sweet our earthly desire and dear our human affection,431We may, joyfully despising the pedantries of old age,Hold to the time, nor lose the delight of mortal attainment;Keenly rejoicing in all that wisdom approves, nor allowingOurselves at the challenge of younger craft to be outsailed;But trimming our old canvas in all change of weather and wind,Freely without fear urge o'erseas our good vessel onward,Piloting into the far, unmapp'd futurity.—Farewell.
{425}
2EPISTLE IITOL. M.TO A SOCIALIST IN LONDONNovethical system, no contemplation or action,No reason'd attitude of mind nor principle of faith,Neither Sōcratical wisdom nor saintly devotion,Buildeth a fortress against heart-ache & compassionate grief,Nor responds to desire, nor with true mastery yieldethEasy repose to the mind; And since all our study endethEmptily in full doubt,—fathoming the divine intentionIn this one thing alone, that, howsōe'er it affect us,'Twas never intended for mortal fancy to compass,—Ivhave concluded that from first purposes unknown10None should seek to deduce idēal laws to be liv'd by;And, loving art, am true to the Muse, & pōetry extol:Therefore 'twas that afore I prais'd & heartily enjoy'dYour human verses,Fraser, when nobody bought them,More than again I praise those serious exhortations,Wherewith you wu'd amend the degraded people about you.Nay tho' like a prophet with heav'n-sent dignity inspir'd,With ready convincement and stern example assuring,Mightily you proclaim your love-messag' in the assembly,Exhibiting panacēas of ancient ill, propagating20Out of a Scotch cerebrum the reforming zeal of aTolstoi,I listen all unmov'd, as a sceptic among the believers.Yet what a charm has an earnest soul, whom sympathy unchecktFor human suffering has strengthen'd and dedicatedBravely to serve his kind, to renounce his natural instinct,And liv' apart, indulging in acts of mercy, delightedIn wisdom's rock-hewn citadelvher law to illustrate,Embodying the pattern of self-integrity complete.{426}Yea, what a charm pervades discourse, that loftily reason'dPoints the narrow pathway throu' this world's ugly disorder;How very fair will appear any gate of cleanliness, open30From the city's tumult, its rank impurity, its dreadVulgarity's triumph: Nay sure & bounteous as Truth,Beautiful in confusion appeareth Simplicity's way.—'Simple it is, (yóu say) God is good,—Nature is ample,—'Earth yields plenty for all,—and all might share in abundance,'Were profit and labour but fairly divided among them.'Scarce any laws are needed in our Utopia but these,—'No fruitless labour to provide mere useless adornment,'No money encouraging man's sloth & slavery, no rents40'Of titeld landlords, no pamper'd luxury breeding'Fleshly disease, worst fiend & foe of mind body and soul;'All should work, and only produce life's only requirements:'So with days all halfholidays, toil healthfully enjoy'd,'Each might, throu' leisure hours of amusement pīety and peace,'In the domestic joys & holy community partake.—'—This wer' a downleveling, my friend; yoū need, to assure me,Fix a limit to the folk; else, as their number is increas't,Their happiness may dwindle away, & what was at outsetGoal & prize, the provoker of all your wise revolution,50Will by subdivision disappear in course of atainment.When goods arevincreas'd, mouths arevincreas'd to devour them:If the famine be reliev'd this season in India, next dearthWill be a worse. Yoū know how one day Herschel acostedSúch a philanthropical Save-all, who claimed to acomplishSome greatest happiness for a greatest number; 'Attend, man;(Saíd-he) Resólve me anon one query: Suppose Adam and EveFirst crēated on Earth but twice ten centuries ere Christ,{427}That they gat four children in all, who liv'd, getting alsoFour to the pair: Had thus mankind ever equaly increast60By moderate families but doubling in each generation,How many souls would now be alive to revise the conundrumOf greatest happiness? Novanswer? Well, 'tis a long sum.Say if on earth such a crowd could stand. No? Pray then imágineAll earth's land as a plain, & all this company thereon,Piled together like peas in a pintpot: How many layers?No guess? Then how high the column? How far wu'd it extendInto the sky?—To the moon?—Further—To the sun?—To the sun! Pshaw!That column of happy men would reach up, as I fathom its height,Million dīameters of Neptune's infinit' orbit.'70Myvobjection annoys your kindly philanthropy?—'It proves'Too much.'—Yes nature shows in that scrutiny bankrupt;Mere matter in deposit gives out. Yóu wish to determineNo limit of future polities: your actual objectIs to relieve suffering, to repeal injustice acruingFrom monied inheritance, which makes a nonentity potentFor public mischief, who might, if usefully harness'dIn common employment, have assisted social order.Why should Law give fifty talents where Nature alloys one?For money is the talent of supreme empery: Gold, Gold80Envieth all, getteth all, absorbeth, mastereth all things:It pusheth out & thrusteth away pitilessly the weak ones,Those ill-fated, opprest, unfortun'd needy: Beneath themYawns the abyss. Down down they fall, as a stream on a mountain,With ceaseless cataract. None hearkeneth; only the silentGrave, that darkly devours their cry of desperate anguish.Spáre me the story; believe more feel this grief than avow it:{428}'Tis put aside from thought with death's incurable evil;Left for them, that assume mankind as cause, to lament it.And what if all Nature ratify this merciless outrage?90If her wonder of arch-wonders, her fair animal life,Her generate creatures, her motion'd warmblooded offspring,Haunters of the forest & royal country, her antler'dMild-gazers, that keep silvan sabbath idly without end;Her herded galopers, sleeksided stately careerersOf trembling nostril; her coy unapproachable estrays,Stealthy treaders, climbers; her leapers furry, lissom-limb'd;Her timorous burrowers, and grangers thrifty, the sandyPlaymates of the warren; her clumsy-footed, shaggy roamers;Her soarers, the feather'd fast-fliers, loftily floating100Sky-sailers, exiles of high solitudinous eyries;Her perching carolers, twitterers, & sweetly singing birds;All ocean's finny clans, mute-mouthers, watery breathers,Furtive arrow-darters, and fan-tail'd easy balancers,Silvery-scale, gilt-head, thorn-back, frill'd harlequinadingGlobe and slimy ribbon: Shell-builders of many-chamber'dPearly dwellings, soft shapes mosslike or starry, adorningWith rich floral fancy the gay rock-garden of ebb-tide:All life, from the massive-bulkt, ivory-tusht, elephantineCentēnarian, acknowledging with crouching obeisance110Man's will, ev'n to the least petty whiffling ephemeral insect,Which in a hot sunbeam engend'ring, when summer is high,Vaunteth an hour his speck of tinsely gaudiness and dies:Ah! what if all & each of Nature's favorite offspring,'Mong many distinctions, have this portentous agreement,Mouth,Stomach,Intestine? Question that brute apparatus,So manifoldly devis'd, set alert with furious instinct:What doth it interpret but this, thatLife Liveth on Life?That the select creatures, whovinherit earth's domination,Whose happy existence is Nature's intelligent smile,120Are bloody survivors of a mortal combat, a-tweenwhilesChanting a brief pæan for victory on the battlefield?{429}Since that of all their kinds most owe their prosperous estateUnto the art, whereby they more successfully destroy'dTheir weaker brethren, more insatiably devour'd them;And all fine qualities, their forms pictorial, admired,Their symmetries, their grace, & beauty, the loveliness of them,Were by Murder evolv'd, to 'scape from it or to effect it.'Surely again (yoū say) too much is proven, it argues'Mere horror & despair; unless persuasion avail us130'That the moral virtues are man's idēa, awaken'd'By the spirit's motions; & therefore not to be conceiv'd'In Nature's outward & mainly material aspect,'As that is understood. You, since you hold that opinion,'Run your own ship aground invoking Nature against me.'—Then withdraw the appeal, my friend, to her active alīance;Bē pessimist Nature with a pitchfork manfully expell'd,Not to return. Yetsoul in hand, with brutal alegiance,Hunters & warriorsdo not forget the comandment.See how lively the old animal continueth in them:140Of what trifling account they hold life, yet what a practis'dArt pursue to preserve it: if I should rightly define sportSlaughter with danger, what were more serious and brave?Their love of air, of strength, of wildness, afford us an inklingOf the delight of beasts, with whom they might innocentlyBoast a fellow-feeling, summoning them forth to the combat.Nay dream not so quickly to see her ladyship expell'd.Those prowling Līons of stony Kabylia, whose roarFrights from sleep the huddled herdsmen, soon as the sudden nightFalls on Mount Atlas, those grave uxorious outlaws150Wandering in the Somali desert or waste Kalahari,Sound a challenge that amid summer-idling London is answer'dHaply in Old Bond Street, where some fashionably attired youthDaintily stands poising the weapon foredoom'd to appay them:{430}Orvhe mentally sighteth a tiger of India, that lowCrouches among the river jungles, or hunts desolatingGrassy Tarâi, 'neath lofty Himálya, or far southwardOutacamund, Mysore's residency, the Nilgherry mountainsBy Malabar; yea, and ere-long shall sight him in earnest,Stalked as a deer, surprised where hē lay slumbering at noonUnder a rock full-gorged, or deep in reedy covert hid160By the trackers disturbed: Two grand eyes shall for a momentGlare upon either side the muzzle. Woe then to the hunter,If hē blench! That fury beclouded in invisible speedWhat marksman could arrest? what mortal abide his arrachement?Standing above the immense carcase hē gratefully praisethGod for a man-eater so fine, so worthy the slaying.See him again; 'tis war: one hill-rock strongly defendedChecks advance, to be stormed at cost of half the assailants.Gaily away they go, Highlanders, English, or Irish,170Or swart Ghoorkas against the leaden hail, climbing, ascending,Lost in a smoke, scattering, creeping, here there, ever upwards:Till some change cometh o'er confusion. Who winneth? ah! see!Ours have arrived, and he who led their bravery is there.None that heard will ever forget that far-echoing cheer:Such heard Nelson, above the crashings & thundering of guns:At Marathon 'twas heard and all time's story remembers.See him again, when at home visitingvhis episcopal uncle:That good priest contrast with this good captain, assay them:Find a common-measure equating their rival emotions;180Evaporate the rubbish, the degrading pestiferous fussOf stuck-up importance, the palatial coterie, weigh outThen the solids: whose life would claim the award of an umpireFor greatest happiness? High-priest or soldier? Adjudge it{431}By their books: Let a child give sentence. Ev'n as a magnetTurns and points to the north, so children's obstinate insightFlies to the tale of war, hairbreadth scapes, daring achievements,Discoveries, conquests, the romance of history: these thingsWin them away from play to devour with greedy attentionTill they long to be men; while all that clerkly palaver190Tastes like wormwood.—'Avast! (I hear yoū calling) Avast there!I forbid the appeal.'—Well, style my humour atrocious;Granted a child cannot understand; yet see what a huge growthStands to be extermin'd, ere you can set dibble in ground.Nay, more yet; that mighty forest, whose wildness offends you,And silences appal, where earth-life self-suffocatingSeethes, lavish as sun-life in a red star's fi'ry corona;That waste magnificence, and vain fecundity, breedingGīants & parasites embrac'd in flowery tangle,Interwoven alive and dead, where one tyrannous tree200Blights desolating around it a swamp of rank vegetation;Where Reason yet dreams unawakt, & throu' the solemn dayOnly the monkey chatters, & discordant the parrot screams:All this is in man's heart with dateless sympathy worshipt,With filial reverence, & awful pīeties involv'd;While that other picture, your formal fancy, the gardenOf your stingy promise, must that not quench his imágin'dIdēals of beauty, his angel hope of attainment?What to him are the level'd borders, the symmetric allotments,Where nothing exceedeth, nothing encroacheth, nor assaileth;Where Reason now drudgeth a sad monomaniac, all day211Watering & weeding, digging & diligently manuringHer label'd families, starch-makers, nitrogen-extract-Purveyors, classified potherbs & empty pretendersOf medical virtues; nay ev'n andtheirlittle impulse{432}T'ward liberal fruiting disallow'd by stern regulation;So many beans to a pod, with so many pods to a beanstalk;Prun'd, pincht, economiz'd miserly til' all is abortion,Save in such specimens as, but for an extravagant care,Had miserably perish'd. What madness works to delude you,220Bēing a man, that yoū see not mankind's predilectionIs for Magnificence, Force, Freedom, Bounty; his inbornLove for Beauty, his aim to possess, his pride to devise it:And from everlasting his heart is fixt with affectionsPrēengag'd to a few sovranly determinate objects,Toys of an ēternal distraction. Beautiful isGold,Clear as a trumpet-call, stirring where'er it appearethAll high pow'rs to battle; with mágisterial ardourGlowing among the metals, elemental drops of a fire-god'sLife-blood of old outpour'd in Chāos: Mágical also230EV'RYrecondite jewel of Earth, with their seraphim-names,RUBY, JACYNTH, EMERALD, AMETHYST, SAPPHIRE; amaranthineStarry essences, elect emblems of purity, heirloomsOf deathless glories, most like to divine imanences.Then that heart-gladdening highpriz'd ambrosia, blendingTheir dissolute purples & golds with sparkling aroma,That ruddy juice exprest from favour'd vintages, infus'dWith cosmic laughter, when upon some sécular epactBlandly the sun's old heart is stirr'd to a septennial smile,Causing strangefortun'd comfort to melancholy mortals:240Friend to the flésh, if mind be fatigued; rallying to the sound mind,When succour is needed 'gainst fainting weariness of flesh;Shall Wine not be belov'd? Or now let Aristotle answerWhat goods are,—Time leaves the scholar's inventory unchang'd;—All Virtues & Pow'rs, Honour & Pleasure, all that in our lifeMakes us self-sufficient, Friends, Riches, Comeliness, and Strength;{433}They thatvhave these things in plenty desire to retain them,And win more; while they that lack are pleas'd to desire them.Nay and since possession will leave the desire unappeasèd,Save in mere appetites that vary with our physical state,250Surely delight in goods is an ecstasy rather attendantOn their mental image, than on experienc'd operation.So the shepherd envies the monarch, the monarch the shepherd's lot,—'O what a life were this, How sweet, how lovely!' the king cries.Whence, I say, as a man feels brave who reads ofAchilles;One looking on riches may learn some kindred elation,And whatever notions of fortune, luxury, comfort,Genius or virtue, are shown to him, only as aspectsOf possible bēing, 'tis so much gain to desire them;Learning Magnificence in mean obscurity, tasting260Something of all those goods which Fate outwardly denies him.But say none shall again be king or prosperous or great,—Arguing 'all eminence is unequal, unequal is unjust',—Should that once come about, then alas for this merry England,Sunk in a grey monotone of drudgery, dreamily poringO'er her illumin'd page of history, faln to regretfulWorship of ancestors, with nought now left to delight her,Nought to attain, save one nurst hope, one ambition onlyRed Revolution, a wild Reawakening, & a Renaissance.Impatiently enough yoū hear me, longing to refute me,270While Ivin privileg'd pulpit my period expand.Who could allow such a list of strange miscellaneous items,So-call'd goods, Strength, Ríches, Honour, Gold, Genius, and Wine?Is not Wisdom above Rubies? more than Coral or Pearl?Yours is a scheme deep-laid on true distinctive asortment,Parting use or good from useless or evil asunder;Dismissing accessories, while half my heathenish invoice{434}Are Vanity's vanities. Well; truly, as oldSolomonsaid,So theybe: What is excepted? What scapes his araignment?Is't Pleasure or Wisdom? Nay askTheologia: Good-works,280Saith-she, offend her nostril. If I distinguish, asserting,Say, that if Ivenjoyed my neighbour's excessive incomeI would hire me a string-quartett not an automaton car,You blame equally both our tastes for luxury, indeedHis shows more of a use. If man's propensity is vain,Vulgar, inane, unworthy; 'tis also vain to bewail it:Think you to change his skin? 'Twere scale by scale to regraft itWith purer traditions; and who shall amend the amenders?Nay let bé the bubbles, till man grow more solid in mind,Condemn not the follies: My neighbour's foolery were worse,Sat he agape listening to Mozart, intently desiring291All that time to be rattling alóng on a furious engineIn caoutchouc carapace, with a trail of damnable oilstench.Yea, blame not the pleasures; they are not enough; pleasure onlyMakes this life liveable: nor scout that doctrine as unsound:Consider if mankind from puling birth to bitter deathKnew nought but the sorrows, endured unrespited alwaysThose agonizing assaults which no flesh wholly can escape;Were his hunger a pang like his starvation, alievementThereof a worse torture, like that which full many die with;Did love burn his soul as fire his skin; did affections300Rend his will, as Turks rend men with horses asunder;Were his labour a breathless effort; his slumber occasionFor visiting Furies to repair his temple of anguish;Were thoughts all mockeries; slow intelligence a deception;His mind's far ventures, her voyages into the unseenBut horror & terrified nightmare; None then had ever heardPraise of a Crēator, nor seen any Dēity worshipped.'Twas for heav'nly Pleasure that God did first fashion all thing,{435}Nor with other benefit would holy Religion attract us310Picturing of Paradise. Consult our Lady's Evangel,Where Saint Luke,—colouring (was it unconsciously, suppose you?)Fact and fable alike,—contrasts a beggar with a rich man,And from holding a fool's happiness too greatly in esteemMakes pleasure ēternal the balance of temporal evil,And the reverse; nor shrinks, ascribing thus to the next worldVaster inequalities, harsher perversity than this.Youhave a soul's paradise, its entry the loop of a needle,Come hither & prithy tell me what I must do to be savèdI, that feeding on Idēals in temperat' estate320Seem so wealthy to poor Lazarus, so needy to Dives:What from my heav'n-bound schooner's dispensable outfitHas to be cast o'erboard? What see yoū here that offends you?These myriad volumes, these tons of music:—allow themOr disallow? Fiddle and trichord?—Must all be relinquished?Such toys have not a place in your socīety; you sayNobody shall make them, nor made may justly acquire them.Yet, should a plea be alleged for life's most gracious adornment,For contemplative art's last transcendental achievement,Grief's almighty solace, frolicking Mirth's Purification,330For Man's unparagon'd High-pōetess, inseparate MuseCompanion, the belov'd most dearly among her sisters,Revivifīer of age, fairest instructor of all grace,His peacemaker alert with varied sympathy, whose speechNot to arede and love is wholly to miss the celestialConsolatries, the divine interpreting of physical life,—Yoū wince? make exception? allow things musical? admitSo many faked viols, penny trumpets, and amateurishPerformers? Nay, nay! stand firm, for concession is vain.Music is outmeasurably a barefaced luxury, her plea340Will cover art, (—almost to atone art's vile imitations—);{436}My Japanese paintings, my fair blue Cheney, HellenicStatues and Caroline silver, my beautiful Aldines,Prized more highly because so few, so fondly familiar,Need no tongue to defend them against rude hands, that assail themOnly because their name isRarity; hands insensate,Rending away pitilessly the fair embroideries of life,That close-clust'ring man, his comfort pared to the outskirtsOfvhis discomfort, may share in meanness unenviedBut what if Ivunveil the figure that closely beside you350Half hides his Hell-charred skeleton with mysteries obscene,That foul one, that Moloch of all Utopias, ancientPoisoner & destroyer-elect of innumerous unborn?Know you the story of our hive-bees, the yellow honey-makers,Whose images from of old have haunted Pōetry, settlingOn the blossoms of man's dream-garden, as on the summer-flow'rs,Pictures of happy toil, sunny glances, gendering alwaysSuch sweet thoughts, as be by slumbrous music awaken'd?How all their outward happiness,—that fairy demeanourOf busy contentment, singing at their work,—is an inborn360Empty habit, the relics of a time when considerate joyTruly possest their tiny bodies; when golden abundanceWas not a State-kept hoard; when feasts were plentiful indulg'dWith wine well-fermented, or old-stored spicy metheglin:For they died not then miserably within the second moonForgotten, unrespected of all; but slept many winters,Saw many springs, liv'd, lov'd like men, consciously rejoicingIn Nature's promises, with like hopes and recollections.Intelligence had brought them Scīence, Genius enter'd;Seers and sages arose, great Bees, perfecting among them370Copious inventions, with man's art worthily compared.Then was a time when that, which haps not in ages of ages,Strangely befel: they stole from Nature's secresy one key,{437}Found the hidden motive which works to varīety of kind;And thus came wondrously possest of pow'r to determineTheir children's qualities, habitudes, yea their specialized formMasculine or feminine to produce, or asexual offspringRedow'rd and differenced with such alternative organsAs they chose, to whate'er preferential function adapted,Wax-pocket or honey-bag, with an instinct rightly acordant.We know well the result, but not what causes effected381Their decision to prefer so blindly the race to the unit,As to renounce happiness for a problem, a vain abstraction;Making home and kingdom a vast egg-factory, whereinFood and life are stor'd up alike, and strictly proportion'dIn loveless labour with mean anxīety. WondrousTheir reason'd motive, their altrūistic obedienceUnto a self-impos'd life-sentence of prison or toil.Wonder wisely! then ask if these ingenious insects,(Who made Natur' against her will their activ' acomplice,And, methodizing anew her heartless system, averted391From their house the torrent of whelming natural increase,)Are blood-guiltless among their own-born prógeny: What skillKeeps their peace, or what price buys it? Alack! 'tis murder,Murder again. No worst Oriental despot, assuring'Gainst birthright or faction or envy his ill-gotten empire,So decimates his kin, as do these rown-bodied egg-queensSurprise competitors, and stab their slumbering infants,Into the wax-cradles replunging their double-edged stings.Or what a deed of blood some high-day, when the summervhath400Their clammy cells o'erbrim'd, and already ripening orchardsAnd late flow'rs proclaim that starving winter approacheth,Nor will again any queen lead forth her swarm, dispeoplingTheir strawbuilt citadel; then watch how these busy workersCease for awhile from toil; how crowding upon the devoted{438}Drones they fall; those easy fellows gave some provocation;Yet 'tis a foul massacre, cold murder of unsuspectingLife-long companions; and done bloodthirstily:—is notExercise of pow'r a delight? have yóu not a doctrineThat calls duty pleasure? What an if they make merry, saying'Lazy-livers, runagates, evil beasts, greedy devourers,411'Too happy and too long ye've liv'd, unashamed to have outliv'd'Your breeders, feeders, warmers and toiling attendants;'Had-ye ever been worthy a public good to accomplish,'Each had nobly perish'd long-ago. Unneeded, obese ones,'Impious encumbrance, whose hope of service is over,'Who did not, now can not, assist the community,Ye die!'My parable may serve. What wisdom man hath attain'd toCame to him of Nature's goodwill throu' tardy selection:Should her teaching accuse herself and her method impugn,I may share with her the reproach of approving as artist421Far other idēals than what seem needful in action.This difficulty besets our time. If you have an answer,Write me it, as you keep your salt in savour; or if toilGrant you an indulgence, here lies fair country, direct thenYour Sabbath excursion westward, and spend a summer-dayPreaching among the lilies what youvhave preached to the chimneys.
{439}
3PEACE ODEON CONCLUSION OF THE BOER WAR, JUNE 1902Now joy in all hearts with happy auguries,And praise on all lips: for sunny June comethChasing the thick warcloud, that outspreadSulfurous and sullen over England.Full thirty moons since unwilling enmity,Since daily suspense for hideous perilOf brethren unrescued, beleaguer'dPlague-stricken in cities unprovided,Had quencht accustom'd gaiety, from the dayWhen first the Dutchman's implacable folly,The country of Shakspeare def̄ing,Thought with a curse to appal the nation:Whose threat to quell their kinsmen in AfricaAnger'd awhile our easy democracy;That, reckless and patient of insult,Will not abide arrogant defīance:They called to arms; and war began evilly.From slily forestor'd, well-hidden armouries,And early advantage, the despotStood for a time prevalent against us:Till from the coil of slow-gathering battleHe rancorous, with full moneybags hurried,Peddling to European envyHis traffic of pennyworthy slander.{440}For since the first keel launch'd upon OceanNe'er had before so mighty an armamentO'errun the realm of dark Poseidon,So resolutely measur'd the waters,As soon from our ports in diligent passageO'er half the round world plow'd hither & thitherThe pathless Atlantic, revengefulSoldiery pouring on Esperanza:Nor shows the Argive story of Ilium,With tale of ancient auxiliar cities,So vast a roll of wide allianceAs, rallying to the aid of England,Came from the swarming counties accoutering,And misty highlands of Caledonia,With Cambria's half-Celtic offspring,And the ever-merry fighting Irish:Came too the new world's hardy Canadians,And from remote Australia championsLike huntsmen, and from those twin islandsLying off antipodal beyond her,Under the old flag sailing across the sea:For mighty is blood's empery, where honourAnd freedom ancestral have upbuiltInheritance to a lovely glory.Thee, France, love I, fair lawgiver and scholar:Thy lively grace, thy temper illustrious;And thee, in all wisdom Diviner,Germany, deep melodist immortal;Nor less have envied soft Italy's spirit,In marble unveil'd and eloquent colour:But best love I England, wer' I notBorn to her aery should envy also.{441}Wherefore to-day one gift above every giftLet us beseech, that God will accord to herAlways a right judgement in all things;Ev'n to celestial excellencies;And grant us in long peace to accumulateJoy, and to stablish friendliness and commerce,And barter in markets for unpricedBeauty, the pearl of unending empire.
May, 1902.
4EVENINGFrom Wm. Blake[A]Come, rosy angel, thy coronet donningOf starry jewels, smile upon ev'ry bed,And grant what each day-weary mortal,Labourer or lover, asketh of thee.Smile thou on our loves, enveloping the landWith dusky curtain: consider each blossomThat timely upcloseth, that opensHer treasure of heavy-laden odours.Now, while the west-wind slumbereth on the lake,Silently dost thou with delicate shimmerO'erbloom the frowning front of awfulNight to a glance of unearthly silver.No hungry wild beast rangeth in our forest,No tiger or wolf prowleth around the fold:Keep thou from our sheepcotes the taintingInvisible peril of the darkness.
{442}
5POVRE AME AMOUREUSEFrom Louise Labe, 1555(Sapphics)When to my lone soft bed at eve returningSweet desir'd sleep already stealeth o'er me,My spirit flīeth to the fairy-land ofher tyrannous love.Him then I think fondly to kiss, to hold himFrankly then to my bosom; I that all dayHave lookèd forvhim suffering, repining,yea many long days.O blessèd sleep, with flatteries beguile me;So,vif I ne'er mayvof a surety havevhim,Grant to my poor soul amorous the dark giftof this illusion.
6THE FOURTH DIMENSION(Hendecasyllables)Truest-hearted of early friends, that EtonLong since gáve to me,—Ah! 'tis all a life-time,—With my faithfully festive auspicationOf Christmas merriment, this idle item.Plato truly believ'd his archetypalIdēas to possess the fourth dimension:For since our solid is triple, but alwaysIts shade only double, solids asumbraeMust lack equally one dimension also.Could Platovhave avoided or denied it?{443}So Saint Paul, when in argument opposingTo our earthly bodies bodies celestial,Meant just those pretty Greek aforesaid abstractsOf four Plātonical divine dimensions.If this be not a holy consolationMore than plumpudding and a turkey roasted,Whereto you but address a third dimension,Try it, pray, as a pill to aid digestion:I can't find anything better to send you.