Chapter VIII: Epilogue: To Dipsychus (1)

‘I don’t very well understand what it’s all about,’ said my uncle. ‘I won’t say I didn’t drop into a doze while the young man was drivelling through his latter soliloquies. But there was a great deal that was unmeaning, vague, and involved; and what was most plain, was least decent and least moral.’

‘Dear sir,’ said I, ‘says the proverb—“Needs must when the devil drives;” and if the devil is to speak——’

‘Well,’ said my uncle, ‘why should he? Nobody asked him. Not that he didn’t say much which, if only it hadn’t been for the way he said it, and that it was he who said it, would have been sensible enough.’

‘But, sir,’ said I, ‘perhaps he wasn’t a devil after all. That’s the beauty of the poem; nobody can say. You see, dear sir, the thing which it is attempted to represent is the conflict between the tender conscience and the world. Now, the over-tender conscience will, of course, exaggerate the wickedness of the world; and the Spirit in my poem may be merely the hypothesis or subjective imagination formed——’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, my dear boy,’ interrupted my uncle, ‘don’t go into the theory of it. If you’re wrong in it, it makes bad worse; if you’re right, you may be a critic, but you can’t be a poet. And then you know very well I don’t understand all those new words. But as for that, I quite agree that consciences are much too tender in your generation—schoolboys’ consciences, too! As my old friend the Canon says of the Westminster students, “They’re all so pious.” It’s all Arnold’s doing; he spoilt the public schools.’

‘My dear uncle,’ said I, ‘how can so venerable a sexagenarian utter so juvenile a paradox? How often have I not heard you lament the idleness and listlessness, the boorishness and vulgar tyranny, the brutish manners alike, and minds——’

‘Ah!’ said my uncle, ‘I may have fallen in occasionally with the talk of the day; but at seventy one begins to see clearer into the bottom of one’s mind. In middle life one says so many things in the way of business. Not that I mean that the old schools were perfect, any more than we old boys that were there. But whatever else they were or did, they certainly were in harmony with the world, and they certainly did not disqualify the country’s youth for after-life and the country’s service.’

‘But, my dear sir, this bringing the schools of the country into harmony with public opinion is exactly——’

‘Don’t interrupt me with public opinion, my dear nephew; you’ll quote me a leading article next. “Young men must be young men,” as the worthy head of your college said to me touching a case of rustication. “My dear sir,” said I, “I only wish to heaven they would be; but as for my own nephews, they seem to me a sort of hobbadi-hoy cherub, too big to be innocent, and too simple for anything else. They’re full of the notion of the world being so wicked and of their taking a higher line, as they call it. I only fear they’ll never take any line at all.” What is the true purpose of education? Simply to make plain to the young understanding the laws of the life they will have to enter. For example—that lying won’t do, thieving still less; that idleness will get punished; that if they are cowards, the whole world will be against them; that if they will have their own way, they must fight for it. As for the conscience, mamma, I take it—such as mammas are now-a-days, at any rate—has probably set that agoing fast enough already. What a blessing to see her good little child come back a brave young devil-may-care!’

‘Exactly, my dear sir. As if at twelve or fourteen a roundabout boy, with his three meals a day inside him, is likely to be over-troubled with scruples.’

‘Put him through a strong course of confirmation and sacraments, backed up with sermons and private admonitions, and what is much the same as auricular confession, and really, my dear nephew, I can’t answer for it but he mayn’t turn out as great a goose as you—pardon me—_were_ about the age of eighteen or nineteen.’

‘But to have passed _through_ that, my dear sir! surely that can be no harm.’

‘I don’t know. Your constitutions don’t seem to recover it, quite. We did without these foolish measles well enough in my time.’

‘Westminster had its Cowper, my dear sir; and other schools had theirs also, mute and inglorious, but surely not few.’

‘Ah, ah! the beginning of troubles——’

‘You see, my dear sir, you must not refer it to Arnold, at all at all. Anything that Arnold did in this direction——’

‘Why, my dear boy, how often have I not heard from you, how he used to attack offences, not as offences—the right view—against discipline, but as sin, heinous guilt, I don’t know what beside! Why didn’t he flog them and hold his tongue? Flog them he did, but why preach?’

‘If he did err in this way, sir, which I hardly think, I ascribe it to the spirit of the time. The real cause of the evil you complain of, which to a certain extent I admit, was, I take it, the religious movement of the last century, beginning with Wesleyanism, and culminating at last in Puseyism. This over-excitation of the religious sense, resulting in this irrational, almost animal irritability of consciences, was, in many ways, as foreign to Arnold as it is proper to——’

‘Well, well, my dear nephew, if you like to make a theory of it, pray write it out for yourself nicely in full; but your poor old uncle does not like theories, and is moreover sadly sleepy.’

‘Good night, dear uncle, good night. Only let me say you six more verses.’

_DIPSYCHUS CONTINUED._

A FRAGMENT.

[_An interval of thirty years._]

SCENE I.—_In London. Dipsychus in his Study._

_Dipsychus._ O God! O God! and must I still go on
Doing this work—I know not, hell’s or thine;
And these rewards receiving—sure not thine;
The adulation of a foolish crowd,
Half foolish and half greedy; upright judge—
Lawyer acute—the Mansfield and the Hale
In one united to bless modern Courts.
O God! O God! According to the law,
With solemn face to solemn sentence fit,
Doing the justice that is but half just;
Punishing wrong that is not truly wrong!
Administering, alas, God! not Thy law.

(_Knock at the door._)

What? Is the hour already for the Court?
Come in. Now, Lord Chief Justice, to thy work.

(_Enter a Servant._)

_Serv._ My lord, a woman begging to be seen.

_Di._ A woman begging to be seen? What’s this?
’Tis not the duty of your post, my friend,
To give admittance on the busy days
Of a hard labourer in this great world
To all poor creatures begging to be seen.
Something unusual in it? Bid her wait
In the room below, I’ll see her as I pass.
Is the horse there?

_Serv._ He’s coming round, my lord.

_Di._ Say I will see her as I pass. (_Exit Servant._)
I have but one way left; but that one way,
On which once entered, there is no return;
And as there’s no return, no looking back,
Amidst the smoky tumult of this field
Whereon, enlisted once, in arms we stand,
Nor know, nor e’en remotely can divine
The sense, or purport, or the probable end,
One only guide to our blind work we keep,
To obey orders, and to fight it out.
Some hapless sad petitioner, no doubt,
With the true plaintiveness of real distress,
Twisting her misery to a marketable lie,
To waste my close-shorn interval of rest.
_She_ came upon me in my weaker thoughts,
Those weaker thoughts that still indeed recur,
But come, my servants, at a word to go.

(_Enter Woman._)

What is it? what have you to say to me?
Who are you?

_Wom._ Once you knew me well enough.

_Di._ Oh, you! I had been told that you were dead.

_Wom._ So your creatures said;
But I shall live, I think, till you die too.

_Di._ What do you want? Money, subsistence, bread?

_Wom._ I wanted bread, money, all things, ’tis true,
But wanted, above all things, to see you.

_Di._ This cannot be. What has been done is o’er.
You have no claim or right against me more;
I have dealt justly with you to the uttermost.

_Wom._ I did not come to say you were unjust—
I came to see you only.

_Di._ Hear me now.
Remember, it was not the marriage vow,
Nor promise e’er of chaste fidelity,
That joined us thirty years ago in a tie
Which I, I think, scarce sought. It was not I
That took your innocence; you spoiled me of mine.
And yet, as though the vow had been divine,
Was I not faithful? Were you so to me?
Had you been white in spotless purity,
Could I have clung to you more faithfully?
I left you, after wrongs I blush with shame
E’en now through all my fifty years to name.
I left you; yet I stinted still my ease,—
Curtailed my pleasures—toil still extra toil,—
To repay you for what you never gave.
Is it not true?

_Wom._ Go on, say all and more.
Upon this body, as the basis, lies
The ladder that has raised you to the skies.

_Di._ Is that so much? am I indeed so high?
Am I not rather
The slave and servant of the wretched world,
Liveried and finely dressed—yet all the same
A menial and lacquey seeking place
For hire, and for his hire’s sake doing work?

_Wom._ I do not know; you have wife and child I know
Domestic comfort and a noble name,
And people speak in my ears too your praise.
O man, O man! do you not know in your heart
It was for this you came to me—
It was for this I took you to my breast?
O man, man, man!
You come to us with your dalliance in the street,
You pay us with your miserable gold,
You do not know how in the——

_Di._ (_looks at his watch_). You must go now. Justice
calls me elsewhere;
Justice—might keep you here.
You may return again; stay, let me see—
Six weeks to-morrow you shall see me again;
Now you must go. Do you need money? here,
It is your due: take it, that you may live;
And see me, six weeks from to-morrow, elsewhere.

_Wom._ I will not go;
You must stay here and hear me, or I shall die!
It were ill for you that I should.

_Di._ What! shall the nation wait?
Woman, if I have wronged you, it was for good—
Good has come of it. Lo, I have done some work.
Over the blasted and the blackened spot
Of our unhappy and unhallowed deed
I have raised a mausoleum of such acts
As in this world do honour unto me,
But in the next to thee.

_Wom._ Hear me, I cannot go!

_Di._ It cannot be; the court, the nation waits.
Is not the work, too, yours?

_Wom._ I go, to die this night!

_Di._ I cannot help it. Duty lies here. Depart!

_Wom._ Listen; before I die, one word! In old times
You called me Pleasure—my name now is Guilt.

SCENE II.—_In Westminster Hall._

_1st Barrister._ They say the Lord Chief Justice is unwell;
Did you observe how, after that decision
Which all the world admired so, suddenly
He became pale and looked in the air and staggered,
As if some phantom floated on his eyes?
He is a strange man.

_Bar. 2._ He is unwell, there is no doubt of that,
But why or how is quite another question.
It is odd to find so stern and strong a man
Give way before he’s sixty. Many a mind,
Apparently less vigorous than his,
Has kept its full judicial faculty,
And sat the woolsack past threescore and ten.

_Bar. 3._ No business to be done to-day. Have you heard
The Chief Justice is lying dangerously ill?
Apoplexy, paralysis, Heaven knows what—some seizure.

_Bar. 1._ Heavens! that will be a loss indeed!

_Bar. 2._ A loss
Which will be some one’s gain, however.

_Bar. 1._ Not the nation’s,
If this sage Chancellor give it to ——
But is he really sure to die, do you think?

_Bar. 3._ A very sudden and very alarming attack.
And now you know to the full as much as I,
Or, as I fancy, any lawyer here.

_Bar. 2._ Do you know anything of his early life?

_Bar. 1._ My father knew him at college: a reading man,
The quietest of the quiet, shy and timid.
And college honours past,
No one believed he ever would do anything.

_Bar. 2._ He was a moral sort of prig, I’ve heard,
Till he was twenty-five; and even then
He never entered into life as most men.
That is the reason why he fails so soon.
It takes high feeding and a well-taught conscience
To breed your mighty hero of the law.
So much the worse for him; so much the better
For all expectants now.

_Bar. 3._ For ——, for one.

_Bar. 2._ Well, there’ll be several changes, as I think.
Not that I think the shock of new promotion
Will vibrate quite perceptibly down here.
There was a story that I once was told,
Some woman that they used to tease him with.

_Bar. 1._ He grew too stern for teasing before long;
A man with greater power of what I think
They call, in some new sense of the word, Repulsion,
I think I never saw in all my life.

_Bar. 2._ A most forbidding man in private life,
I’ve always heard. What’s this new news?

_Bar. 4._ The Lord Chief Justice has resigned.

_Bar. 1, 2, 3._ Is it true?
Really? Quite certain?

_Bar. 4._ Publicly announced.
You’re quite behind. Most probably ere this
The _Times_ has got it in a new edition.

SCENE III.—_Dipsychus in his own house, alone._

_Di._ She will come yet, I think, although she said
She would go hence and die; I cannot tell.
Should I have made the nation’s business wait,
That I might listen to an old sad tale
Uselessly iterated? Ah—ah me!
I am grown weak indeed; those old black thoughts
No more as servants at my bidding go,
But as stern tyrants look me in the face,
And mock my reason’s inefficient hand
That sways to wave them hence.

_Serv._ You rung, my lord?

_Di._ Come here, my friend. The woman,
A beggar-woman, whom six weeks ago,
As you remember, you admitted to me,
You may admit again if she returns. [_Exit Servant._

Will she return? or did she die? I searched
Newspaper columns through to find a trace
Of some poor corpse discovered in the Thames,
Weltering in filth or stranded on the shoals.

‘You called me Pleasure once, I now am Guilt.’
Is that her voice?—
‘Once Pleasure and now Guilt—and after this
Guilt evermore.’ I hear her voice again.
‘Once Guilt, but now’—I know not what it says;—
Some word in some strange language, that my ears
Have never heard, yet seem to long to know.
‘Once Pleasure and now Guilt, and after this’—
What does she say?—...

POEMS ON LIFE AND DUTY.

_DUTY._

Duty—that’s to say, complying
With whate’er’s expected here;
On your unknown cousin’s dying,
Straight be ready with the tear;
Upon etiquette relying,
Unto usage nought denying,
Lend your waist to be embraced,
Blush not even, never fear;
Claims of kith and kin connection,
Claims of manners honour still,
Ready money of affection
Pay, whoever drew the bill.
With the form conforming duly,
Senseless what it meaneth truly,
Go to church—the world require you,
To balls—the world require you too,
And marry—papa and mamma desire you,
And your sisters and schoolfellows do.
Duty—’tis to take on trust
What things are good, and right, and just;
And whether indeed they be or be not,
Try not, test not, feel not, see not:
’Tis walk and dance, sit down and rise
By leading, opening ne’er your eyes;
Stunt sturdy limbs that Nature gave,
And be drawn in a Bath chair along to the grave.
’Tis the stern and prompt suppressing
As an obvious deadly sin,
All the questing and the guessing
Of the soul’s own soul within:
’Tis the coward acquiescence
In a destiny’s behest,
To a shade by terror made,
Sacrificing, aye, the essence
Of all that’s truest, noblest, best:
’Tis the blind non-recognition
Or of goodness, truth, or beauty,
Save by precept and submission;
Moral blank, and moral void,
Life at very birth destroyed.
Atrophy, exinanition!
Duty!
Yea, by duty’s prime condition
Pure nonentity of duty!

_LIFE IS STRUGGLE._

To wear out heart, and nerves, and brain,
And give oneself a world of pain;
Be eager, angry, fierce, and hot,
Imperious, supple—God knows what,
For what’s all one to have or not;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
For ’tis not joy, it is not gain,
It is not in itself a bliss,
Only it is precisely this
That keeps us all alive.

To say we truly feel the pain,
And quite are sinking with the strain;—
Entirely, simply, undeceived,
Believe, and say we ne’er believed
The object, e’en were it achieved,
A thing we e’er had cared to keep;
With heart and soul to hold it cheap,
And then to go and try it again;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
O, ’tis not joy, and ’tis not bliss,
Only it is precisely this
That keeps us still alive.

_IN THE GREAT METROPOLIS._

Each for himself is still the rule;
We learn it when we go to school—
The devil take the hindmost, O!

And when the schoolboys grow to men,
In life they learn it o’er again—
The devil take the hindmost, O!

For in the church, and at the bar,
On ’Change, at court, where’er they are,
The devil takes the hindmost, O!

Husband for husband, wife for wife,
Are careful that in married life
The devil takes the hindmost, O!

From youth to age, whate’er the game,
The unvarying practice is the same—
The devil takes the hindmost, O!

And after death, we do not know,
But scarce can doubt, where’er we go,
The devil takes the hindmost, O!

Ti rol de rol, ti rol de ro,
The devil take the hindmost, O!

_THE LATEST DECALOGUE._

Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?
No graven images may be
Worshipped, except the currency:
Swear not at all; for, for thy curse
Thine enemy is none the worse:
At church on Sunday to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend:
Honour thy parents; that is, all
From whom advancement may befall;
Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive:
Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it:
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it’s so lucrative to cheat:
Bear not false witness; let the lie
Have time on its own wings to fly:
Thou shalt not covet, but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.

_THE QUESTIONING SPIRIT._

The human spirits saw I on a day,
Sitting and looking each a different way;
And hardly tasking, subtly questioning,
Another spirit went around the ring
To each and each: and as he ceased his say,
Each after each, I heard them singly sing,
Some querulously high, some softly, sadly low,
We know not—what avails to know?
We know not—wherefore need we know?
This answer gave they still unto his suing,
We know not, let us do as we are doing.
Dost thou not know that these things only seem?—
I know not, let me dream my dream.
Are dust and ashes fit to make a treasure?—
I know not, let me take my pleasure.
What shall avail the knowledge thou hast sought?—
I know not, let me think my thought.
What is the end of strife?—
I know not, let me live my life.
How many days or e’er thou mean’st to move?—
I know not, let me love my love.
Were not things old once new?—
I know not, let me do as others do.
And when the rest were over past,
I know not, I will do my duty, said the last.

Thy duty do? rejoined the voice,
Ah, do it, do it, and rejoice;
But shalt thou then, when all is done,
Enjoy a love, embrace a beauty
Like these, that may be seen and won
In life, whose course will then be run;
Or wilt thou be where there is none?
I know not, I will do my duty.

And taking up the word around, above, below,
Some querulously high, some softly, sadly low,
We know not, sang they all, nor ever need we know;
We know not, sang they, what avails to know?
Whereat the questioning spirit, some short space,
Though unabashed, stood quiet in his place.
But as the echoing chorus died away
And to their dreams the rest returned apace,
By the one spirit I saw him kneeling low,
And in a silvery whisper heard him say:
Truly, thou know’st not, and thou need’st not know;
Hope only, hope thou, and believe alway;
I also know not, and I need not know,
Only with questionings pass I to and fro,
Perplexing these that sleep, and in their folly
Imbreeding doubt and sceptic melancholy;
Till that, their dreams deserting, they with me
Come all to this true ignorance and thee.

1847

_BETHESDA._

A SEQUEL.

I saw again the spirits on a day,
Where on the earth in mournful case they lay;
Five porches were there, and a pool, and round,
Huddling in blankets, strewn upon the ground,
Tied-up and bandaged, weary, sore and spent,
The maimed and halt, diseased and impotent.
For a great angel came, ’twas said, and stirred
The pool at certain seasons, and the word
Was, with this people of the sick, that they
Who in the waters here their limbs should lay
Before the motion on the surface ceased
Should of their torment straightway be released.
So with shrunk bodies and with heads down-dropt,
Stretched on the steps, and at the pillars propt,
Watching by day and listening through the night,
They filled the place, a miserable sight.

And I beheld that on the stony floor
He too, that spoke of duty once before,
No otherwise than others here to-day,
Foredone and sick and sadly muttering lay.
‘I know not, I will do—what is it I would say?
What was that word which once sufficed alone for all,
Which now I seek in vain, and never can recall?’
And then, as weary of in vain renewing
His question, thus his mournful thought pursuing,
‘I know not, I must do as other men are doing.’

But what the waters of that pool might be,
Of Lethe were they, or Philosophy;
And whether he, long waiting, did attain
Deliverance from the burden of his pain
There with the rest; or whether, yet before,
Some more diviner stranger passed the door
With his small company into that sad place,
And breathing hope into the sick man’s face,
Bade him take up his bed, and rise and go,
What the end were, and whether it were so,
Further than this I saw not, neither know.

1849

_HOPE EVERMORE AND BELIEVE!_

Hope evermore and believe, O man, for e’en as thy thought
So are the things that thou see’st; e’en as thy hope and belief.
Cowardly art thou and timid? they rise to provoke thee against them;
Hast thou courage? enough, see them exulting to yield.
Yea, the rough rock, the dull earth, the wild sea’s furying waters
(Violent say’st thou and hard, mighty thou think’st to destroy),
All with ineffable longing are waiting their Invader,
All, with one varying voice, call to him, Come and subdue;
Still for their Conqueror call, and, but for the joy of being conquered
(Rapture they will not forego), dare to resist and rebel;
Still, when resisting and raging, in soft undervoice say unto him,
Fear not, retire not, O man; hope evermore and believe.

Go from the east to the west, as the sun and the stars direct thee,
Go with the girdle of man, go and encompass the earth.
Not for the gain of the gold; for the getting, the hoarding, the having,
But for the joy of the deed; but for the Duty to do.
Go with the spiritual life, the higher volition and action,
With the great girdle of God, go and encompass the earth.

Go; say not in thy heart, And what then were it accomplished,
Were the wild impulse allayed, what were the use or the good!
Go, when the instinct is stilled, and when the deed is accomplished,
What thou hast done and shalt do, shall be declared to thee then.
Go with the sun and the stars, and yet evermore in thy spirit
Say to thyself: It is good: yet is there better than it.
This that I see is not all, and this that I do is but little;
Nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it.

_BLESSED ARE THEY THAT HAVE NOT SEEN!_

O happy they whose hearts receive
The implanted word with faith; believe
Because their fathers did before,
Because they learnt, and ask no more.
High triumphs of convictions wrought,
And won by individual thought;
The joy, delusive oft, but keen,
Of having with our own eyes seen,
What if they have not felt nor known
An amplitude instead they own,
By no self-binding ordinance prest
To toil in labour they detest:
By no deceiving reasoning tied
Or this or that way to decide.

O happy they! above their head
The glory of the unseen is spread;
Their happy heart is free to range
Thro’ largest tracts of pleasant change;
Their intellects encradled lie
In boundless possibility.
For impulses of varying kinds
The Ancient Home a lodging finds:
Each appetite our nature breeds,
It meets with viands for its needs.

Oh happy they! nor need they fear
The wordy strife that rages near:
All reason wastes by day, and more,
Will instinct in a night restore.
O happy, so their state but give
A clue by which a man can live;
O blest, unless ’tis proved by fact
A dream impossible to act.

_COLD COMFORT._

Say, will it, when our hairs are grey,
And wintry suns half light the day,
Which cheering hope and strengthening trust
Have left, departed, turned to dust,—
Say, will it soothe lone years to extract
From fitful shows with sense exact
Their sad residuum, small, of fact?
Will trembling nerves their solace find
In plain conclusions of the mind?
Or errant fancies fond, that still
To fretful motions prompt the will,
Repose upon effect and cause,
And action of unvarying laws,
And human life’s familiar doom,
And on the all-concluding tomb?

Or were it to our kind and race,
And our instructive selves, disgrace
To wander then once more in you,
Green fields, beneath the pleasant blue;
To dream as we were used to dream,
And let things be whate’er they seem?

O feeble shapes of beggars grey
That, tottering on the public way,
Die out in doting, dim decay,
Is it to you when all is past
Our would-be wisdom turns at last?

_SEHNSUCHT._

Whence are ye, vague desires,
Which carry men along,
However proud and strong;
Which, having ruled to-day,
To-morrow pass away?
Whence are ye, vague desires?
Whence are ye?

Which women, yielding to,
Find still so good and true;
So true, so good to-day,
To-morrow gone away,
Whence are ye, vague desires?
Whence are ye?

From seats of bliss above,
Where angels sing of love;
From subtle airs around,
Or from the vulgar ground,
Whence are ye, vague desires?
Whence are ye?

A message from the blest,
Or bodily unrest;
A call to heavenly good,
A fever in the blood:
What are ye, vague desires?
What are ye?

Which men who know you best
Are proof against the least,
And rushing on to-day,
To-morrow cast away.
What are ye, vague desires?
What are ye?

Which women, ever new,
Still warned, surrender to;
Adored with you to-day,
Then cast with you away,
What are ye, vague desires?
What are ye?

Which unto boyhood’s heart
The force of man impart,
And pass, and leave it cold,
And prematurely old,
What are ye, vague desires?
What are ye?

Which, tremblingly confest,
Pour in the young girl’s breast
Joy, joy—the like is none,
And leave her then undone—
What are ye, vague desires?
What are ye?

Ah yet! though man be marred,
Ignoble made, and hard;
Though broken women lie
In anguish down to die;
Ah yet! ye vague desires,
Ah yet!

By Him who gave you birth,
And blended you with earth,
Was some good end designed
For man and womankind;
Ah yet! ye vague desires,
Ah yet!

The petals of to-day,
To-morrow fallen away,
Shall something leave instead,
To live when they are dead;
When you, ye vague desires,
Have vanished;

A something to survive,
Of you though it derive
Apparent earthly birth,
But of far other worth
Than you, ye vague desires,
Than you.

_HIGH AND LOW._

The grasses green of sweet content
That spring, no matter high or low,
Where’er a living thing can grow,
On chilly hills and rocky rent,
And by the lowly streamlet’s side—
Oh! why did e’er I turn from these?—
The lordly, tall, umbrageous trees,
That stand in high aspiring pride,
With massive bulk on high sustain
A world of boughs with leaf and fruits,
And drive their wide-extending roots
Deep down into the subject plain.
Oh, what with these had I to do?—
That germs of things above their kind
May live, pent up and close confined
In humbler forms, it may be true;
Yet great is that which gives our lot;
High laws and powers our will transcend
And not for this, till time do end,
Shall any be what he is not.
Each in its place, as each was sent,
Just nature ranges side by side;
Alike the oak tree’s lofty pride
And grasses green of sweet content.

_ALL IS WELL._

Whate’er you dream with doubt possest,
Keep, keep it snug within your breast,
And lay you down and take your rest;
Forget in sleep the doubt and pain,
And when you wake, to work again.
The wind it blows, the vessel goes,
And where and whither, no one knows.

’Twill all be well: no need of care;
Though how it will, and when, and where,
We cannot see, and can’t declare.
In spite of dreams, in spite of thought,
’Tis not in vain, and not for nought,
The wind it blows, the ship it goes,
Though where and whither, no one knows.

_πάντα ῥεῖ· οὐδὲν μένει._

Upon the water, in the boat,
I sit and sketch as down I float:
The stream is wide, the view is fair,
I sketch it looking backward there.

The stream is strong, and as I sit
And view the picture that we quit,
It flows and flows, and bears the boat,
And I sit sketching as we float.

Each pointed height, each wavy line,
To new and other forms combine;
Proportions vary, colours fade,
And all the landscape is remade.

Depicted neither far nor near,
And larger there and smaller here,
And varying down from old to new,
E’en I can hardly think it true.

Yet still I look, and still I sit,
Adjusting, shaping, altering it;
And still the current bears the boat
And me, still sketching as I float.

Still as I sit, with something new
The foreground intercepts my view;
Even the distant mountain range
From the first moment suffers change.

_THE STREAM OF LIFE._

O stream descending to the sea,
Thy mossy banks between,
The flow’rets blow, the grasses grow,
The leafy trees are green.

In garden plots the children play,
The fields the labourers till,
And houses stand on either hand,
And thou descendest still.

O life descending into death,
Our waking eyes behold,
Parent and friend thy lapse attend,
Companions young and old.

Strong purposes our mind possess,
Our hearts affections fill,
We toil and earn, we seek and learn,
And thou descendest still.

O end to which our currents tend,
Inevitable sea,
To which we flow, what do we know,
What shall we guess of thee?

A roar we hear upon thy shore,
As we our course fulfil;
Scarce we divine a sun will shine
And be above us still.

_IN A LONDON SQUARE._

Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane,
East wind and frost are safely gone;
With zephyr mild and balmy rain
The summer comes serenely on;
Earth, air, and sun and skies combine
To promise all that’s kind and fair:—
But thou, O human heart of mine,
Be still, contain thyself, and bear.

December days were brief and chill,
The winds of March were wild and drear,
And, nearing and receding still,
Spring never would, we thought, be here.
The leaves that burst, the suns that shine,
Had, not the less, their certain date:—
And thou, O human heart of mine,
Be still, refrain thyself, and wait.

THE BOTHIE OF TOBER-NA-VUOLICH: A LONG-VACATION PASTORAL.

_Nunc formosissimus annus_
_Ite meæ felix quondam pecus, ite camenæ._

_THE BOTHIE OF TOBER-NA-VUOLICH._

I

_Socii cratera coronant._

It was the afternoon; and the sports were now at the ending.
Long had the stone been put, tree cast, and thrown the hammer;
Up the perpendicular hill, Sir Hector so called it,
Eight stout gillies had run, with speed and agility wondrous;
Run too the course on the level had been; the leaping was over:
Last in the show of dress, a novelty recently added,
Noble ladies their prizes adjudged for costume that was perfect,
Turning the clansmen about, as they stood with upraised elbows;
Bowing their eye-glassed brows, and fingering kilt and sporran.
It was four of the clock, and the sports were come to the ending,
Therefore the Oxford party went off to adorn for the dinner.
Be it recorded in song who was first, who last, in dressing.
Hope was first, black-tied, white-waistcoated, simple, His Honour;
For the postman made out he was heir to the earldom of Ilay
(Being the younger son of the younger brother, the Colonel),
Treated him therefore with special respect; doffed bonnet, and ever
Called him His Honour: His Honour he therefore was at the cottage;
Always His Honour at least, sometimes the Viscount of Ilay.
Hope was first, His Honour, and next to His Honour the Tutor.
Still more plain the Tutor, the grave man, nicknamed Adam,
White-tied, clerical, silent, with antique square-cut waistcoat
Formal, unchanged, of black cloth, but with sense and feeling beneath it;
Skilful in Ethics and Logic, in Pindar and Poets unrivalled;
_Shady_ in Latin, said Lindsay, but _topping_ in Plays and Aldrich.
Somewhat more splendid in dress, in a waistcoat work of a lady,
Lindsay succeeded; the lively, the cheery, cigar-loving Lindsay,
Lindsay the ready of speech, the Piper, the Dialectician,
This was his title from Adam because of the words he invented,
Who in three weeks had created a dialect new for the party;
This was his title from Adam, but mostly they called him the Piper.
Lindsay succeeded, the lively, the cheery, cigar-loving Lindsay.
Hewson and Hobbes were down at the _matutine_ bathing; of course too
Arthur, the bather of bathers, _par excellence_, Audley by surname,
Arthur they called him for love and for euphony; they had been bathing,
Where in the morning was custom, where over a ledge of granite
Into a granite basin the amber torrent descended,
Only a step from the cottage, the road and larches between them.
Hewson and Hobbes followed quick upon Adam; on them followed Arthur.
Airlie descended the last, effulgent as god of Olympus;
Blue, perceptibly blue, was the coat that had white silk facings,
Waistcoat blue, coral-buttoned, the white tie finely adjusted,
Coral moreover the studs on a shirt as of crochet of women:
When the fourwheel for ten minutes already had stood at the gateway,
He, like a god, came leaving his ample Olympian chamber.
And in the fourwheel they drove to the place of the clansmen’s meeting.
So in the fourwheel they came; and Donald the innkeeper showed them
Up to the barn where the dinner should be. Four tables were in it;
Two at the top and the bottom, a little upraised from the level,
These for Chairman and Croupier, and gentry fit to be with them,
Two lengthways in the midst for keeper and gillie and peasant.
Here were clansmen many in kilt and bonnet assembled,
Keepers a dozen at least; the Marquis’s targeted gillies;
Pipers five or six, among them the young one, the drunkard;
Many with silver brooches, and some with those brilliant crystals
Found amid granite-dust on the frosty scalp of the Cairn-Gorm;
But with snuff-boxes all, and all of them using the boxes.
Here too were Catholic Priest, and Established Minister standing
Catholic Priest; for many still clung to the Ancient Worship,
And Sir Hector’s father himself had built them a chapel;
So stood Priest and Minister, near to each other, but silent,
One to say grace before, the other after the dinner.
Hither anon too came the shrewd, ever-ciphering Factor,
Hither anon the Attaché, the Guardsman mute and stately,
Hither from lodge and bothie in all the adjoining shootings
Members of Parliament many, forgetful of votes and bluebooks,
Here, amid heathery hills, upon beast and bird of the forest
Venting the murderous spleen of the endless Railway Committee.
Hither the Marquis of Ayr, and Dalgarnish Earl and Croupier,
And at their side, amid murmurs of welcome, long looked-for, himself too
Eager, the grey, but boy-hearted Sir Hector, the Chief and the Chairman.
Then was the dinner served, and the Minister prayed for a blessing,
And to the viands before them with knife and with fork they beset them:
Venison, the red and the roe, with mutton; and grouse succeeding;
Such was the feast, with whisky of course, and at top and bottom
Small decanters of sherry, not overchoice, for the gentry.
So to the viands before them with laughter and chat they beset them.
And, when on flesh and on fowl had appetite duly been sated,
Up rose the Catholic Priest and returned God thanks for the dinner.
Then on all tables were set black bottles of well-mixed toddy,
And, with the bottles and glasses before them, they sat, digesting,
Talking, enjoying, but chiefly awaiting the toasts and speeches.

Spare me, O great Recollection! for words to the task were unequal,
Spare me, O mistress of Song! nor bid me remember minutely
All that was said and done o’er the well-mixed tempting toddy;
How were healths proposed and drunk ‘with all the honours,’
Glasses and bonnets waving, and three-times-three thrice over,
Queen, and Prince, and Army, and Landlords all, and Keepers;
Bid me not, grammar defying, repeat from grammar-defiers
Long constructions strange and plusquam-Thucydidean;
Tell how, as sudden torrent in time of speat[7] in the mountain
Hurries six ways at once, and takes at last to the roughest,
Or as the practised rider at Astley’s or Franconi’s
Skilfully, boldly bestrides many steeds at once in the gallop,
Crossing from this to that, with one leg here, one yonder,
So, less skilful, but equally bold, and wild as the torrent,
All through sentences six at a time, unsuspecting of syntax,
Hurried the lively good-will and garrulous tale of Sir Hector.
Left to oblivion be it, the memory, faithful as ever,
How the Marquis of Ayr, with wonderful gesticulation,
Floundering on through game and mess-room recollections,
Gossip of neighbouring forest, praise of targeted gillies,
Anticipation of royal visit, skits at pedestrians,
Swore he would never abandon his country, nor give up deer-stalking;
How, too, more brief, and plainer, in spite of the Gaelic accent,
Highland peasants gave courteous answer to flattering nobles.
Two orations alone the memorial song will render;
For at the banquet’s close spake thus the lively Sir Hector,
Somewhat husky with praises exuberant, often repeated,
Pleasant to him and to them, of the gallant Highland soldiers
Whom he erst led in the fight;—something husky, but ready, though weary,
Up to them rose and spoke the grey but gladsome chieftain:—
Fill up your glasses, my friends, once more,—With all the honours!
There was a toast I forgot, which our gallant Highland homes have
Always welcomed the stranger, delighted, I may say, to see such
Fine young men at my table—My friends! are you ready? the Strangers.
Gentlemen, here are your healths,—and I wish you—With all the honours!
So he said, and the cheers ensued, and all the honours,
All our Collegians were bowed to, the Attaché detecting His Honour,
Guardsman moving to Arthur, and Marquis sidling to Airlie,
And the small Piper below getting up and nodding to Lindsay.
But, while the healths were being drunk, was much tribulation and
trouble,
Nodding and beckoning across, observed of Attaché and Guardsman:
Adam wouldn’t speak,—indeed it was certain he couldn’t;
Hewson could, and would if they wished; Philip Hewson a poet,
Hewson a radical hot, hating lords and scorning ladies,
Silent mostly, but often reviling in fire and fury
Feudal tenures, mercantile lords, competition and bishops,
Liveries, armorial bearings, amongst other matters the Game-laws:
He could speak, and was asked to by Adam; but Lindsay aloud cried,
(Whisky was hot in his brain,) Confound it, no, not Hewson,
Ain’t he cock-sure to bring in his eternal political humbug?
However, so it must be, and after due pause of silence,
Waving his hand to Lindsay, and smiling oddly to Adam,
Up to them rose and spoke the poet and radical Hewson:—
I am, I think, perhaps the most perfect stranger present.
I have not, as have some of my friends, in my veins some tincture,
Some few ounces of Scottish blood; no, nothing like it.
I am therefore perhaps the fittest to answer and thank you.
So I thank you, sir, for myself and for my companions,
Heartily thank you all for this unexpected greeting,
All the more welcome, as showing you do not account us intruders,
Are not unwilling to see the north and the south forgather.
And, surely, seldom have Scotch and English more thoroughly mingled;
Scarcely with warmer hearts, and clearer feeling of manhood,
Even in tourney, and foray, and fray, and regular battle.
Where the life and the strength came out in the tug and tussle,
Scarcely, where man met man, and soul encountered with soul, as
Close as do the bodies and twining limbs of the wrestlers,
When for a final bout are a day’s two champions mated,—
In the grand old times of bows, and bills, and claymores,
At the old Flodden-field—or Bannockburn—or Culloden.
—(And he paused a moment, for breath, and because of some cheering,)
We are the better friends, I fancy, for that old fighting,
Better friends, inasmuch as we know each other the better,
We can now shake hands without pretending or shuffling.
On this passage followed a great tornado of cheering,
Tables were rapped, feet stamped, a glass or two got broken:
He, ere the cheers died wholly away, and while still there was stamping,
Added, in altered voice, with a smile, his doubtful conclusion.
I have, however, less claim than others perhaps to this honour,
For, let me say, I am neither game-keeper, nor game-preserver.
So he said, and sat down, but his satire had not been taken.
Only the _men_, who were all on their legs as concerned in the thanking,
Were a trifle confused, but mostly sat down without laughing;
Lindsay alone, close-facing the chair, shook his fist at the speaker.
Only a Liberal member, away at the end of the table,
Started, remembering sadly the cry of a coming election,
Only the Attaché glanced at the Guardsman, who twirled his moustachio,
Only the Marquis faced round, but, not quite clear of the meaning,
Joined with the joyous Sir Hector, who lustily beat on the table.
And soon after the chairman arose, and the feast was over:
Now should the barn be cleared and forthwith adorned for the dancing,
And, to make way for this purpose, the Tutor and pupils retiring
Were by the chieftain addressed and invited to come to the castle.
But ere the door-way they quitted, a thin man clad as the Saxon,
Trouser and cap and jacket of homespun blue, hand-woven,
Singled out, and said with determined accent, to Hewson,
Touching his arm: Young man, if ye pass through the Braes o’ Lochaber,
See by the loch-side ye come to the Bothie of Tober-na-vuolich.

II

_Et certamen erat, Corydon cum Thyrside, magnum._

Morn, in yellow and white, came broadening out from the mountains,
Long ere music and reel were hushed in the barn of the dancers.
Duly in _matutine_ bathed, before eight some two of the party,
Where in the morning was custom, where over a ledge of granite
Into a granite basin the amber torrent descended.
There two plunges each took Philip and Arthur together,
Duly in _matutine_ bathed, and read, and waited for breakfast:
Breakfast commencing at nine, lingered lazily on to noon-day.
Tea and coffee were there; a jug of water for Hewson;
Tea and coffee; and four cold grouse upon the sideboard;
Gaily they talked, as they sat, some late and lazy at breakfast,
Some professing a book, some smoking outside at the window.
By an aurora soft-pouring a still sheeny tide to the zenith,
Hewson and Arthur, with Adam, had walked and got home by eleven;
Hope and the others had stayed till the round sun lighted them bedward.
They of the lovely aurora, but these of the lovelier women
Spoke—of noble ladies and rustic girls, their partners.
Turned to them Hewson, the Chartist, the poet, the eloquent speaker.
Sick of the very names of your Lady Augustas and Floras
Am I, as ever I was of the dreary botanical titles
Of the exotic plants, their antitypes in the hot-house:
Roses, violets, lilies for me! the out-of-door beauties;
Meadow and woodland sweets, forget-me-nots and hearts-ease!
Pausing awhile, he proceeded anon, for none made answer.
Oh, if our high-born girls knew only the grace, the attraction.
Labour, and labour alone, can add to the beauty of women,
Truly the milliner’s trade would quickly, I think, be at discount,
All the waste and loss in silk and satin be saved us,
Saved for purposes truly and widely productive——
That’s right,
Take off your coat to it, Philip, cried Lindsay, outside in the garden,
Take off your coat to it, Philip.
Well, then, said Hewson, resuming;
Laugh if you please at my novel economy; listen to this, though;
As for myself, and apart from economy wholly, believe me,
Never I properly felt the relation between men and women,
Though to the dancing-master I went perforce, for a quarter,
Where, in dismal quadrille, were good-looking girls in abundance,
Though, too, school-girl cousins were mine—a bevy of beauties—
Never (of course you will laugh, but of course all the same I shall
say it),
Never, believe me, I knew of the feelings between men and women,
Till in some village fields in holidays now getting stupid,
One day sauntering ‘long and listless,’ as Tennyson has it,
Long and listless strolling, ungainly in hobbadiboyhood,
Chanced it my eye fell aside on a capless, bonnetless maiden,
Bending with three-pronged fork in a garden uprooting potatoes.
Was it the air? who can say? or herself, or the charm of the labour?
But a new thing was in me; and longing delicious possessed me,
Longing to take her and lift her, and put her away from her slaving.
Was it embracing or aiding was most in my mind? hard question!
But a new thing was in me; I, too, was a youth among maidens:
Was it the air I who can say! but in part ’twas the charm of the labour.
Still, though a new thing was in me, the poets revealed themselves to me,
And in my dreams by Miranda, her Ferdinand, often I wandered,
Though all the fuss about girls, the giggling and toying and coying,
Were not so strange as before, so incomprehensible purely;
Still, as before (and as now), balls, dances, and evening parties,
Shooting with bows, going shopping together, and hearing them singing,
Dangling beside them, and turning the leaves on the dreary piano,
Offering unneeded arms, performing dull farces of escort,
Seemed like a sort of unnatural up-in-the-air balloon-work
(Or what to me is as hateful, a riding about in a carriage),
Utter removal from work, mother earth, and the objects of living.
Hungry and fainting for food, you ask me to join you in snapping—
What but a pink-paper comfit, with motto romantic inside it?
Wishing to stock me a garden, I’m sent to a table of nosegays;
Better a crust of black bread than a mountain of paper confections,
Better a daisy in earth than a dahlia cut and gathered,
Better a cowslip with root than a prize carnation without it.
That I allow, said Adam.
But he, with the bit in his teeth, scarce
Breathed a brief moment, and hurried exultingly on with his rider,
Far over hillock, and runnel, and bramble, away in the champaign,
Snorting defiance and force, the white foam flecking his flanks, the
Rein hanging loose to his neck, and head projecting before him.