Chapter XV: Book V: Dedicated to M. G. K (3)

Lament, fair hearted queen, lament with me:
For when thy seer died no song was sung,
Nor for our heroes fal'n by land or sea
Hath honour found a tongue:
Nor aught of beauty for their tomb can frame
Worthy their noble name.
Let Mirth go bare: make mute thy dancing string:
With thy majestic consolation
Sweeten our suffering.
Speak thou my woe; that from her pain
My spirit arise to see again
The Truth unknown that keeps our faith,
The Beauty unseen that bates our breath,
The heaven that doth our joy renew,
And drinketh up our tears as dew.

VII

DIRGE

Man born of desire
Cometh out of the night,
A wandering spark of fire,
A lonely word of eternal thought
Echoing in chance and forgot.

1

He seeth the sun,
He calleth the stars by name,
He saluteth the flowers.--
Wonders of land and sea,
The mountain towers
Of ice and air
He seeth, and calleth them fair:
Then he hideth his face;--
Whence he came to pass away
Where all is forgot,
Unmade--lost for aye
With the things that are not.

2

He striveth to know,
To unravel the Mind
That veileth in horror:
He wills to adore.
In wisdom he walketh
And loveth his kind;
His labouring breath
Would keep evermore:
Then he hideth his face;--
Whence he came to pass away
Where all is forgot,
Unmade--lost for aye
With the things that are not.

3

He dreameth of beauty,
He seeks to create
Fairer and fairer
To vanquish his Fate;
No hindrance he--
No curse will brook,
He maketh a law
No ill shall be:
Then he hideth his face;--
Whence he came to pass away
Where all is forgot,
Unmade--lost for aye
With the things that are not.

VIII

Rejoice, ye dead, where'er your spirits dwell,
Rejoice that yet on earth your fame is bright,
And that your names, remember'd day and night,
Live on the lips of those who love you well.
'Tis ye that conquer'd have the powers of Hell
Each with the special grace of your delight;
Ye are the world's creators, and by might
Alone of Heavenly love ye did excel.

Now ye are starry names
Behind the sun ye climb
To light the glooms of Time
With deathless flames.

IX

Open for me the gates of delight,
The gates of the garden of man's desire;
Where spirits touch'd by heavenly fire
Have planted the trees of life.--
Their branches in beauty are spread,
Their fruit divine
To the nations is given for bread,
And crush'd into wine.

To thee, O man, the sun his truth hath given,
The moon hath whisper'd in love her silvery dreams;
Night hath unlockt the starry heaven,
The sea the trust of his streams:
And the rapture of woodland spring
Is stay'd in its flying;
And Death cannot sting
Its beauty undying.

Fear and Pity disentwine
Their aching beams in colours fine;
Pain and woe forgo their might.
After darkness thy leaping sight,
After dumbness thy dancing sound,
After fainting thy heavenly flight,
After sorrow thy pleasure crown'd:
O enter the garden of thy delight,
Thy solace is found.

X

To us, O Queen of sinless grace,
Now at our prayer unveil thy face:
Awake again thy beauty free;
Return and make our Graces three.
And with our thronging strength to the ends of the earth
Thy myriad-voicèd loveliness go forth,
To lead o'er all the world's wide ways
God's everlasting praise,
And every heart inspire
With the joy of man in the beauty of Love's desire.

19

A HYMN OF NATURE

AN ODE WRITTEN FOR MUSIC

_The music composed by Sir Hubert Parry, performed at
the Gloucester Festival, 1898_

I

Power eternal, power unknown, uncreate:
Force of force, fate of fate.

Beauty and light are thy seeing,
Wisdom and right thy decreeing,
Life of life is thy being.
In the smile of thine infinite starry gleam,
Without beginning or end,
Measure or number,
Beyond time and space,
Without foe or friend,
In the void of thy formless embrace,
All things pass as a dream
Of thine unbroken slumber.

II

Gloom and the night are thine:
On the face of thy mirror darkness and terror,
The smoke of thy blood, the frost of thy breath.

In silence and woful awe
Thy harrying angels of death
Destroy whate'er thou makest--
Makest, destroyest, destroyest and makest.
Thy gems of life thou dost squander,
Their virginal beauty givest to plunder,
Doomest to uttermost regions of age-long ice
To starve and expire:
Consumest with glance of fire,
Or back to confusion shakest
With earthquake, elemental storm and thunder.

III

In ways of beauty and peace
Fair desire, companion of man,
Leadeth the children of earth.

As when the storm doth cease,
The loving sun the clouds dispelleth,
And woodland walks are sweet in spring;
The birds they merrily sing
And every flower-bud swelleth.
Or where the heav'ns o'erspan
The lonely downs
When summer is high:
Below their breezy crowns
And grassy steep
Spreadeth the infinite smile of the sunlit sea;
Whereon the white ships swim,
And steal to havens far
Across the horizon dim,
Or lie becalm'd upon the windless deep,
Like thoughts of beauty and peace,
When the storm doth cease,
And fair desire, companion of man,
Leadeth the children of earth.

IV

Man, born to toil, in his labour rejoiceth;
His voice is heard in the morn:
He armeth his hand and sallieth forth
To engage with the generous teeming earth,
And drinks from the rocky rills
The laughter of life.

Or else, in crowded cities gathering close,
He traffics morn and eve
In thronging market-halls;
Or within echoing walls
Of busy arsenals
Weldeth the stubborn iron to engines vast;
Or tends the thousand looms
Where, with black smoke o'ercast,
The land mourns in deep glooms.

Life is toil, and life is good:
There in loving brotherhood
Beateth the nation's heart of fire.
Strife! Strife! The strife is strong!
There battle thought and voice, and spirits conspire
In joyous dance around the tree of life,
And from the ringing choir
Riseth the praise of God from hearts in tuneful song.

V

Hark! What spirit doth entreat
The love-obedient air?
All the pomp of his delight
Revels on the ravisht night,
Wandering wilful, soaring fair:
There! 'Tis there, 'tis there.
Like a flower of primal fire
Late redeem'd by man's desire.

Away, on wings away
My spirit far hath flown,
To a land of love and peace,
Of beauty unknown.
The world that earth-born man,
By evil undismay'd,
Out of the breath of God
Hath for his heaven made.

Where all his dreams soe'er
Of holy things and fair
In splendour are upgrown,
Which thro' the toilsome years
Martyrs and faithful seers
And poets with holy tears
Of hope have sown.

There, beyond power of ill,
In joy and blessing crown'd,
Christ with His lamp of truth
Sitteth upon the hill
Of everlasting youth,
And calls His saints around.

VI

Sweet compassionate tears
Have dimm'd my earthly sight,
Tears of love, the showers wherewith
The eternal morn is bright:
Dews of the heav'nly spheres.
With tears my eyes are wet,
Tears not of vain regret,
Tears of no lost delight,
Dews of the heav'nly spheres
Have dimm'd my earthly sight,
Sweet compassionate tears.

VII

Gird on thy sword, O man, thy strength endue,
In fair desire thine earth-born joy renew.
Live thou thy life beneath the making sun
Till Beauty, Truth, and Love in thee are one.

Thro' thousand ages hath thy childhood run:
On timeless ruin hath thy glory been:
From the forgotten night of loves fordone
Thou risest in the dawn of hopes unseen.

Higher and higher shall thy thoughts aspire,
Unto the stars of heaven, and pass away,
And earth renew the buds of thy desire
In fleeting blooms of everlasting day.

Thy work with beauty crown, thy life with love;
Thy mind with truth uplift to God above:
For whom all is, from whom was all begun,
In whom all Beauty, Truth, and Love are one.

POEMS
IN
CLASSICAL PROSODY

_PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS_

_Fp. I._ Daniel Press. 1903.

_" II._ _Monthly Review. July, 1903, with
an abstract of Stone's Prosody, as
there used._

_No. 3._ _Printed by C. H. Daniel. 1903._

_" 8._ _In 'Pelican,' C.C.C., Oxford._

_" 9._ _English Review. March, 1912._

_" 21._ _New Quarterly. Jan. 1909, with
an essay on the Virgilian Hexameter,
&c._
/#
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 to _think_ in 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 the _h_ as
_always_ consonantal in quality. His valuation of the _er_ sound 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 (though
_inconsistently_) 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 as _doubtful_. For example on p.
414 _Rūin_ is thus written. Of all accented long vowels in 'open'
position the long _u_ seems 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 a [v] in the gap: these weak places are chiefly
due to my accepting Stone's unchanging valuation of _h_. 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 the _New Quarterly_ by 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.
#/

1

EPISTLE I

TO L. M.

WINTRY DELIGHTS

Now 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 me
Mudbound, unvisited for months with my merry children,
Grateful t'ward Providence, and heeding a slander against me
Less than a rheum, think of me to-day, dear Līonel, and take
This 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--; 10
For, once born, whatever 'tis worth, LIFE is to be held to,
Its mere persistence esteem'd as rēal attainment,
Its crown of silver reverenc'd as one promise of youth
Fruiting, of existence one needful purpose accomplish'd:
And 'twere worth the living, howe'er unkindly bereft of
Those 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 of
Long-plann'd excursions, the romance of journeying in lands
Historic, of sēeing their glory, the famous adornments 21
Giv'n to memorial Earth by man, decorator of all-time,
(--As wē saw with virginal eyes travelling to behold them,--)
Her gorgeous palaces, [v]her tow'rs and stately cathedrals;
Where the turrets and domes of pictured Tuscany slumber,
Or the havoc'd splendours of Rome imperial, or where
Glare 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:-- 30

Set these out of account, and with them too put away ART,
Those ravishings of mind, those sensuous intelligences,
By whose grace the elect enjoy their sacred aloofness
From Life's meagre affairs, in beauty's rēgenerate youth
Reading immortality's sublime revelation, adoring
Their own heav'nly desire; nor alone in worship assist they,
But take, call'd of God, part and pleasure in crēation
Of that beauty, the first of His first purposes extoll'd:--

Yea, set aside with these all NATURE'S beauty, the wildwood's
Flow'ry domain, the flushing, softcrowding loveliness of Spring, 40
Lazy Summer's burning dīal, the serenely solemn spells
Of 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 landscape
Mountainous 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 appearing
As to caress her children, or all that in exaltation 50
Lifteth aloft our hearts to an unseen glory beyond her:--

Put these out of account; yea, more I say, banish also
From the credit sŭm of enjoyment those simple AFFECTIONS,
Whose common exercise informs our natural instinct;
That, set in our animal flesh-fabric, of our very lifeblood
Draw their subsistence, and even in ungenerous hearts
Root, like plants in stony deserts and 'neath pitiless snows.
Yea, put away all LOVE, the blessings and pīeties[v]of home,
All delicate heart-bonds, vital tendernesses untold,
Joys that fear to be named, feelings too holy to gaze on; 60
And with his inviolate peace-trīumph his passionate war
Be forgone, his mighty desire, thrilling ecstasies, ardours
Of 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 art
And 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 rejoicing
In 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 after
His prey fl[=y]ing afield, and that which his arm killeth eateth.

History and SCĪENCE our playthings are: what an untold
Wealth of inexhaustive treasure is stored up for amusement!
Shall the amass'd Earth-structure appeal to me less than in early
Childhood an old fives-ball, whose wraps I wondering unwound,
Untwining the ravel'd worsted, that mere rubbish and waste
Of leather and shavings had bound and moulded elastic 81
Into a perfect sphere? Shall not the celestial earth-ball
Equally entertain a mature enquiry, reward our
Examination of its contexture, conglomerated
Of layer'd débris, the erosion of infinite ages?
Tho' I lack the wizard Darwin's scīentific insight
On the barren sea-beaches of East Patagonia gazing,
I must wond'ring attend, nay learn myself to decipher
Time's rich hīeroglyph, with vast elemental pencil
Scor'd upon Earth's rocky crust,--minute shells slowly collecting 90
Press'd to a stone, uprais'd to a mountain, again to a fine sand
Worn, 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 on[v]her fragmentary pages
Should too lightly reveal frustrate Antiquity, hath laid
Rūin upon rūin, revolution upon revolution:
Yet no single atom, no least insignificant grain 100
But, 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 commandments
By God's finger of old inscribed on table of earth-stone.

This for me wer' enough: yet confin'd Gēology's field
Counts 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 onward
Spiral eddies, the blacken'd dust-motes whirl'd off from around it. 110
But tho' man's microscopical functions measure all things
By his small footprints, finger-spans and ticking of clocks,
And thereby conceive the immense--such multiple extent
As 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 path
Of trackless travelling, the precise momentary places
Of the planets and their satellites, their annual orbits,
Times, perturbations of times, and orbit of orbit. 120
What was Alexander's subduing of Asia, or that
Sheep-worry of Europe, when pigmy Napoleon enter'd
Her 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 compare
With the immortal olive that circles bold Galileo's
Brows, the laurel'd halo[v]of Newton's unwithering fame? 129
Or what a child's surmise, how trifling a journey Columbus
Adventur'd, to a land like that which he sail'd from arriving,
If compar'd to Bessel's magic divination, awarding
Magnificent Sirius[v]his dark and invisible bride;
Or when Adams by Cam, (more nearly Leverrier in France,)
From the minutely measur'd vacillation of Uranus, augur'd
Where his mighty brother Neptune went wandering unnamed,
And thro' those thousand-million league-darknesses of space
Drew him slowly whene'er he pass'd, and slowly released him!
_Nil admirari!_ 'Tis surely a most shabby thinker 139
Who, looking on Nature, finds not the reflection appalling

And if these wonders we must with wonder abandon,
Astronomy's Cosmos, the Immense, and those physical laws
That link mind to matter, laws mutual in revelation,
Which measure and analyse Nature's primordial orgasm,
Lifegiving omnipotential LIGHT, its speed to determine,
Untwist its rainbow of various earthcoloring rays,
Counting strictly to each its own millionth-millimetred
Wave-length, and mapping out on fray'd diffraction of ether
All the adust elements and furnaced alchemy of[v]heav'n;
Laws which atone the disorder of infinit observation 150
With tyrannous numbers and abstract theory, closing
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 exploit
Of famous'd heroes hath so rōmantic a discourse,
As these growing annals of long heav'n-scaling achievement
And far discoveries, which he who[v]idly neglecteth 161
Is but a boor as truly ridiculous as the village clown,
In whose thought the pleasant sun-ball performeth a circuit
Daily 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 reach
Concerning Nature's ēternal essential object,
Self-matter, embodying substratum of ev'ry relation
Both of Time and Space, at once the machinery and stuff
Of those Idēas; carrier, giver, only receiver 171
Of such perceptions as arise in sensible organs.
Now whether each element is a cōherency of equal
Strictly symmetric atoms, or among themselves the atoms are
Like animals in a herd, having each an identity distinct,
--So that atoms of gold compar'd with sulphur or iron
Are but as ancient Greeks compar'd with Chinamen and Turks;--
Nor whether all elements are untransmutable offspring
From one kind or more thro' endless eternity changing,
Or whether invisibles claim rightly the name of immortals,
I make no[v]enquiry; matter minutely divided 181
Showing 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 to
Hath these only channels, (which must limit and qualify[v]it,)
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, 190
Wherein 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 land
Wholly cover'd from sight, pack'd close to the watery margins
With mere empty vessels, I could myself put in each one
Some different substance, and write its formula thereon.'

Thus would speak the chemist; and Nature's superabundance,
Her vast infinitude of waste vāriety untold, 200
As[v]her immense extent and inconceivable object,
Squandering activities throughout ēternity, dwarfeth
Man'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 all
After us unconcern'd to remain, strange, beautiful as now.
May not an idle echo[v]of an antique pōetry haunt me,
'Friendship is all feigning, yea[v]all loving is folly only'?
--Yet doth not very mention of antique pōetry and love 210
Quickly recall to better motions my dispirited faith?
And I see man's discontent as witness asserting
His moral idēal, that, born of Nature, is heir to
Her children's titles, which nought may cancel or impugn;
Not wer' of all her works man least, but ranking among them
Highly or ev'n as best, he wrongs himself to imagine
His soul foe to her aim, or from[v]her sanction an outlaw.
Nay, but just as man should appear more fully accordant
With things not himself, would they rank with[v]him as equals:
Judging other creatures he sets them wholly beneath him;
His disquīet among manifold and alien objects 221
Bēing 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, erecting
Superstructive of all, bringing ev'ry research to the object,
Boldly a new scīence of MAN, from dreamy scholastic
Imprisoning set free, and inveterate divination, 230
Into the light of truth, to the touch of history and fact.
Since 'the proper study of mankind is man',--nor aforetime
Was 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 value
On the delusive efforts of human babyhood; and so
Witnessing impatiently the rear of their disappearance,
Upgathering the relics and vestiges of primitive man,
Should ratify[v]instinct for scīence, look to the darkness
For light, find a knowledge where 'twas most groping or unknown: 240
While civilization's advances mutely regarding
Talk we of old scapegoats, discuss bloodrites, immolations,
Worship of ancestors; explain complexities involved
Of 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 papers
And the worried congestion of our Victorian era,
Whose many inventions of world-wide luxury have changed
Life's very face:--but enough wē hear of progress, enough have 250
Our conscious scīence and comforts trumpeted; altho'
Hardly can I, who so many years eagerly frequented
Bartholomew's fountain, not speak of things to awaken
Kind old HIPPOCRATES, 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 of[v]her deep-foundering empire,
No[v]art or scīence grew so contemptible, order'd 259
So by mere folly, windy caprice, superstition and chance,
As boastful MEDICINE, 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 Laennec
Or Jenner invented his meed of worthy remembrance,)
Did one mind foresee, one seer foretell the appearance
Of that unexpected daylight that arose upon our time.
Who dream'd that living air poison'd our SURGERY, coating
All our sheeny weapons with germs of an invisible death, 270
Till he saw the sterile steel work with immunity, and save
Quickly 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' MEDICINE makes not so plain an appeal to the vulgar,
Yet she lags not a whit: her pregnant thēory touches
Deeper discoveries,[v]her more complete revolution
Gives promise of wider benefits in larger abundance.
Where she nam'd the disease she now separates the bacillus; 280
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 extract
And 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 revelations
Of 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, 291
Are shock'd by[v]a method that shuns not contamination
With crūel Nature's most secret processes unmaskt.
And yet in all mankind's disappointed history, now first
Have[v]his scouts push'd surely within[v]his foul enemies' lines,
And his sharpshooters descried their insidious foe,
Those swarming parasites, that barely within the detection
Of manifold search-light, have bred, swimming unsuspected
Thro' man's brain and limbs, slaying with loathly pollution
His beauty's children,[v]his sweet scīons of affection, 300
In fev'rous torment and tears, his home desolating
Of their fair innocence, breaking[v]his proud passionate heart,
And his kindly belief in GOD'S good justice arraigning.
With what wildly directed attack, what an armory illjudged,
Has he, (alas, poor man,) with what cumbrous machination
Sought to defend himself from their Lilliputian onslaught;
Aye discharging around him, in obscure night, at a venture,
Ev'ry missile which[v]his despair confus'dly imagin'd;
His simples, compounds, specifics, chemical therapeutics,
Juice of plants, whatever was nam'd in lordly Salerno's 310
Herbaries 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 abeyance
These foul distempers, and with this world's benefactors
Shall PASTEUR obtain the reward of saintly devotion,
His crown hēroic, who fought not destiny in vain.

'Tis success that attracts: 'twas therefore so many workers
Ran pellmell to the schools of Nature in our generation, 320
While other employments have lack'd their genius and pined.
Our fathers' likings wē thought semibarbarous, our art
Self-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 that GRACE is dying of old age
I hold in derision, their inkpot thēories of man,
Of his cradle of art, his deathbed of algebra;--and see 330
How Scīence has wrought, since we went idling at Eton,
One thing above surmise:--An' if I may dare to remind you
How Vergil praises your lov'd Lucretius, (of whom
My matter and metre[v]have set you thinking, as I fear,)
In that glory which ends 'et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit 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? 340
If 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 active
Volcano: 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,
All are thrown to the limbo of antediluvian idols, 350
Only because we learn mankind's true history, and know
That not at all from a high perfection sinfully man fell,
But from baseness arose: We have with sympathy enter'd
Those 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'd
Ages since to the drift and drip, the cementing accretions
Whence 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, 360
Its mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, the machairodos, and beasts
Whose unnamed pastures the immense Atlantic inundates.
In what corner of earth lie not dispersed the familiar
Flinty relics of his old primitive stone-cutlery? what child
Kens not now the design, the adapted structure of each one
Of 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, (awaiting
Indestructible, unnumber'd, on chary attention,)
From their prēadamite pulpits now cry Revelation. 370
Not 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 siege
Of courage and happiness protracted so many thousand
Thousand years in a slow persistent victory of brain
And right hand o'er all the venom'd stings, sharpnesses of fang
And 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 infant 380
In[v]his cradle alone; and nought but those petty stonechips
For the battle: 'twas wonder above wonders his achievement:
Yea, and since he thought as a child 'twas natural in[v]him,
Meeting in existence with purposes antagonistic,
Circumstances oppos'd to desire, vast activities, which
Thwarted 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 affections
Was not amiss. The desire and love of beauty possess man:
Art is of all that beauty the best outwardly presented; 391
Truth to the soul is merely the best that mind can imagine.
No lover ēternal will hold to an older opinion
If but lovelier ideas, with Nature agrēeing,
Are to his understanding offer'd.... But enough: 'tis an unsolv'd
Mystery.--Yet man dreams to flatter[v]his dēity saying
'Beautiful is Nature!' rather 'tis various, endless,
And her efforts fertile in error tho' grand in attainment.
If wé, while praising[v]her scheme and infinite order,
Are compell'd to select, our choice condemns the remainder;
Nor can wisdom honour those loathly polluting offences, 401
Whose very names to the Muse are either accursèd or unknown.
Nay, if such foul things thou deemest worthy, the fault was
Making 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 there
One 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, Nature
Scarce observes them at all: that keen unfaltering insight, 410
Whereby[v]earthly desire's roaming wildernesses are changed
Into a garden a-bloom; its wandering impossible ways
Into pillar'd avenues, alleys and fair-flow'ry terrac'd walks,
(Where GOD talks with man, as once 'twas fancied of Eden;)
That transcendental supreme interpreting of sense,
Rendering intelligence passionate with mystery, linking
Sympathy with grandeur, the reserve of dignity with play;
Those soul-formalities, the balance held 'twixt the denīal
And the betrayal of intention, whose masteries invite,
Entice, welcome ever, meet, and with kindliness embrace; 420
Those guarded floodgates of boundless, lovely resources,
Whence nothing ill issues, no distraction nor abortion
Hindering enjoyment, but in easy security flow forth
Ecstasies 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'd
Praiseth 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, 431
We 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 allowing
Ourselves 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.

2

EPISTLE II

TO A SOCIALIST IN LONDON