Chapter III: Part 3

Nature is right to rate a worthless son,
Though She may find use for him later on.
A battered thing like that, long past its prime,
Rusted and cankered with unlovely grime,
Out of shape and fashion, is good enough
To feed Creation’s furnace with the stuff
It is ever craving, supply of fresh
Material of mortal mind and flesh.
You need not be afraid that you, poor Clown,
Will—deserve as you may—be shovelled down
Into a bottomless pit, or consigned
To Hell, as sport for devils there confined.
How unless from old clay could new be born?
Dust we were, and must, dust to dust, return;
Millions before have fallen to it; thus
Will numberless worse, better, fall like us!
New pots from old—
just that is Nature’s view;
Still the old stuff, although the style be new.
—And Man the stuff; no scrap of Self his own;
Nothing fee simple; all on lease, or loan!

So complain not, as if to strike away
From life ere extreme age, if then, a day
Were robbery. We have, all grant, no right
O’er the past; Nature, keeping this in sight,
Inquires what better title then have we
To stake out a claim in futurity.
Past—no beginning—future—no end—are one;
Neither heeds when Man comes; when he is gone;
And you—when time casts you out, why lament,
More than its neglect in the old descent?
For grievances a fairer you might choose
In the undue postponement of repose.
Sleep is prized as a respite from Earth’s strife,
Yet is checkered by dreams that mimic life;
And death loathed as carrion bird of air,
Though sleep’s original, with no nightmare!
But, perhaps, not delights of life so much
You grieve to lose as that to quit your touch
Upon life, is to leave you face to face
With Hell’s Powers, and at their cruel grace.
Dread not; whatever penalties you owe
You will pay to the full, but not Below.
Hell’s horrors are mere bugbears; and, as they,
Shadows from the realities of day;
Warnings as well.
In no drear realm beneath
Wanders Tantalus, with fear-frozen breath
Lest the huge rock shall snap the slender thread,
And thunder down upon his helpless head.
It is a parable. The weight of cares,
The uncertainties in human affairs—
These men attribute to the wrath of God;
Charging Heaven with strokes from Fortune’s rod.
Never huge Tityos lay chained upon
Torturing bank of pitchy Acheron.
Had such monster lived, and his writhing bulk
Paved, no mere nine acres, a guilt-logged hulk,
But the whole Earth’s circle, neither he could
Supply vultures groping his breast for food,
Nor his nerves endure ages of the strain
Of waiting, with the everlasting pain.
The crazed lover in whose heart desire delves,
And lust gnaws, is Tityos for ourselves.
Look; spy you not passions everywhere
Mounting red-billed from entrails to the air?
Not in Hell is the stone pushed up, that will
Foil Sisyphus by rolling down the hill.
’Tis our Office-badges we see each year
Candidates praying, buying leave to wear—
Ungrateful burden—and worse, after all,
Not be licensed to be the people’s thrall!
The Danaids again; who could in truth
Believe that in despite of bridal ruth
Fifty girls, save one, would shed forth a flood,
At their father’s dictate, of kindred blood,
Or, if so, have paid for the deed in Hell
By drawing, in cracked pitchers, from a well?
Myth ill planned; but ponder it he who feeds
Cross-grained diseases of the soul, ill weeds,
That usurp life’s field, and divert the gaze
From joys that might be his for many days,
To outbursts as self-mocking as the freak
Of pouring water into jars that leak.
Cerberus too, the Furies, and the gloom
Steaming from black Cocytus, and the boom
Of Tartarus, flames and shrieks, horrors seen
By none but bards. They never could have been;
Yet such were, are, will be, at our own hearth,
So long as wrong is rampant on the Earth.
Thriving guilt is haunted. As if to mock
Its rise, is hurled from the Tarpeian rock,
Shivers in dungeons, is scourged, branded, all
To stamp sin’s end, and emphasize pride’s fall.
If Justice often lags, alas, to find
Fit chastisement for crime, and may seem blind,
Conscience is keener-sighted; and its goad
And whip spare not; no mercy for the load.
How cheered would be the sinner could he think
Dying cleared accounts; he had but to sink
In death, and the weight dropped? Part of his curse
Is that fancy paints future torments worse.
The Wise assure him Hell is not; in vain;
Life, his, is Hell; Eternity of pain.
To wrongdoers and wronged too brief a space
Human life has seemed to avenge a race
On heinous crimes against it; hence rose Dis,
Balanced by Elysian fields of bliss.
But you, the Multitude, why are you sad
That life is short, you, neither good, nor bad?
Is it not for an ordinary man
Audacious to complain how short his span,
When, Ancus, with his royal work to do,
Closed his eyes on light, younger than are you?
Other kings, and lords many, in the pride
Of life, who ruled great nations since have died.
By a sudden treason He breathed his last
Who paved a road by which his legions passed
O’er the sea’s salt pools, scornful of the roar
As foot and horsemen crossed from shore to shore.
Scipio, thunderbolt of war, at whom
Carthage shuddered, messenger of her doom,
Gave his bones without protest to the grave
As much of course as if a scullion slave.
Did they who trained the energies of mind
To serve, and exalt, or please, humankind,
Pioneered in the Sciences to arm
Against gross Dulness, and by Arts to charm,
Repine when the summons came to leave off,
And not echo it with a glad “Enough”!
Ministers of the Muses, with the rest,
Peerless Homer, by all their king confessed,
Raised not a single murmur, did not plead
For one song more before they joined the dead.
Democritus, not stooping to complain,
When he missed the old readiness of brain,
Stayed for no rougher monitors of age;
Spared death the toil of posting the last stage,
When the sun arises the stars that shone
In high Heaven, leave it to flame alone.
Epicurus was the sun; in his light
Wisdom of other men became as night,
His page tracks life to its source; there the whole
Is moulded by this father of the soul.
Mortal being is a medley; but as bees,
Ranging up and down, among flow’rs and trees,
In a woodland glade, sip everywhere,
Scorning nothing suckled by sunny air,
And turn all to honey, so his wise pen
Transmutes words into golden sweets for men.
As his thought wells up from a mind divine,
Terrors bred of animal blood resign
Their hold, world’s walls crumble in dust away,
I see in light clearer than that of day
Earth—above it, through it; but nought to tell
Of an Under-world, torture-jail of Hell.
Heaven stands revealed; the Gods’ quiet home,
Where nor clouds, nor rain and snow-storms dare come,
And in large air they breathe immortally,
Unknowing sin or grief, content to Be.
Ah! the debt that I owe, joy mixed with awe,
For all I learned through him of Nature’s law!
If lives stretched for goodness, well might his vie
For an exemption from the rule to die;
Nothing more certain, as his light grew dim,
Than his waiver of it, if pressed on him.
And You make a fuss at death, fret and fume,
When how does your life differ from a tomb?
You rid yourself of half of it in sleep;
For the other half, when you think you keep
Awake, bemused you yawn and snore, a prey
To sick nightmares although it is broad day,
Chief of your evils being that you fail
To extort from them what it is you ail.
Cruel the weight, you cry, upon your breast;
It wears you out, and robs you of your rest.
Seek whence it came, and by what right it took
You for pack-horse, and why it is you brook
The burden; put it, put your brain and heart
To the question. When you and Reason part,
The nightmare will be gone, and you will find
You have regained possession of your mind.
Ignorance of Causes;—that is the main
Virus in the pest of which you complain.
You rush about with it, are discontent
To return no sounder than when you went.
Ho! to the villa from the house in Town—
As driving a fire engine—headlong down.
Doze; with the fury that you galloped down,
Gallop up, just to sup alone in Town!
Why! to escape yourself—from whom, be sure,
You cannot flee out of whatever door.
Yourself you loathe for sickness!
And its Cause?
None else than being blind to Nature’s laws.
Life-in-death—it fleets! Moments its concern;
Yet in them what may not a mortal learn!
Study those laws, I say; they keep the key
Of the Universe and Eternity;
The clue to what hereafter shall be made
Of this stuff in which, men, we masquerade.

Take to heart my counsel; do not from fear
For life, shun ills your duty is to bear.
The end’s stamped on each mortal lot by Fate;
No human force avails to change the date.
And why crave to live on? You’ll find nought new;
Nothing but the old objects to pursue;
No fresh joys from life to be hammered; just
Battered failures, and savouring of dust.
We covet years, in the hope that they will
Be generous beyond the past, and still,
Although they be, hope, covet, as at first;
So wide-mouthed faith; so unquenchable thirst!
Never does it occur to you to glance
At Fortune’s caprices, the whims of Chance,
To reflect that, if added, years will not,
Whatever the number, affect one jot
The accounts between life and death.
No strife
Can be, infinite Death with finite Life.
What that called “Death”? A sea beyond, before;
Boundless, everlasting; no port, no shore.
And “Life”? An accident. Whether at birth it fall,
Or in a thousand years, concerns not Death at all!

Earth’s Decay

Bk. II. vv. 1145-1175

Ah! the good times, when Earth was young and new,
And, day by day, in strength and beauty grew;
When out of her bountiful bosom sprang
Each instant, some fresh wonder into view.

Instead, the mournful change! now, day by day,
The rule for the old Mother is decay.
Ill is the continual drain supplied,
As used particles rarefy away.

It is not as in the primeval age.
Nought mattered it to her that at this stage,
In the gay effervescence of her youth,
Blind forces beat on her; she mocked their rage.

Her garrison lacks food for its support.
Pounded by batteries of ev’ry sort,
The walls already are a pile of dust.
No hope to hold longer the great World-fort.

Futurity has ceased to be for Earth
As in her prime of jollity and mirth.
She is worn out, and weak with motherhood;
No more, as once, has vigour to give birth

To all kinds of being, race after race,
Creatures monstrous in size, perfect in grace;
All her own make; by no gold cord let down
With glory on them from a higher place,

Or cast up by the lashing, wailing tide.—
She bears not, as when laughed on ev’ry side
Cattle, corn, pastures, vines, to make hearts glad,
Earth’s gifts to Man, her glory, and her pride.

A changed scene ours; no longer Nature heaps
The barns with sheaves; well, if the farmer keeps,
After cost of labour and grain he sowed,
A balance from the harvest that he reaps.

His land in ancient days required no toil,
Except to clear the corn from off the soil;
Much less, an armoury of tools, with beeves,
And a train of hirelings to drudge and moil.

Some aged ploughman will be heard complain,
That “labour as he may, how small the gain!
Harder times these than those his father knew;
A grateful task to be God-fearing then!

True, that, man for man, a husbandman’s plot
Might seem, in measurement, a smaller plot
Than is now allowed; but reckon by yield,
And how unequal is the present lot!”

Not without cause the impulse to repine
That we live in times of weakness—decline
Throughout—in wisdom, honest cheer, and worth—
Ev’n in fruitfulness of a shrivelled vine.

But look at home ere you begin to ring
Changes on offence from without; to bring
Indictments against Fortune and the Gods;
While none’s in fault but Earth herself—poor thing!

Primeval Man

Bk. V. vv. 781-1159

In the beginning Earth at her own will
Spread a verdant glitter on plain and hill.
Flowery meadows shone, gay, birthday sheen,
Many-coloured embroidery of green.
Meanwhile fresh germs were nursing strength beyond
The modest grass that carpeted the ground.
In them all a strange, a wild yearning woke
To taste upper air; from the soil trees broke.
Ah the sense of liberty, the keen zest
Of a roaming instinct that stirred Earth’s breast!
Thus she by herself in bush and tall grove
Probed the mystery of the realm above;
Foliage anticipating in space
The down and feathers of a wingéd race.
Next, in many, manifold modes, not come
From salt pools, or sky-dropped, but from the womb—
Bewildering variety of birth—
Of the one universal Mother, Earth,
Life, under impulses of rain, heat, light,
Found organs of movement, even of flight.
Nor yet is her inventiveness outworn;
Still, through the same forces, are fresh forms born.
But well it may have been that in old days,
When Earth was quicker, livelier, in ways,
Air larger, the diversity in kind
Was more, the size greater, than now we find,
Vitality faster in ev’rything.
Thus, eggs would be hatched by the sun in Spring,
As the cicala strips its body bare
Of its fine coat, and needs no mother’s care.
And now Earth’s motherliness that had first
Found its scope in herbage, in due course nursed
Human life itself.
Wombs from moist heat grew
Soil-fixed by roots that nutriment thence drew.
This children, when they broke forth, sucked, and then,
Issuing to air, walked erect as Men.
Owing thus to one source—Earth’s breast—their milk,
For clothes her breath, for couch turf soft as silk.
Fit season for creative pow’rs to wake,
When cold did not numb, gusts confusion make,
And unlike natures could in peace assume
Their just traits, and find, without jostling, room.
With fair intervals since the birth of Man,
Almost each beast and bird we know began
To range mountains and air, although at length
Earth, like to mortal mothers, waned in strength.
Change is Nature’s prime law; stage follows stage;
And the engine by which she works is age.
A plant from flower droops into decay;
Another from dust blossoms for its day.
Earth is in endless flux; she cannot bear
Qualities once loved; kinds are not which were.
Legend is thus encouraged to relate
Tales of wonders in Earth’s creative state.
We hear of bodies twofold, each a kind,
Bound in one frame, but with a single mind.
Inconceivable Centaurs!
At three years
A horse is full-grown and all burdens bears;
At that age a boy can but play, and rest;
Yearns aloud in sleep for his mother’s breast.
Hardly is life for the young man begun
When the wind-galled steed’s course long since was run.
And Scylla? She might have chos’n to be fish,
Or to bark as dogs, and have had her wish;
But as a pair!
And Chimæra again?
Well for the Three to work as each is fain;
But, however it is with dragons, goat
And lion boast not of a flame-proof coat.
So, of the new Earth and Heaven—dreams told
Of rivers running sudden floods of gold;
Trees with gems for flowers; giants of height
To wade deep-rushing waters, and a might
That could make Olympus a ruined heap;
As if, because young Earth was used to keep
Elements and seeds dormant, when they came
At length to life, they need not be the same!
Fancy “improved” them from real freaks, born,
Living, if lives scarce human, and forlorn.
From instinct creative, but cross-grained, Earth
Brought monsters—aspect and limbs strange—to birth;
Abnormal the whole—some with parts too few,
Some with more, though all human, than were due.
Horse-men, mermaids, dragons, gold-streams, gemmed trees.
For Nature are impossibilities.
Had they once existed, there is no cause
Why the race should have ceased through Nature’s laws.
The freaks of Earth were actual, and led
Earthly men’s lives; horror, if they had bred,
As they might have but for good Nature’s grace!
She, guardian of the purity of race,
Rejecting them from the kind, by her ban
Of Childlessness, saved the descent of Man!
Nature works marvels; many are combined,
When she plants, and bars trespass on, a kind.
First, long experiments will have been tried
Before candidates find their way inside.
Even with claim allowed, how many have
Left, to prove they lived, nothing but a grave!
Food may have failed, elbow-room, or good will
In new-come neighbours strong to do them ill.
Among survivors a part owe their life
To native power to outlast long strife.
A habit may have been acquired to keep
Vigils while the enemies were asleep;
Or consciously they set wit against wit,
And, with life for stakes, enjoy playing it.
That is reynard’s way; lions’, less, resource,
Than valiant rage has been the ruling force;
And a third quality has saved a race,
Agility—deers’ pow’r to devour space.
Again, Man is grand destroyer; so breeds,
Many, owe survival to his large needs.
Dogs might have been classed with wolves; but we prize
Them as loyal light sleepers, best allies.
Some kinds, beasts of burden, willing or not,
Exchange protection, meals, for freedom’s lot.
To flocks and herds attack by beasts of prey
Was a nightly scare; it has passed away.
They are secured from that, or lack of food,
Since their extinction would lose Man a good.
But kinds that neither can resist a raid,
Nor have the right to call Man to their aid,
What for them but death, if worth while as spoil,
Or sharp riddance, cumberers of the soil?
Such final dooms as these may well have struck
A multitude of kinds out of life’s book;
And Earth, as women, fills not gaps; her stage
Of maternity obeys laws of age.
Not Man, first-born of Earth, of those that fail;
Child of a lusty mother, hard and hale;
Built on a frame-work of big, solid bone,
With tough sinews to weld the flesh in one;
Not made with heat to faint, or cold to freeze,
To sicken with strange meat, or by disease.
Men led wandering wild beasts’ lives; the sun
Had revolutions numberless to run
Ere they harrowed fields, guided the curved ploughs,
Planted young orchards, or lopped rotting boughs.
Meanwhile they gathered Earth’s alms, well content
With the chance harvests sunshine, showers sent;
Though food on which our ancestors relied
Was that the boundless woods of oak supplied.
Acorns were their mainstay, with, in large store,
Berries that young Earth’s teeming fallows bore.
They felt not how miserable they were;
For Nature pitied, and gave ample fare.
To slake thirst they but had to track the sound
Of torrents tumbling from great hills around—
A call their fellows, the wild beasts, knew well.
And oft a man would linger in some cell
Of Wood-Nymph invited by the cool air,
Since thence broke springs unfailing. Here and there
They bubbled round rocks, loitering to play
With each; then would awhile sleep on their way
In soft green moss, before all joined, to flow,
One easy gliding stream, to the smooth plain below.
As yet men had not learned to tan a skin
Robbed from some beast, and dress themselves therein.
Forest, or mountain cave, was the sole home—
If that,—they knew. When, as they chanced to roam,
A storm burst, rain, or whirlwind, they would lie,
Grimy, in the thick scrub, till it passed by.
Each one was for himself; none of them could
Rise to an idea of common good;
“Custom”, “Morals”, things unknown; and what use
In laws, when no act required an excuse?
Aught a man saw, and liked, he took; so long
As none other saw, liked, and was as strong.
The only need, a standard how to test
Animal worth—live as fitted that best.
Savage love, although not without its storms,
Was simpler than ours, direct, free from forms.
If two agreed in those natural days,
They wedded, as were weddings; went their ways.
Were he willing, not she, he won consent
With a stick: and she had to be content.
When rich the wooer, quick the bargain made,
And the price in acorns, or berries paid.
In our times, though passion may burn, its flame
We call discreetly by some other name;
Is it force to warn daughters that to wed
Poverty means just a mother’s death bed?
And as for a sale of hearts, dare compare
A lawyer’s settlements with a swine’s fare!
Still, in essence a likeness we may find
In our modes to those of the new-world kind.
Hunters all, by virtue of speed of foot,
Patience no less, they ran down any brute;
Hands as dexterous hurled a storm of stones,
And wielded clubs that crashed through flesh and bones.
Rarely were they baulked, or had to lie low,
Hunted, the hunters, by a stronger foe!
Sometimes night surprised them, led by the chase
Far from their customary haunts. Small case
They made of that; strewed leaves, and on the heap
Threw themselves, like wild beasts, and were asleep.
Pity not that beneath no roof they lay,
As darkness followed on the close of day.
They wailed not, doubting its return, for light,
Till with rosy torch the Sun banished night.
The two had from their childhood come and gone;
Why fear the Dark, unwatched, might rule alone?
To them who never knew of locks and bars,
A roof seemed a worse guardian than the stars.
Rather it was when they had sought repose
In caves they met most danger from their foes.
It might occur to some wandering beast,
Making the night hideous, to infest
A recess it passed: and, however glad
The tenant to buy life with all he had,
His fate would be to glut a lion’s maw.
Plunged live in a live tomb by tooth and claw;
Though worse their doom, who, with huge gobbets jagged
From the bleeding flesh, about the woods dragged
Noisome centres of horror and pest—palms
Trembling o’er sores for which they knew no balms;
Calling with agonizing cries on death
To sink their remains to the world beneath.
Alas!
Though measure age with age; nor let
Us in compassion for a few forget
How hosts that, eagles gleaming, marched to war,
Return, less thousands weltering in gore;
A navy that rode yesterday the waves,
To-day is matchwood, corpses robbed of graves.
Ocean in Earth’s infancy swelled with pride,
And lightly laid its empty threats aside;
Laughing tides might mean treachery, or not;
Mortals could plead no wreck to prove a plot;
Famine slew a good few in the Age of Flint;
Surfeit’s as homicidal as is stint;
For themselves poisoned meats rude nomads dressed;
With polished art we serve them to a guest!
A stage on; huts, plaited boughs; men therein
Who stripped for clothes their prey of fur and skin.
Chief of all discoveries theirs to learn
How the thing we call “Fire” will flame and burn.
First, lightning brought it, darting from above;
Though men might watch its birth in any grove,
For when gales blow, the old trees sway about,
And from the boughs in friction sparks flash out.
The sun taught many uses; how the heat—
Repeated rays—will gradually beat
Hardness mellow, and, with fire’s aid, prepare
The soil’s crude fruits and grain for human fare.
Thus, from a hearth and rough shed, rose a home,
With revolutions many thence to come;
And when stop?
With comfort, unknown of old,
Men grew impatient of rude toil and cold.
Plenty and leisure stirred the torpid heart;
And love and tenderness required their part.
Marriage fought free-love; couples plighted troth;
And offspring were the property of both.
Pledges of love, they had power to warm
Beyond the circle where they were life’s charm.
How could a father keep a heart of stone,
When he felt a child’s throbbing on his own?
Tenderness breeds tenderness; men at length
Recognized binding duties owed by strength
To weakness—assuming what it has willed
Must be done—in the stammer of a child
Dictating to its father. From the hearth
Sympathy with helplessness spread through Earth.
Right of the weak was the keystone whereon
Neighbours that would not do or see wrong done,
Founded their leagues; AND THOUGH SOME BASE WAR-LORD
WOULD HERE AND THERE BE FALSE TO HIS SWORN WORD,
THE BEST, THE MAIN PART, STOOD BY THEIRS, PURE, CHASTE:—
Else, mankind had perished, Earth been a waste!

Throughout it all, Mankind was being taught
To voice the rising requirements of Thought.
Gradual process! Gesture was first stage;
The fingers point a want in infant age.
Each creature feels what force the best to spend
To indicate a need, and gain an end.
An angry calf soon after it is born,
Butts with forehead not armed as yet with horn;
Whelps of panthers, and cubs of lions treat
As weapons teeth to be, and clawless feet.
Chickens ruffle spread-wings, as at a foe,
Threatening trespassers things they might do.
What emotion will not all beasts succeed
In expressing, though without speech, at need?
Your Molossian draws back his large, soft lips,
And shews his hard teeth! Strangers, ware, he grips!
Then comes an old friend of the Master’s—hark!
With frolic round and round, the joyous bark!
So with the whole tribe; whether in a glow
Of love they lick their pups; or to and fro
Roll them—mimic rage—and bare, as to glut
Cannibal hunger, teeth in jaws half shut.
All who know but a little of the kind,
And listen to the scolding match, will find
Worlds of difference from the doleful bay
Of hound deserted, whipt, cow’ring away.
Horses, again; does not the rule apply?
You tell by a steed’s neigh that mares are nigh;
Straightway he feels the spur of wingéd love;
They interpret his challenge to the drove.
But—nostrils spread, the neigh become a snort;
War steeds, jangling armour, pass—he would join the sport!
Nor are birds, ospreys, gulls, without their choice
Of vents for feeling; all unlike the voice,
In wooing, to the hunger-scream of strife,
Or victor’s, grappling sea fish for its life.
Even, it is believed, some kinds that ride
The air have means by varied cries to guide
Men’s acts. Rough throated rooks and crows are said
By secular sign-reading to have bred
An instinct when winds, floods, rain they would have,
To warn of weather coming that they crave.
Thus, ears attest the ways that have been found
By lower races to converse by sound,
Strange if Man, Nature’s first-born, built not speech
On sounds for meanings diverse, one for each!
Fond fable that one knew all names, and then
Distributed them to dumb fellow men!
Before common use, by what means learned he
Articulate speech had utility?
How urge men as good as deaf—so, the rule,
Sulky—for no clear gain, to go to school,
When Nature had already, by design
For them, through combining powers, to reign,
Giv’n versatility of voice and tongue
To plan, to act, and drive the world along!
Strength in union; this the great, first law,
From which, and its self-sacrifice, men draw
Sovereignty in Nature; thence learned to bow
To chiefs in mind and heart, who taught them how
To change forms of living and life for new.
From acceptance of son after sire grew
Kingship and kings; with cities in due course,
And citadels as centres of armed force,
Or royal refuges in civil strife;
For complex soon became national life.
Wealth counted first by cattle, and by land;
And the State’s part was at the King’s command.
By his own standard he apportioned it,
For strength or beauty; sometimes mother-wit.
Laws of inheritance grew fixed; and great
Landowners vied with kings to rule a State.
Gold came; race, steel, charm, acres ceased to reign;
All gave gold way, and followed in its train.
An owner used it to earn rule and fame;
Less for themselves—not e’en so high his aim—
Than that he sought to hide some stain of earth.
None blushed to rank by accidents of birth;
But rank through money! Rich men would disguise
That flaw by vouching aught else for their rise,
They wished wealth for enjoyment, yet to shun
Odium for it behind honours won.
Vain! each peak climbed breeds on its own account
Envy with traps to trip you as you mount;
The more, and loftier, surer the flash
Of a bolt, and for you, amid the crash,
To find yourself contemptuously hurled
Into the foul pit of the Underworld.
Flee gold and power, both; neither is one
With happiness; or sheds bliss on a throne.
Few who have touched the goal aver the good
Equals the price they paid in sweat of blood.
Better it satisfies to be of those
That obey than to sway realms, and crush foes.
Hear Reason, and know wealth, absolute, whole,
Is so to live that means disturb not soul.
You wish to forbid Penury your door?
Then adjust your house-keeping to your store.
Ambition exalts to abase; your eyes,
If they see, will teach you its lures are lies.

Earth’s masters despised these truths; they who had
Supremacy and wealth went drunk and mad
With licence; worms could bear no more; and crown,
And lordship—heads with them—came tumbling down.
Majesty was a ball for mobs to spurn;
Awe’s excess was matched by excess of scorn.
It was the dregs’ orgy; rule of brute force;
And each man’s fury followed its full course.
Guilt will, whatever an offence, appear
Less heinous to third persons than seen near.
Trial now was before a Court of one;—
Judge, suitor, he to whom the hurt was done.
Vengeance extreme would rouse convict, or kin,
To redress disproportioned to the sin,
And, unindulged, leave on the other side
A balance owing, and unsatisfied;
Enmeshing in either case a wide swarm
Of households pledged to work each other harm.
A blood-feud chokes enterprise;—earn reward
For deeds, when hangs over the door a sword!
Then, in all ages, let him who shall dare
Set rolling stones of civil feud, beware!
Whatever lives earlier it may spoil,
It will not miss him out; it must recoil,
No peace at home for one who has, the first,
Poisoned man’s faith in man; he is accurst.
Skulk as he may, himself does not believe
He shall for aye be able to deceive;
In sleep, fever-raging, he will proclaim
His sin, and roam clad in the sheet of shame!
Drear this “mid passage”, when, as themselves thought,
Emancipated, men were sold and bought;
Bondsmen to cunning demagogues, who saw
Their gain in putting off the reign of Law.
But ev’n the Multitude will not endure
Chaos, save as interlude. Hence the cure.
Mankind wearies of frauds; of vengeful deeds,
Infinitely renewing, like ill weeds.
From lassitude it lets the wise and good
Enlist strong arms to stem the turbid flood.
In time some sage arises to extract
Ideas of right, that laws condense to act.
Youth long since was past; Nature stood aside,
Leaving Man to face problems, and replies provide.

Iphigenia

Bk. I. vv. 80-102

Think not I, and in Reason’s name, blaspheme
Holy truths. Nay, for this would ill beseem
My purpose. To bring home impious deeds
Done as for Religion—that is my theme.

Who knows not of Aulis—the Chiefs arrayed
About the Altar of the Trivian Maid—
Lords, chosen of Achæa, kings of men,
Reluctant murderers, ashamed, afraid.

And lo! though startled, with no fear at all—
For how suspect ill in her loved sire’s call!—
A girl, young; yet ripe for marriage; perhaps,
Summoned to adorn that high festival!

What if some tremor? In her flow’r of days,
Brought hither for the host of Greeks to gaze,
And admire the Fair, a young hero’s bride.
Hark! is not that the wedding chant they raise?

Courage! Faint not; here are brave friends will bear
Thee to the Altar; all await thee there!
“Who, and for what?” She knows not, but a steam,
A blood offering, scents she in the air.

In a trance she moves; round her a void space.
Awed as if at Death’s halo on Youth’s grace,
Warriors shrink as on the Princess comes,
Abashed to look their victim in the face.

A priest’s touch—the tresses in which maids bind
Their waving hair have found themselves confined
By a sacrificial fillet, the ends
Circling each cheek, and flowing down behind.

She wakes. Flash on her soul—the Fleet’s delay—
Her Mother’s despair as she went her way—
The wrath of Artemis, Her gory rites—
Basilisk glance as Calchas passed that day!

And her sire—not once to have turned and smiled
Upon his best beloved, his first-born child—
The gleam from a ray on a Thing ill veiled—
And a swell of sobs that could not be stilled!

Her knees fail her; and how not? how sustain
The horror! her father to will to stain
His dagger with her blood! to breathe beneath
A load of inextinguishable pain!

So, shed Iphianassa her pure life,
Borne in shuddering arms to a Sire’s knife:
Printing with chaste blood incestuous stains,
Re-dyed later by a foul, vengeful wife!

The whole to verify a priest’s surmise,
Prove privity with Heav’n in vulgar eyes!
No matter how Gods’ credit was abused,
Or sweet innocence sacrificed to lies.

Maternal Love

Bk. II. vv. 342-380

Admire how Nature, with her jealous care
For purity in kind, still schemes to pair
Mother and child by features that forbid
Confusion in the common home all share.

Members of a kind insomuch agree;
Yet each is itself; whence diversity.
Mutual recognition rests on that;
Family ties without it could not be.

No human convention; dumb cattle can
Be sure where love is due, no less than Man.
An universal instinct—and, for guide,
A sense of differences—Nature’s plan.

A calf may its innocent life resign
On the altar before some stately shrine,
Shedding a flood of warm blood ’mid the steam
Of incense, and libations of red wine.

And the Mother! in many a green glade
She tracks the lost by prints his feet have made.
Each spot she studies, in the fond belief
The faith of love can never be gainsaid.

Then, from the woods that her moans overflow,
An impulse drives her to renew her woe
At the stall, where a passionate regret,
Piercing her heart, tosses her to and fro.

Not willow saplings, dewy grass, nor sight
Of brimming rivers, with, in warm noon light,
Cool pools to stand in, banish pain and ache,
Much less, yield an interval of delight.

A calf at play impose on her belief!
Be accepted as hers, and bring relief!
Numberless signs attest it not her own;
Both like and unlike aggravate her grief.

’Tis given not to flocks alone and herds
To mark diversities, but wild beasts, birds,
Joying in lonely groves, and streams, and lakes,
Even fish that understand without words,

As they swim the deep, paint in shells the shore,—
Nay, grains of corn themselves, an endless store,
Remain distinguishable, one and all;
Are known apart by learnéd in such lore.

Art works after one pattern, and by rule;
Nature as the mood inspires, not a school.
She is certain in idea; diverse
In embodiment; never same and dull.

Echo

Bk. IV. vv. 525-536, 549-596

Sound, voice are bodies. Though not for the hand
To grasp, sense feels them, acts at their command.
They wind into the ear, and strike the drum;
Hark! response, as to a conductor’s wand.

The voice even can hurt, as fist, or saw.
In full volume, hoarse, grating on the jaw,
Jostling its way in haste to worry through,
It leaves the path it travels rough and raw.

And no less bodily a spoken word;
When moulded, and dressed, to be rightly heard,
And winged by that arch modeller, the tongue,
It slips through the lips, and careers, a bird.

If the length to be traversed is unfair,
Symmetry is marred; speakers must prepare
For dazed confusion in their audience,
And only a blurred rumbling in the air.

Then set a Herald in a market place.
For him thousands of eyes gaze from one face;
And he flings at the whole a single word,
That each will drink-in as his special grace.

It multiplies, and with the hearers; all
Receive stamped facsimiles, to recall
Both form and sound, distinct, as that went forth;
Each can claim his own for original.

Human ears are the goal; and when no ear
Is reached, after roaming everywhere
In vain for shelter, the poor thing expires,
To flit a ghostly leaf, dead, shrunk and sere.

Or chance may be that it collides with rock;
When—as with pebble that recoils—the shock
Returns the voice thither whence it had come,
And so unchanged that it appears to mock.

Natural the cause, effect; the surprise,
When in lone spots a company’s loud cries
After stragglers on dark hills, bring back nought
But old words in old order as replies.

Where a height faced height, I have known a shout
To gambol between in a joyous rout,
And six or seven times reverberate;
Like ball thrown to and fro in play about.

Nothing is out of Nature’s course, the mode
In which She acts; but Fancy loves to load
Being with mysteries; not learn the laws
Within our ken that rule Earth, our abode.

Thus, a charmed husbandman will vigils keep,
Imagining far echoes breaking sleep,
’Mid silences that seem to hold their breath,
To be Pan come, half God, half Beast, with leap,

And rustle of his bristly, pine-wreathed head—
Drawn lip running o’er shrilling pipe—to lead
His troop, goat-footed Satyrs, Nymphs, and Fauns,
Till cliffs and caves reply to chords and reed.

He deems that shy Powers, as falls the Dark,
In solitudes—no prying crowds to mark—
Fill woods and hills with music, wind and stringed,
That he hears till the day-star wakes the lark.

For ears hear as they list.
The world is wide,
With wildernesses wherein few abide.
Remote from busy marts these joy to dream
Some Gods do not disdain to dwell beside!

The Seasons

Bk. V. vv. 736-746

The pageant of the Seasons! Venus comes; She brings with her,
As leader of the revel, winged Zephyr, Spring’s harbinger.
And Flora has spread a carpet, finer was never wove,
All hues and fragrances, to be trod by the Queen of Love.
Next enters red-hot Summer; but its droughts are lightly borne
By good Goddess Ceres; for they ripen the standing corn
Nought ashamed is She of the dusty sweat upon her brow.
Foreseeing her sheaves, how more and heavier they shall grow;
Nor even scolds the North-wind; it steels the straw to sustain,
By its rough embraces, the weight of the hardening grain.
Autumn steps close after; and it too with a God for guide;
Hark! shout the vineyards, “Bacchus! Hail to Bacchus!” far and wide.
And now Earth’s “No-man’s land!” Spring, Autumn, Summer here and there;
While up and down dance the Winds in the Kingdom of the Air.
South-easters roar through woods where green leaves whispered yesterday;
And thunders the South on meadows that wear the bloom of May.
But the Year is waning; in the long chilly Dark it sits;
No more, though by mere spasms, it breaks out into merry fits.
Sulky and dull it mumbles its tempers in fog and sleet;
Its joints are stiff with age; it totters on frost-bitten feet.
’Tis Winter, with a train pinched like itself, and short of breath,
That shivers, and, as it moves, rattles its remains of teeth.

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.