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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Bishop Blougram's Apology</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">No more wine? then we'll push back chairs and talk.<br>A final glass for me, though: cool, i' faith!<br>We ought to have our Abbey back, you see.<br>It's different, preaching in basilicas,<br>And doing duty in some masterpiece<br>Like this of brother Pugin's, bless his heart!<br>I doubt if they're half baked, those chalk rosettes,<br>Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere;<br>It's just like breathing in a lime-kiln: eh?<br>These hot long ceremonies of our church <br>Cost us a little—oh, they pay the price,<br>You take me—amply pay it! Now, we'll talk.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs.<br>No deprecation—nay, I beg you, sir!<br>Beside 't is our engagement: don't you know,<br>I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out,<br>We'd see truth dawn together?—truth that peeps<br>Over the glasses' edge when dinner's done,<br>And body gets its sop and holds its noise<br>And leaves soul free a little. Now's the time:<br>Truth's break of day! You do despise me then.<br>And if I say, "despise me"—never fear!<br>1 know you do not in a certain sense—<br>Not in my arm-chair, for example: here,<br>I well imagine you respect my place<br>(Status, entourage, worldly circumstance)<br>Quite to its value—very much indeed:<br>—Are up to the protesting eyes of you<br>In pride at being seated here for once—<br>You'll turn it to such capital account! <br>When somebody, through years and years to come,<br>Hints of the bishop—names me—that's enough:<br>"Blougram? I knew him"—(into it you slide)<br>"Dined with him once, a Corpus Christi Day,<br>All alone, we two; he's a clever man:<br>And after dinner—why, the wine you know—<br>Oh, there was wine, and good!—what with the wine . . .<br>'Faith, we began upon all sorts of talk!<br>He's no bad fellow, Blougram; he had seen<br>Something of mine he relished, some review:<br>He's quite above their humbug in his heart,<br>Half-said as much, indeed—the thing's his trade.<br>I warrant, Blougram's sceptical at times:<br>How otherwise? I liked him, I confess!"<br>Che che, my dear sir, as we say at Rome,<br>Don't you protest now! It's fair give and take;<br>You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths:<br>The hand's mine now, and here you follow suit.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays—<br>You do despise me; your ideal of life <br>Is not the bishop's: you would not be I.<br>You would like better to be Goethe, now,<br>Or Buonaparte, or, bless me, lower still,<br>Count D'Orsay—so you did what you preferred,<br>Spoke as you thought, and, as you cannot help,<br>Believed or disbelieved, no matter what,<br>So long as on that point, whate'er it was,<br>You loosed your mind, were whole and sole yourself.<br>—That, my ideal never can include,<br>Upon that element of truth and worth <br>Never be based! for say they make me Pope—<br>(They can't—suppose it for our argument!)<br>Why, there I'm at my tether's end, I've reached<br>My height, and not a height which pleases you:<br>An unbelieving Pope won't do, you say.<br>It's like those eerie stories nurses tell,<br>Of how some actor on a stage played Death,<br>With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart,<br>And called himself the monarch of the world;<br>Then, going in the tire-room afterward, <br>Because the play was done, to shift himself,<br>Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly,<br>The moment he had shut the closet door,<br>By Death himself. Thus God might touch a Pope<br>At unawares, ask what his baubles mean,<br>And whose part he presumed to play just now.<br>Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So, drawing comfortable breath again,<br>You weigh and find, whatever more or less<br>I boast of my ideal realized <br>Is nothing in the balance when opposed<br>To your ideal, your grand simple life,<br>Of which you will not realize one jot.<br>I am much, you are nothing; you would be all,<br>I would be merely much: you beat me there.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why!<br>The common problem, yours, mine, every one's,<br>Is—not to fancy what were fair in life<br>Provided it could be—but, finding first<br>What may be, then find how to make it fair <br>Up to our means: a very different thing!<br>No abstract intellectual plan of life<br>Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws,<br>But one, a man, who is man and nothing more,<br>May lead within a world which (by your leave)<br>Is Rome or London, not Fool's-paradise.<br>Embellish Rome, idealize away,<br>Make paradise of London if you can,<br>You're welcome, nay, you're wise.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> A simile!<br>We mortals cross the ocean of this world <br>Each in his average cabin of a life;<br>The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room.<br>Now for our six months' voyage—how prepare?<br>You come on shipboard with a landsman's list<br>Of things he calls convenient: so they are!<br>An India screen is pretty furniture,<br>A piano-forte is a fine resource,<br>All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf,<br>The new edition fifty volumes long;<br>And little Greek books, with the funny type <br>They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next:<br>Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes!<br>And Parma's pride, the Jerome, let us add!<br>'T were pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow<br>Hang full in face of one where'er one roams,<br>Since he more than the others brings with him<br>Italy's self—the marvellous Modenese!—<br>Yet was not on your list before, perhaps.<br>—Alas, friend, here's the agent . . . is 't the name?<br>The captain, or whoever's master here— <br>You see him screw his face up; what's his cry<br>Ere you set foot on shipboard? "Six feet square!"<br>If you won't understand what six feet mean,<br>Compute and purchase stores accordingly—<br>And if, in pique because he overhauls<br>Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board<br>Bare—why, you cut a figure at the first<br>While sympathetic landsmen see you off;<br>Not afterward, when long ere half seas over,<br>You peep up from your utterly naked boards <br>Into some snug and well-appointed berth,<br>Like mine for instance (try the cooler jug—<br>Put back the other, but don't jog the ice!)<br>And mortified you mutter "Well and good;<br>He sits enjoying his sea-furniture;<br>'Tis stout and proper, and there's store of it;<br>Though I've the better notion, all agree,<br>Of fitting rooms up. Hang the carpenter,<br>Neat ship-shape fixings and contrivances—<br>I would have brought my Jerome, frame and all!" <br>And meantime you bring nothing: never mind—<br>You've proved your artist-nature: what you don't<br>You might bring, so despise me, as I say.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Now come, let's backward to the starting-place.<br>See my way: we're two college friends, suppose.<br>Prepare together for our voyage, then;<br>Each note and check the other in his work—<br>Here's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticise!<br>What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Why first, you don't believe, you don't and can't, <br>(Not statedly, that is, and fixedly<br>And absolutely and exclusively)<br>In any revelation called divine.<br>No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains<br>But say so, like the honest man you are?<br>First, therefore, overhaul theology!<br>Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,<br>Must find believing every whit as hard:<br>And if I do not frankly say as much,<br>The ugly consequence is clear enough. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe—<br>If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed,<br>Absolute and exclusive, as you say.<br>You're wrong—I mean to prove it in due time.<br>Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie<br>I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,<br>So give up hope accordingly to solve—<br>(To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then<br>With both of us, though in unlike degree,<br>Missing full credence—overboard with them! <br>I mean to meet you on your own premise:<br>Good, there go mine in company with yours!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> And now what are we? unbelievers both,<br>Calm and complete, determinately fixed<br>To-day, to-morrow and forever, pray?<br>You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think!<br>In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief,<br>As unbelief before, shakes us by fits,<br>Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's<br>The gain? how can we guard our unbelief, <br>Make it bear fruit to us?—the problem here.<br>Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,<br>A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,<br>A chorus-ending from Euripides—<br>And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears<br>As old and new at once as nature's self,<br>To rap and knock and enter in our soul,<br>Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,<br>Round the ancient idol, on his base again—<br>The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly. <br>There the old misgivings, crooked questions are—<br>This good God—what he could do, if he would,<br>Would, if he could—then must have done long since:<br>If so, when, where and how? some way must be—<br>Once feel about, and soon or late you hit<br>Some sense, in which it might be, after all.<br>Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> —That way<br>Over the mountain, which who stands upon<br>Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road;<br>While, if he views it from the waste itself,<br>Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,<br>Not vague, mistakable! what's a break or two<br>Seen from the unbroken desert either side?<br>And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)<br>What if the breaks themselves should prove at last<br>The most consummate of contrivances<br>To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith?<br>And so we stumble at truth's very test!<br>All we have gained then by our unbelief<br>Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, <br>For one of faith diversified by doubt:<br>We called the chess-board white—we call it black.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> "Well," you rejoin, "the end's no worse, at least;<br>We've reason for both colors on the board:<br>Why not confess then, where I drop the faith<br>And you the doubt, that I'm as right as you?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Because, friend, in the next place, this being so,<br>And both things even—faith and unbelief<br>Left to a man's choice—we'll proceed a step,<br>Returning to our image, which I like. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> A man's choice, yes—but a cabin-passenger's—<br>The man made for the special life o' the world—<br>Do you forget him? I remember though!<br>Consult our ship's conditions and you find<br>One and but one choice suitable to all;<br>The choice, that you unluckily prefer,<br>Turning things topsy-turvy—they or it<br>Going to the ground. Belief or unbelief<br>Bears upon life, determines its whole course,<br>Begins at its beginning. See the world <br>Such as it is—you made it not, nor I;<br>I mean to take it as it is—and you,<br>Not so you'll take it—though you get naught else.<br>I know the special kind of life I like,<br>What suits the most my idiosyncrasy,<br>Brings out the best of me and bears me fruit<br>In power, peace, pleasantness and length of days.<br>I find that positive belief does this<br>For me, and unbelief, no whit of this.<br>—For you, it does, however?—that, we'll try!<br>'T is clear, I cannot lead my life, at least,<br>Induce the world to let me peaceably,<br>Without declaring at the outset, "Friends,<br>I absolutely and peremptorily<br>Believe!"—I say, faith is my waking life:<br>One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals,<br>We know, but waking's the main point with us,<br>And my provision's for life's waking part.<br>Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand<br>All day, I build, scheme, study, and make friends; <br>And when night overtakes me, down I lie,<br>Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it,<br>The sooner the better, to begin afresh.<br>What's midnight's doubt before the dayspring's faith?<br>You, the philosopher, that disbelieve,<br>That recognize the night, give dreams their weight—<br>To be consistent you should keep your bed,<br>Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man,<br>For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares!<br>And certainly at night you'll sleep and dream, <br>Live through the day and bustle as you please.<br>And so you live to sleep as I to wake,<br>To unbelieve as I to still believe?<br>Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you<br>Bed-ridden—and its good things come to me.<br>Its estimation, which is half the fight,<br>That's the first-cabin comfort I secure:<br>The next . . . but you perceive with half an eye!<br>Come, come, it's best believing, if we may;<br>You can't but own that!<br> Next, concede again,<br>If once we choose belief, on all accounts<br>We can't be too decisive in our faith,<br>Conclusive and exclusive in its terms,<br>To suit the world which gives us the good things.<br>In every man's career are certain points<br>Whereon he dares not be indifferent;<br>The world detects him clearly, if he dare,<br>As baffled at the game, and losing life.<br>He may care little or he may care much<br>For riches, honor, pleasure, work, repose,<br>Since various theories of life and life's<br>Success are extant which might easily<br>Comport with either estimate of these;<br>And whoso chooses wealth or poverty,<br>Labor or quiet, is not judged a fool<br>Because his fellow would choose otherwise;<br>We let him choose upon his own account<br>So long as he's consistent with his choice.<br>But certain points, left wholly to himself,<br>When once a man has arbitrated on, <br>We say he must succeed there or go hang.<br>Thus, he should wed the woman he loves most<br>Or needs most, whatsoe'er the love or need—<br>For he can't wed twice. Then, he must avouch,<br>Or follow, at the least, sufficiently,<br>The form of faith his conscience holds the best,<br>Whate'er the process of conviction was:<br>For nothing can compensate his mistake<br>On such a point, the man himself being judge:<br>He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Well now, there's one great form of Christian faith<br>I happened to be born in—which to teach<br>Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,<br>As best and readiest means of living by;<br>The same on examination being proved<br>The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise<br>And absolute form of faith in the whole world—<br>Accordingly, most potent of all forms<br>For working on the world. Observe, my friend!<br>Such as you know me, I am free to say,<br>In these hard latter days which hamper one,<br>Myself—by no immoderate exercise<br>Of intellect and learning, but the tact<br>To let external forces work for me,<br>—Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread;<br>Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's,<br>Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world<br>And make my life an ease and joy and pride;<br>It does so—which for me 's a great point gained,<br>Who have a soul and body that exact <br>A comfortable care in many ways.<br>There's power in me and will to dominate<br>Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:<br>In many ways I need mankind's respect,<br>Obedience, and the love that's born of fear:<br>While at the same time, there's a taste I have,<br>A toy of soul, a titillating thing,<br>Refuses to digest these dainties crude.<br>The naked life is gross till clothed upon:<br>I must take what men offer, with a grace <br>As though I would not, could I help it, take<br>An uniform I wear though over-rich—<br>Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;<br>No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake<br>And despicable therefore! now folk kneel<br>And kiss my hand—of course the Church's hand.<br>Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,<br>And thus that it should be I have procured;<br>And thus it could not be another way,<br>I venture to imagine.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> You'll reply, <br>So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;<br>But were I made of better elements,<br>With nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,<br>I hardly would account the thing success<br>Though it did all for me I say.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But, friend,<br>We speak of what is; not of what might be,<br>And how 'twere better if 'twere otherwise.<br>I am the man you see here plain enough:<br>Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives!<br>Suppose I own at once to tail and claws; <br>The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed<br>I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes<br>To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.<br>My business is not to remake myself,<br>But make the absolute best of what God made.<br>Or—our first simile—though you prove me doomed<br>To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole,<br>The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should strive<br>To make what use of each were possible;<br>And as this cabin gets upholstery, <br>That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast<br>I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes<br>Enumerated so complacently,<br>On the mere ground that you forsooth can find<br>In this particular life I choose to lead<br>No fit provision for them. Can you not?<br>Say you, my fault is I address myself<br>To grosser estimators than should judge?<br>And that's no way of holding up the soul, <br>Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows<br>One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'—<br>Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that.<br>I pine among my million imbeciles<br>(You think) aware some dozen men of sense<br>Eye me and know me, whether I believe<br>In the last winking Virgin, as I vow,<br>And am a fool, or disbelieve in her<br>And am a knave—approve in neither case,<br>Withhold their voices though I look their way:<br>Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end<br>(The thing they gave at Florence—what's its name?)<br>While the mad houseful's plaudits near outbang<br>His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,<br>He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths<br>Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here—<br>That even your prime men who appraise their kind<br>Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,<br>See more in a truth than the truth's simple self, <br>Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street<br>Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?<br>You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;<br>Him you must watch—he's sure to fall, yet stands!<br>Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.<br>The honest thief, the tender murderer,<br>The superstitious atheist, demirep<br>That loves and saves her soul in new French books—<br>We watch while these in equilibrium keep<br>The giddy line midway: one step aside, <br>They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line<br>Before your sages—just the men to shrink<br>From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad<br>You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?<br>Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave<br>When there's a thousand diamond weights between?<br>So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find,<br>Profess themselves indignant, scandalized<br>At thus being held unable to explain<br>How a superior man who disbelieves <br>May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way!<br>It's through my coming in the tail of time,<br>Nicking the minute with a happy tact.<br>Had I been born three hundred years ago<br>They'd say, "What's strange? Blougram of course believes;"<br>And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course."<br>But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet<br>How can he?" All eyes turn with interest.<br>Whereas, step off the line on either side—<br>You, for example, clever to a fault, <br>The rough and ready man who write apace,<br>Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less—<br>You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares?<br>Lord So-and-so—his coat bedropped with wax,<br>All Peter's chains about his waist, his back<br>Brave with the needlework of Noodledom—<br>Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares?<br>But I, the man of sense and learning too,<br>The able to think yet act, the this, the that,<br>I, to believe at this late time of day! <br>Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> —Except it's yours! Admire me as these may,<br>You don't. But whom at least do you admire?<br>Present your own perfection, your ideal,<br>Your pattern man for a minute—oh, make haste,<br>Is it Napoleon you would have us grow?<br>Concede the means; allow his head and hand,<br>(A large concession, clever as you are)<br>Good! In our common primal element<br>Of unbelief (we can't believe, you know— <br>We're still at that admission, recollect!)<br>Where do you find—apart from, towering o'er<br>The secondary temporary aims<br>Which satisfy the gross taste you despise—<br>Where do you find his star?—his crazy trust<br>God knows through what or in what? it's alive<br>And shines and leads him, and that's all we want.<br>Have we aught in our sober night shall point<br>Such ends as his were, and direct the means<br>Of working out our purpose straight as his,<br>Nor bring a moment's trouble on success<br>With after-care to justify the same?<br>—Be a Napoleon, and yet disbelieve—<br>Why, the man's mad, friend, take his light away!<br>What's the vague good o' the world, for which you dare<br>With comfort to yourself blow millions up?<br>We neither of us see it! we do see<br>The blown-up millions—spatter of their brains<br>And writhing of their bowels and so forth,<br>In that bewildering entanglement <br>Of horrible eventualities<br>Past calculation to the end of time!<br>Can I mistake for some clear word of God<br>(Which were my ample warrant for it all)<br>His puff of hazy instinct, idle talk,<br>"The State, that's I," quack-nonsense about crowns,<br>And (when one beats the man to his last hold)<br>A vague idea of setting things to rights,<br>Policing people efficaciously,<br>More to their profit, most of all to his own; <br>The whole to end that dismallest of ends<br>By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church,<br>And resurrection of the old regime?<br>Would I, who hope to live a dozen years,<br>Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such?<br>No: for, concede me but the merest chance<br>Doubt may be wrong—there's judgment, life to come<br>With just that chance, I dare not. Doubt proves right?<br>This present life is all?—you offer me<br>Its dozen noisy years, without a chance <br>That wedding an archduchess, wearing lace,<br>And getting called by divers new-coined names,<br>Will drive off ugly thoughts and let me dine,<br>Sleep, read and chat in quiet as I like!<br>Therefore I will not.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Take another case;<br>Fit up the cabin yet another way.<br>What say you to the poets? shall we write<br>Hamlet, Othello—make the world our own,<br>Without a risk to run of either sort?<br>I can't!—to put the strongest reason first. <br>"But try," you urge, "the trying shall suffice;<br>The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life:<br>Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!"<br>Spare my self-knowledge—there's no fooling me!<br>If I prefer remaining my poor self,<br>I say so not in self-dispraise but praise.<br>If I'm a Shakespeare, let the well alone;<br>Why should I try to be what now I am?<br>If I'm no Shakespeare, as too probable—<br>His power and consciousness and self-delight <br>And all we want in common, shall I find—<br>Trying forever? while on points of taste<br>Wherewith, to speak it humbly, he and I<br>Are dowered alike—I'll ask you, I or he,<br>Which in our two lives realizes most?<br>Much, he imagined—somewhat, I possess.<br>He had the imagination; stick to that!<br>Let him say, "In the face of my soul's works<br>Your world is worthless and I touch it not<br>Lest I should wrong them"—I'll withdraw my plea. <br>But does he say so? look upon his life!<br>Himself, who only can, gives judgment there.<br>He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces<br>To build the trimmest house in Stratford town;<br>Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of things,<br>Giulio Romano's pictures, Dowland's lute;<br>Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too,<br>And none more, had he seen its entry once,<br>Than "Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal."<br>Why then should I who play that personage, <br>The very Pandulph Shakespeare's fancy made,<br>Be told that had the poet chanced to start<br>From where I stand now (some degree like mine<br>Being just the goal he ran his race to reach)<br>He would have run the whole race back, forsooth,<br>And left being Pandulph, to begin write plays?<br>Ah, the earth's best can be but the earth's best!<br>Did Shakespeare live, he could but sit at home<br>And get himself in dreams the Vatican,<br>Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls, <br>And English books, none equal to his own,<br>Which I read, bound in gold (he never did).<br>—Terni's fall, Naples' bay and Gothard's top—<br>Eh, friend? I could not fancy one of these;<br>But, as I pour this claret, there they are:<br>I've gained them—crossed St. Gothard last July<br>With ten mules to the carriage and a bed<br>Slung inside; is my hap the worse for that?<br>We want the same things, Shakespeare and myself,<br>And what I want, I have: he, gifted more, <br>Could fancy he too had them when he liked,<br>But not so thoroughly that, if fate allowed,<br>He would not have them ...also in my sense.<br>We play one game; I send the ball aloft<br>No less adroitly that of fifty strokes<br>Scarce five go o'er the wall so wide and high<br>Which sends them back to me: I wish and get.<br>He struck balls higher and with better skill,<br>But at a poor fence level with his head,<br>And hit—his Stratford house, a coat of arms, <br>Successful dealings in his grain and wool—<br>While I receive heaven's incense in my nose<br>And style myself the cousin of Queen Bess.<br>Ask him, if this life's all, who wins the game?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Believe—and our whole argument breaks up.<br>Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat;<br>Only, we can't command it; fire and life<br>Are all, dead matter's nothing, we agree:<br>And be it a mad dream or God's very breath,<br>The fact's the same—belief's fire, once in us, <br>Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself;<br>We penetrate our life with such a glow<br>As fire lends wood and iron—this turns steel,<br>That burns to ash—all's one, fire proves its power<br>For good or ill, since men call flare success.<br>But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn.<br>Light one in me, I'll find it food enough!<br>Why, to be Luther—that's a life to lead,<br>Incomparably better than my own.<br>He comes, reclaims God's earth for God, he says, <br>Sets up God's rule again by simple means,<br>Re-opens a shut book, and all is done.<br>He flared out in the flaring of mankind;<br>Such Luther's luck was: how shall such be mine?<br>If he succeeded, nothing's left to do:<br>And if he did not altogether—well,<br>Strauss is the next advance. All Strauss should be<br>I might be also. But to what result?<br>He looks upon no future: Luther did.<br>What can I gain on the denying side? <br>Ice makes no conflagration. State the facts,<br>Read the text right, emancipate the world—<br>The emancipated world enjoys itself<br>With scarce a thank-you: Blougram told it first<br>It could not owe a farthing—not to him<br>More than Saint Paul! 't would press its pay, you think?<br>Then add there's still that plaguy hundredth chance<br>Strauss may be wrong. And so a risk is run—<br>For what gain? not for Luther's, who secured<br>A real heaven in his heart throughout his life, <br>Supposing death a little altered things.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> "Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry,<br>"You run the same risk really on all sides,<br>In cool indifference as bold unbelief.<br>As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him.<br>It's not worth having, such imperfect faith,<br>No more available to do faith's work<br>Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point.<br>Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith. <br>We're back on Christian ground. You call for faith;<br>I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.<br>The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,<br>If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does?<br>By life and man's free will. God gave for that!<br>To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice:<br>That's our one act, the previous work's his own.<br>You criticise the soul? it reared this tree—<br>This broad life and whatever fruit it bears!<br>What matter though I doubt at every pore, <br>Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my fingers' ends,<br>Doubts in the trivial work of every day,<br>Doubts at the very bases of my soul<br>In the grand moments when she probes herself—<br>If finally I have a life to show,<br>The thing I did, brought out in evidence<br>Against the thing done to me underground<br>By hell and all its brood, for aught I know?<br>I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt?<br>All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this? <br>It is the idea, the feeling and the love,<br>God means mankind should strive for and show forth<br>Whatever be the process to that end—<br>And not historic knowledge, logic sound,<br>And metaphysical acumen, sure!<br>"What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said,<br>Like you this Christianity or not?<br>It may be false, but will you wish it true?<br>Has it your vote to be so if it can?<br>Trust you an instinct silenced long ago <br>That will break silence and enjoin you love<br>What mortified philosophy is hoarse,<br>And all in vain, with bidding you despise?<br>If you desire faith—then you've faith enough:<br>What else seeks God—nay, what else seek ourselves?<br>You form a notion of me, we'll suppose,<br>On hearsay; it's a favorable one:<br>"But still" (you add) "there was no such good man,<br>Because of contradiction in the facts.<br>One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome, <br>This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him<br>I see he figures as an Englishman."<br>Well, the two things are reconcilable.<br>But would I rather you discovered that,<br>Subjoining—"Still, what matter though they be?<br>Blougram concerns me naught, born here or there."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Pure faith indeed—you know not what you ask!<br>Naked belief in God the Omnipotent,<br>Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much<br>The sense of conscious creatures to be borne. <br>It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare.<br>Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth:<br>I say it's meant to hide him all it can,<br>And that's what all the blessed evil's for.<br>Its use in Time is to environ us,<br>Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough<br>Against that sight till we can bear its stress.<br>Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain<br>And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart<br>Less certainly would wither up at once <br>Than mind, confronted with the truth of him.<br>But time and earth case-harden us to live;<br>The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child<br>Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,<br>Plays on and grows to be a man like us.<br>With me, faith means perpetual unbelief<br>Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot<br>Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.<br>Or, if that's too ambitious—here's my box—<br>I need the excitation of a pinch <br>Threatening the torpor of the inside-nose<br>Nigh on the imminent sneeze that never comes.<br>"Leave it in peace" advise the simple folk:<br>Make it aware of peace by itching-fits,<br>Say I—let doubt occasion still more faith!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> You 'll say, once all believed, man, woman, child,<br>In that dear middle-age these noodles praise.<br>How you'd exult if I could put you back<br>Six hundred years, blot out cosmogony,<br>Geology, ethnology, what not, <br>(Greek endings, each the little passing-bell<br>That signifies some faith's about to die)<br>And set you square with Genesis again—<br>When such a traveller told you his last news,<br>He saw the ark a-top of Ararat<br>But did not climb there since 'twas getting dusk<br>And robber-bands infest the mountain's foot!<br>How should you feel, I ask, in such an age,<br>How act? As other people felt and did;<br>With soul more blank than this decanter's knob, <br>Believe—and yet lie, kill, rob, fornicate<br>Full in belief's face, like the beast you'd be!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> No, when the fight begins within himself,<br>A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,<br>Satan looks up between his feet—both tug—<br>He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes<br>And grows. Prolong that battle through his life!<br>Never leave growing till the life to come!<br>Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks<br>That used to puzzle people wholesomely: <br>Men have outgrown the shame of being fools.<br>What are the laws of nature, not to bend<br>If the Church bid them?—brother Newman asks.<br>Up with the Immaculate Conception, then—<br>On to the rack with faith!—is my advice.<br>Will not that hurry us upon our knees,<br>Knocking our breasts, "It can't be—yet it shall!<br>Who am I, the worm, to argue with my Pope?<br>Low things confound the high things!" and so forth.<br>That's better than acquitting God with grace <br>As some folk do. He's tried—no case is proved,<br>Philosophy is lenient—he may go!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> You'll say, the old system's not so obsolete<br>But men believe still: ay, but who and where?<br>King Bomba's lazzaroni foster yet<br>The sacred flame, so Antonelli writes;<br>But even of these, what ragamuffin-saint<br>Believes God watches him continually,<br>As he believes in fire that it will burn,<br>Or rain that it will drench him? Break fire's law, <br>Sin against rain, although the penalty<br>Be just a singe or soaking? "No," he smiles;<br>"Those laws are laws that can enforce themselves."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The sum of all is—yes, my doubt is great,<br>My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough.<br>I have read much, thought much, experienced much,<br>Yet would die rather than avow my fear<br>The Naples' liquefaction may be false,<br>When set to happen by the palace-clock<br>According to the clouds or dinner-time. <br>I hear you recommend, I might at least<br>Eliminate, decrassify my faith<br>Since I adopt it; keeping what I must<br>And leaving what I can—such points as this.<br>I won't—that is, I can't throw one away.<br>Supposing there's no truth in what I hold<br>About the need of trial to man's faith,<br>Still, when you bid me purify the same,<br>To such a process I discern no end.<br>Clearing off one excrescence to see two, <br>There's ever a next in size, now grown as big,<br>That meets the knife: I cut and cut again!<br>First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last<br>But Fichte's clever cut at God himself?<br>Experimentalize on sacred things!<br>I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain<br>To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.<br>The first step, I am master not to take.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> You'd find the cutting-process to your taste<br>As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned, <br>Nor see more danger in it—you retort.<br>Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise<br>When we consider that the steadfast hold<br>On the extreme end of the chain of faith<br>Gives all the advantage, makes the difference<br>With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule:<br>We are their lords, or they are free of us,<br>Justas we tighten or relax our hold.<br>So, other matters equal, we'll revert<br>To the first problem—which, if solved my way <br>And thrown into the balance, turns the scale—<br>How we may lead a comfortable life,<br>How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Of course you are remarking all this time<br>How narrowly and grossly I view life,<br>Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule<br>The masses, and regard complacently<br>"The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do.<br>I act for, talk for, live for this world now,<br>As this world prizes action, life and talk: 770<br>No prejudice to what next world may prove,<br>Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge<br>To observe then, is that I observe these now,<br>Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile.<br>Let us concede (gratuitously though)<br>Next life relieves the soul of body, yields<br>Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend,<br>Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use<br>May be to make the next life more intense?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Do you know, I have often had a dream <br>(Work it up in your next month's article)<br>Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still<br>Losing true life forever and a day<br>Through ever trying to be and ever being—<br>In the evolution of successive spheres—<br>Before its actual sphere and place of life,<br>Halfway into the next, which having reached,<br>It shoots with corresponding foolery<br>Halfway into the next still, on and off!<br>As when a traveller, bound from North to South, <br>Scouts far in Russia: what's its use in France?<br>In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?<br>In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!<br>Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,<br>A superfluity at Timbuctoo.<br>When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?<br>I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,<br>I take and like its way of life; I think<br>My brothers, who administer the means,<br>Live better for my comfort—that's good too; <br>And God, if he pronounce upon such life,<br>Approves my service, which is better still.<br>If he keep silence—why, for you or me<br>Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times,"<br>What odds is 't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> You meet me at this issue: you declare—<br>All special-pleading done with—truth is truth,<br>And justifies itself by undreamed ways.<br>You don't fear but it's better, if we doubt,<br>To say so, act up to our truth perceived <br>However feebly. Do then—act away!<br>'T is there I'm on the watch for you. How one acts<br>Is, both of us agree, our chief concern:<br>And how you 'll act is what I fain would see<br>If, like the candid person you appear,<br>You dare to make the most of your life's scheme<br>As I of mine, live up to its full law<br>Since there's no higher law that counterchecks.<br>Put natural religion to the test<br>You've just demolished the revealed with—quick, <br>Down to the root of all that checks your will,<br>All prohibition to lie, kill and thieve,<br>Or even to be an atheistic priest!<br>Suppose a pricking to incontinence—<br>Philosophers deduce you chastity<br>Or shame, from just the fact that at the first<br>Whoso embraced a woman in the field,<br>Threw club down and forewent his brains beside,<br>So, stood a ready victim in the reach<br>Of any brother savage, club in hand; <br>Hence saw the use of going out of sight<br>In wood or cave to prosecute his loves:<br>I read this in a French book t' other day.<br>Does law so analyzed coerce you much?<br>Oh, men spin clouds of fuzz where matters end,<br>But you who reach where the first thread begins,<br>You'll soon cut that!—which means you can, but won't,<br>Through certain instincts, blind, unreasoned-out,<br>You dare not set aside, you can't tell why,<br>But there they are, and so you let them rule. <br>Then, friend, you seem as much a slave as I,<br>A liar, conscious coward and hypocrite,<br>Without the good the slave expects to get,<br>In case he has a master after all!<br>You own your instincts? why, what else do I,<br>Who want, am made for, and must have a God<br>Ere I can be aught, do aught?—no mere name<br>Want, but the true thing with what proves its truth,<br>To wit, a relation from that thing to me,<br>Touching from head to foot—which touch I feel, <br>And with it take the rest, this life of ours!<br>I live my life here; yours you dare not live,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> —Not as I state it, who (you please subjoin)<br>Disfigure such a life and call it names.<br>While, to your mind, remains another way<br>For simple men: knowledge and power have rights,<br>But ignorance and weakness have rights too.<br>There needs no crucial effort to find truth<br>If here or there or anywhere about:<br>We ought to turn each side, try hard and see, <br>And if we can't, be glad we've earned at least<br>The right, by one laborious proof the more,<br>To graze in peace earth's pleasant pasturage.<br>Men are not angels, neither are they brutes:<br>Something we may see, all we cannot see.<br>What need of lying? I say, I see all,<br>And swear to each detail the most minute<br>In what I think a Pan's face—you, mere cloud:<br>I swear I hear him speak and see him wink,<br>For fear, if once I drop the emphasis, <br>Mankind may doubt there's any cloud at all.<br>You take the simple life—ready to see,<br>Willing to see (for no cloud 's worth a face)—<br>And leaving quiet what no strength can move,<br>And which, who bids you move? who has the right?<br>I bid you; but you are God's sheep, not mine;<br>"Pastor est tui Dominus." You find<br>In this the pleasant pasture of our life<br>Much you may eat without the least offence,<br>Much you don't eat because your maw objects, <br>Much you would eat but that your fellow-flock<br>Open great eyes at you and even butt,<br>And thereupon you like your mates so well<br>You cannot please yourself, offending them;<br>Though when they seem exorbitantly sheep,<br>You weigh your pleasure with their butts and bleats<br>And strike the balance. Sometimes certain fears<br>Restrain you, real checks since you find them so;<br>Sometimes you please yourself and nothing checks:<br>And thus you graze through life with not one lie, <br>And like it best.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> But do you, in truth's name?<br>If so, you beat—which means you are not I—<br>Who needs must make earth mine and feed my fill<br>Not simply unbutted at, unbickered with,<br>But motioned to the velvet of the sward<br>By those obsequious wethers' very selves.<br>Look at me. sir; my age is double yours:<br>At yours, I knew beforehand, so enjoyed,<br>What now I should be—as, permit the word,<br>I pretty well imagine your whole range <br>And stretch of tether twenty years to come.<br>We both have minds and bodies much alike:<br>In truth's name, don't you want my bishopric,<br>My daily bread, my influence and my state?<br>You're young. I'm old; you must be old one day;<br>Will you find then, as I do hour by hour,<br>Women their lovers kneel to, who cut curls<br>From your fat lap-dog's ear to grace a brooch—<br>Dukes, who petition just to kiss your ring—<br>With much beside you know or may conceive? <br>Suppose we die to-night: well, here am I,<br>Such were my gains, life bore this fruit to me,<br>While writing all the same my articles<br>On music, poetry, the fictile vase<br>Found at Albano, chess, Anacreon's Greek.<br>But you—the highest honor in your life,<br>The thing you'll crown yourself with, all your days,<br>Is—dining here and drinking this last glass<br>I pour you out in sign of amity<br>Before we part forever. Of your power <br>And social influence, worldly worth in short,<br>Judge what's my estimation by the fact,<br>I do not condescend to enjoin, beseech,<br>Hint secrecy on one of all these words!<br>You're shrewd and know that should you publish one<br>The world would brand the lie—my enemies first,<br>Who'd sneer—"the bishop's an arch-hypocrite<br>And knave perhaps, but not so frank a fool."<br>Whereas I should not dare for both my ears<br>Breathe one such syllable, smile one such smile, <br>Before the chaplain who reflects myself—<br>My shade's so much more potent than your flesh.<br>What's your reward, self-abnegating friend?<br>Stood you confessed of those exceptional<br>And privileged great natures that dwarf mine—<br>A zealot with a mad ideal in reach,<br>A poet just about to print his ode,<br>A statesman with a scheme to stop this war,<br>An artist whose religion is his art—<br>I should have nothing to object: such men <br>Carry the fire, all things grow warm to them,<br>Their drugget's worth my purple, they beat me.<br>But you—you 're just as little those as I—<br>You, Gigadibs, who, thirty years of age,<br>Write statedly for Blackwood's Magazine,<br>Believe you see two points in Hamlet's soul<br>Unseized by the Germans yet—which view you'll print—<br>Meantime the best you have to show being still<br>That lively lightsome article we took<br>Almost for the true Dickens—what's its name? <br>"The Slum and Cellar, or Whitechapel life<br>Limned after dark!" it made me laugh, I know,<br>And pleased a month, and brought you in ten pounds.<br>—Success I recognize and compliment,<br>And therefore give you, if you choose, three words<br>(The card and pencil-scratch is quite enough)<br>Which whether here, in Dublin or New York,<br>Will get you, prompt as at my eyebrow's wink,<br>Such terms as never you aspired to get<br>In all our own reviews and some not ours. <br>Go write your lively sketches! be the first<br>"Blougram, or The Eccentric Confidence"—<br>Or better simply say, "The Outward-bound."<br>Why, men as soon would throw it in my teeth<br>As copy and quote the infamy chalked broad<br>About me on the church-door opposite.<br>You will not wait for that experience though,<br>I fancy, howsoever you decide,<br>To discontinue—not detesting, not<br>Defaming, but at least—despising me! <br>_______________________________________</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Over his wine so smiled and talked his hour<br>Sylvester Blougram, styled in partibus<br>Episcopus, nec non—(the deuce knows what<br>It's changed to by our novel hierarchy)<br>With Gigadibs the literary man,<br>Who played with spoons, explored his plate's design,<br>And ranged the olive-stones about its edge,<br>While the great bishop rolled him out a mind<br>Long crumpled, till creased consciousness lay smooth.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke. <br>The other portion, as he shaped it thus<br>For argumentatory purposes,<br>He felt his foe was foolish to dispute.<br>Some arbitrary accidental thoughts<br>That crossed his mind, amusing because new,<br>He chose to represent as fixtures there,<br>Invariable convictions (such they seemed<br>Beside his interlocutor's loose cards<br>Flung daily down, and not the same way twice)<br>While certain hell-deep instincts, man's weak tongue <br>Is never bold to utter in their truth<br>Because styled hell-deep ('t is an old mistake<br>To place hell at the bottom of the earth)<br>He ignored these—not having in readiness<br>Their nomenclature and philosophy:<br>He said true things, but called them by wrong names.<br>"On the whole," he thought, "I justify myself<br>On every point where cavillers like this<br>Oppugn my life: he tries one kind of fence,<br>I close, he's worsted, that's enough for him. <br>He's on the ground: if ground should break away<br>I take my stand on, there's a firmer yet<br>Beneath it, both of us may sink and reach.<br>His ground was over mine and broke the first:<br>So, let him sit with me this many a year!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116253" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He did not sit five minutes. Just a week<br>Sufficed his sudden healthy vehemence.<br>Something had struck him in the "Outward-bound"<br>Another way than Blougram's purpose was:<br>And having bought, not cabin-furniture <br>But settler's-implements (enough for three)<br>And started for Australia—there, I hope,<br>By this time he has tested his first plough,<br>And studied his last chapter of St. John.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br/></a><a href="https://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="https://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Robert+Browning">Robert Browning</a></strong> from <em><a href="https://sources.citatepedia.com/from.php?a=Robert+Browning&d=Men+and+Women">Men and Women</a></em></div>

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