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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><i>Epigraph</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων<br>διῆλθον ἀγέλας . . .<br>τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον,<br>. . . δῶμα θριγκῶσαι κακοῖς.</i></a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd<br>To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last,<br>Attempting one more labour, in a trice,<br>Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">You have seen better days, dear? So have I —<br>And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth<br>As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well,<br>Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same,<br>And wished and had their trouble for their pains.<br>Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last<br>Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline,<br>And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square?<br>Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age,<br>Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads,<br>And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, —<br>Jealous that the good trick which served the turn<br>Have justice rendered it, nor class one day<br>With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,—<br>What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say,<br>(Because night draws on, and the sands increase,<br>And desert-whispers grow a prophecy)<br>Tell all to Corinth of her own accord.<br>Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Lais' sake,<br>Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose,<br>And thinks a man of sixty at the prime?<br>Good! It shall be! Revealment of myself!<br>But listen, for we must co-operate;<br>I don't drink tea: permit me the cigar!<br>First, how to make the matter plain, of course —<br>What was the law by which I lived. Let 's see:<br>Ay, we must take one instant of my life<br>Spent sitting by your side in this neat room:<br>Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh!<br>Here's paper on the table, pen and ink:<br>Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose!<br>See! having sat an hour, I'm rested now,<br>Therefore want work: and spy no better work<br>For eye and hand and mind that guides them both,<br>During this instant, than to draw my pen<br>From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus —<br>Which I at last reach, thus, and here's my line<br>Five inches long and tolerably straight:<br>Better to draw than leave undrawn, I think.<br>Fitter to do than let alone, I hold,<br>Though better, fitter, by but one degree.<br>Therefore it was that, rather than sit still<br>Simply, my right-hand drew it while my left<br>Pulled smooth and pinched the moustache to a point.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now I permit your plump lips to unpurse:<br>So far, one possibly may understand<br>"Without recourse to witchcraft!" True, my dear.<br>Thus folks begin with Euclid, — finish, how?<br>Trying to square the circle! — at any rate,<br>Solving abstruser problems than this first<br>"How find the nearest way 'twixt point and point."<br>Deal but with moral mathematics so —<br>Master one merest moment's work of mine,<br>Even this practising with pen and ink, —<br>Demonstrate why I rather plied the quill<br>Than left the space a blank, — you gain a fact,<br>And God knows what a fact's worth! So proceed<br>By inference from just this moral fact<br>— I don't say, to that plaguy quadrature<br>"What the whole man meant, whom you wish you knew,"<br>But, what meant certain things he did of old,<br>Which puzzled Europe, — why, you'll find them plain,<br>This way, not otherwise: I guarantee.<br>Understand one, you comprehend the rest.<br>Rays from all round converge to any point:<br>Study the point then ere you track the rays!<br>The size o' the circle's nothing; subdivide<br>Earth, and earth's smallest grain of mustard-seed,<br>You count as many parts, small matching large,<br>If you can use the mind's eye: otherwise,<br>Material optics, being gross at best,<br>Prefer the large and leave our mind the small —<br>And pray how many folks have minds can see?<br>Certainly you — and somebody in Thrace<br>Whose name escapes me at the moment. You —<br>Lend me your mind then! Analyse with me<br>This instance of the line 'twixt blot and blot<br>I rather chose to draw than leave a blank.<br>Things else being equal. You are taught thereby<br>That 't is my nature, when I am at ease,<br>Rather than idle out my life too long,<br>To want to do a thing — to put a thought,<br>Whether a great thought or a little one,<br>Into an act, as nearly as may be.<br>Make what is absolutely new — I can't,<br>Mar what is made already well enough —<br>I won't: but turn to best account the thing<br>That 's half-made — that I can. Two blots, you saw<br>I knew how to extend into a line<br>Symmetric on the sheet they blurred before —<br>Such little act sufficed, this time, such thought.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now, we'll extend rays, widen out the verge,<br>Describe a larger circle; leave this first<br>Clod of an instance we began with, rise<br>To the complete world many clods effect.<br>Only continue patient while I throw,<br>Delver-like, spadeful after spadeful up,<br>Just as truths come, the subsoil of me, mould<br>Whence spring my moods: your object, — just to find,<br>Alike from handlift and from barrow-load, 100<br>What salts and silts may constitute the earth —<br>If it be proper stuff to blow man glass,<br>Or bake him pottery, bear him oaks or wheat —<br>What's born of me, in brief; which found, all's known.<br>If it were genius did the digging-job,<br>Logic would speedily sift its product smooth<br>And leave the crude truths bare for poetry;<br>But I'm no poet, and am stiff i' the back.<br>What one spread fails to bring, another may.<br>In goes the shovel and out comes scoop — as here!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I live to please myself. I recognize<br>Power passing mine, immeasurable, God —<br>Above me, whom He made, as heaven beyond<br>Earth — to use figures which assist our sense.<br>I know that He is there as I am here.<br>By the same proof, which seems no proof at all,<br>It so exceeds familiar forms of proof.<br>Why "there," not "here"? Because, when I say "there,"<br>I treat the feeling with distincter shape<br>That space exists between us: I, — not He, —<br>Live, think, do human work here — no machine.<br>His will moves, but a being by myself,<br>His, and not He who made me for a work,<br>Watches my working, judges its effect,<br>But does not interpose. He did so once,<br>And probably will again some time — not now,<br>Life being the minute of mankind, not God's,<br>In a certain sense, like time before and time<br>After man's earthly life, so far as man<br>Needs apprehend the matter. Am I clear?<br>Suppose I bid a courier take to-night<br>(. . . Once for all, let me talk as if I smoked<br>Yet in the Residenz, a personage:<br>I must still represent the thing I was,<br>Galvanically make dead muscle play.<br>Or how shall I illustrate muscle's use?)<br>I could then, last July, bid courier take<br>Message for me, post-haste, a thousand miles.<br>I bid him, since I have the right to bid,<br>And, my part done so far, his part begins;<br>He starts with due equipment, will and power,<br>Means he may use, misuse, not use at all.<br>At his discretion, at his peril too.<br>I leave him to himself: but, journey done,<br>I count the minutes, call for the result<br>In quickness and the courier quality.<br>Weigh its worth, and then punish or reward<br>According to proved service; not before.<br>Meantime, he sleeps through noontide, rides till dawn.<br>Sticks to the straight road, tries the crooked path,<br>Measures and manages resource, trusts, doubts<br>Advisers by the wayside, does his best<br>At his discretion, lags or launches forth,<br>(He knows and I know) at his peril too.<br>You see? Exactly thus men stand to God:<br>I with my courier, God with me. Just so<br>I have His bidding to perform; but mind<br>And body, all of me, though made and meant<br>For that sole service, must consult, concert<br>With my own self and nobody beside,<br>How to effect the same: God helps not else.<br>'T is I who, with my stock of craft and strength,<br>Choose the directer cut across the hedge,<br>Or keep the foot-track that respects a crop.<br>Lie down and rest, rise up and run, — live spare,<br>Feed free, — all that 's my business: but, arrive,<br>Deliver message, bring the answer back,<br>And make my bow, I must: then God will speak,<br>Praise me or haply blame as service proves.<br>To other men, to each and everyone,<br>Another law! what likelier? God, perchance,<br>Grants each new man, by some as new a mode.<br>Intercommunication with Himself,<br>Wreaking on finiteness infinitude;<br>By such a series of effects, gives each<br>Last His own imprint: old yet ever new<br>The process: 't is the way of Deity.<br>How it succeeds, He knows: I only know<br>That varied modes of creatureship abound,<br>Implying just as varied intercourse<br>For each with the creator of them all.<br>Each has his own mind and no other's mode.<br>What mode may yours be? I shall sympathize!<br>No doubt, you, good young lady that you are,<br>Despite a natural naughtiness or two,<br>Turn eyes up like a Pradier Magdalen<br>And see an outspread providential hand<br>Above the owl's-wing aigrette — guard and guide —<br>Visibly o'er your path, about your bed,<br>Through all your practisings with London-town.<br>It points, you go; it stays fixed, and you stop;<br>You quicken its procedure by a word<br>Spoken, a thought in silence, prayer and praise.<br>Well, I believe that such a hand may stoop,<br>And such appeals to it may stave off harm,<br>Pacify the grim guardian of this Square,<br>And stand you in good stead on quarter-day:<br>Quite possible in your case; not in mine.<br>"Ah, but I choose to make the difference,<br>Find the emancipation?" No, I hope!<br>If I deceive myself, take noon for night,<br>Please to become determinedly blind<br>To the true ordinance of human life.<br>Through mere presumption — that is my affair.<br>And truly a grave one; but as grave I think<br>Your affair, yours, the specially observed, —<br>Each favoured person that perceives his path<br>Pointed him, inch by inch, and looks above<br>For guidance, through the mazes of this world,<br>In what we call its meanest life-career<br>— Not how to manage Europe properly.<br>But how keep open shop, and yet pay rent.<br>Rear household, and make both ends meet, the same.<br>I say, such man is no less tasked than I<br>To duly take the path appointed him<br>By whatsoever sign he recognize.<br>Our insincerity on both our heads!<br>No matter what the object of a life,<br>Small work or large, — the making thrive a shop,<br>Or seeing that an empire take no harm, —<br>There are known fruits to judge obedience by.<br>You've read a ton's weight, now, of newspaper —<br>Lives of me, gabble about the kind of prince —<br>You know my work i' the rough; I ask you, then.<br>Do I appear subordinated less<br>To hand-impulsion, one prime push for all.<br>Than little lives of men, the multitude<br>That cried out, every quarter of an hour,<br>For fresh instructions, did or did not work,<br>And praised in the odd minutes?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Eh, my dear?<br>Such is the reason why I acquiesced<br>In doing what seemed best for me to do,<br>So as to please myself on the great scale,<br>Having regard to immortality<br>No less than life — did that which head and heart<br>Prescribed my hand, in measure with its means<br>Of doing — used my special stock of power —<br>Not from the aforesaid head and heart alone,<br>But every sort of helpful circumstance.<br>Some problematic and some nondescript:<br>All regulated by the single care<br>I' the last resort — that I made thoroughly serve<br>The when and how, toiled where was need, reposed<br>As resolutely to the proper point.<br>Braved sorrow, courted joy, to just one end:<br>Namely, that just the creature I was bound<br>To be, I should become, nor thwart at all<br>God's purpose in creation. I conceive<br>No other duty possible to man, —<br>Highest mind, lowest mind, — no other law<br>By which to judge life failure or success:<br>What folks call being saved or cast away.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Such was my rule of life; I worked my best<br>Subject to ultimate judgment, God's not man's.<br>Well then, this settled, — take your tea, I beg.<br>And meditate the fact, 'twixt sip and sip, —<br>This settled — why I pleased myself, you saw,<br>By turning blot and blot into a line,<br>O' the little scale, — we'll try now (as your tongue<br>Tries the concluding sugar-drop) what's meant<br>To please me most o' the great scale. Why, just now,<br>With nothing else to do within my reach.<br>Did I prefer making two blots one line<br>To making yet another separate<br>Third blot, and leaving those I found unlinked?<br>It meant, I like to use the thing I find.<br>Rather than strive at unfound novelty:<br>I make the best of the old, nor try for new.<br>Such will to act, such choice of action's way.<br>Constitute — when at work on the great scale,<br>Driven to their farthest natural consequence<br>By all the help from all the means — my own<br>Particular faculty of serving God,<br>Instinct for putting power to exercise<br>Upon some wish and want o' the time, I prove<br>Possible to mankind as best I may.<br>This constitutes my mission, — grant the phrase, —<br>Namely, to rule men — men within my reach,<br>To order, influence and dispose them so<br>As render solid and stabilify<br>Mankind in particles, the light and loose,<br>For their good and my pleasure in the act.<br>Such good accomplished proves twice good to me —<br>Good for its own sake, as the just and right.<br>And, in the effecting also, good again<br>To me its agent, tasked as suits my taste.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Is this much easy to be understood<br>At first glance? Now begin the steady gaze!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">My rank — (if I must tell you simple truth —<br>Telling were else not worth the whiff o' the weed<br>I lose for the tale's sake) — dear, my rank i' the world<br>Is hard to know and name precisely: err<br>I may, but scarcely over-estimate<br>My style and title. Do I class with men<br>Most useful to their fellows? Possibly, —<br>Therefore, in some sort, best; but, greatest mind<br>And rarest nature? Evidently no.<br>A conservator, call me, if you please,<br>Not a creator nor destroyer: one<br>Who keeps the world safe. I profess to trace<br>The broken circle of society,<br>Dim actual order, I can redescribe<br>Not only where some segment silver-true<br>Stays clear, but where the breaks of black commence<br>Baffling you all who want the eye to probe —<br>As I make out yon problematic thin<br>White paring of your thumb-nail outside there,<br>Above the plaster-monarch on his steed —<br>See an inch, name an ell, and prophecy<br>O' the rest that ought to follow, the round moon<br>Now hiding in the night of things: that round,<br>I labour to demonstrate moon enough<br>For the month's purpose, — that society,<br>Render efficient for the age's need:<br>Preserving you in either case the old,<br>Nor aiming at a new and greater thing,<br>A sun for moon, a future to be made<br>By first abolishing the present law:<br>No such proud task for me by any means!<br>History shows you men whose master-touch<br>Not so much modifies as makes anew:<br>Minds that transmute nor need restore at all.<br>A breath of God made manifest in flesh<br>Subjects the world to change, from time to time,<br>Alters the whole conditions of our race<br>Abruptly, not by unperceived degrees<br>Nor play of elements already there,<br>But quite new leaven, leavening the lump,<br>And liker, so, the natural process. See!<br>Where winter reigned for ages — by a turn<br>I' the time, some star-change, (ask geologists)<br>The ice-tracts split, clash, splinter and disperse.<br>And there's an end of immobility,<br>Silence, and all that tinted pageant, base<br>To pinnacle, one flush from fairy-land<br>Dead-asleep and deserted somewhere, — see! —<br>As a fresh sun, wave, spring and joy outburst.<br>Or else the earth it is, time starts from trance.<br>Her mountains tremble into fire, her plains<br>Heave blinded by confusion: what result?<br>New teeming growth, surprises of strange life<br>Impossible before, a world broke up<br>And re-made, order gained by law destroyed.<br>Not otherwise, in our society<br>Follow like portents, all as absolute<br>Regenerations: they have birth at rare<br>Uncertain unexpected intervals<br>O' the world, by ministry impossible<br>Before and after fulness of the days:<br>Some dervish desert-spectre, swordsman, saint,<br>Law-giver, lyrist, — Oh, we know the names!<br>Quite other these than I. Our time requires<br>No such strange potentate, — who else would dawn, —<br>No fresh force till the old have spent itself.<br>Such seems the natural economy.<br>To shoot a beam into the dark, assists:<br>To make that beam do fuller service, spread<br>And utilize such bounty to the height,<br>That assists also, — and that work is mine.<br>I recognize, contemplate, and approve<br>The general compact of society.<br>Not simply as I see effected good.<br>But good i' the germ, each chance that's possible<br>I' the plan traced so far: all results, in short,<br>For better or worse of the operation due<br>To those exceptional natures, unlike mine,<br>Who, helping, thwarting, conscious, unaware.<br>Did somehow manage to so far describe<br>This diagram left ready to my hand.<br>Waiting my turn of trial. I see success.<br>See failure, see what makes or mars throughout.<br>How shall I else but help complete this plan<br>Of which I know the purpose and approve,<br>By letting stay therein what seems to stand,<br>And adding good thereto of easier reach<br>To-day than yesterday?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So much, no more!<br>Whereon, "No more than that?" — inquire aggrieved<br>Half of my critics: "nothing new at all?<br>The old plan saved, instead of a sponged slate<br>And fresh-drawn figure?" — while, "So much as that?"<br>Object their fellows of the other faith:<br>"Leave uneffaced the crazy labyrinth<br>Of alteration and amendment, lines<br>Which every dabster felt in duty bound<br>To signalize his power of pen and ink<br>By adding to a plan once plain enough?<br>Why keep each fool's bequeathment, scratch and blurr<br>Which overscrawl and underscore the piece —<br>Nay, strengthen them by touches of your own?"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, that 's my mission, so I serve the world,<br>Figure as man o' the moment, — in default<br>Of somebody inspired to strike such change<br>Into society — from round to square.<br>The ellipsis to the rhomboid, how you please,<br>As suits the size and shape o' the world he finds.<br>But this I can, — and nobody my peer, —<br>Do the best with the least change possible:<br>Carry the incompleteness on, a stage,<br>Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth.<br>And weakness strong: wherein if I succeed,<br>It will not prove the worst achievement, sure.<br>In the eyes at least of one man, one I look<br>Nowise to catch in critic company:<br>To-wit, the man inspired, the genius' self<br>Destined to come and change things thoroughly.<br>He, at least, finds his business simplified.<br>Distinguishes the done from undone, reads<br>Plainly what meant and did not mean this time<br>We live in, and I work on, and transmit<br>To such successor: he will operate<br>On good hard substance, not mere shade and shine.<br>Let all my critics, born to idleness<br>And impotency, get their good, and have<br>Their hooting at the giver: I am deaf —<br>Who find great good in this society,<br>Great gain, the purchase of great labour. Touch<br>The work I may and must, but — reverent<br>In every fall o' the finger-tip, no doubt.<br>Perhaps I find all good there's warrant for<br>I' the world as yet: nay, to the end of time, —<br>Since evil never means part company<br>With mankind, only shift side and change shape.<br>I find advance i' the main, and notably<br>The Present an improvement on the Past,<br>And promise for the Future — which shall prove<br>Only the Present with its rough made smooth,<br>Its indistinctness emphasized; I hope<br>No better, nothing newer for mankind,<br>But something equably smoothed everywhere,<br>Good, reconciled with hardly-quite-as-good,<br>Instead of good and bad each jostling each.<br>"And that's all?" Ay, and quite enough for me!<br>We have toiled so long to gain what gain I find<br>I' the Present, — let us keep it! We shall toil<br>So long before we gain — if gain God grant —<br>A Future with one touch of difference<br>I' the heart of things, and not their outside face, —<br>Let us not risk the whiff of my cigar<br>For Fourier, Comte and all that ends in smoke!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This I see clearest probably of men<br>With power to act and influence, now alive:<br>Juster than they to the true state of things;<br>In consequence, more tolerant that, side<br>By side, shall co-exist and thrive alike<br>In the age, the various sorts of happiness<br>jNIoral, mark! — not material — moods o' the mind<br>Suited to man and man his opposite:<br>Say, minor modes of movement — hence to there,<br>Or thence to here, or simply round about —<br>So long as each toe spares its neighbour's kibe,<br>Nor spoils the major march and main advance.<br>The love of peace, care for the family,<br>Contentment with what's bad but might be worse —<br>Good movements these! and good, too, discontent,<br>So long as that spurs good, which might be best,<br>Into becoming better, anyhow:<br>Good — pride of country, putting hearth and home<br>I' the back-ground, out of undue prominence:<br>Good — yearning after change, strife, victory,<br>And triumph. Each shall have its orbit marked,<br>But no more, — none impede the other's path<br>In this wide world, — though each and all alike,<br>Save for me, fain would spread itself through space<br>And leave its fellow not an inch of way.<br>I rule and regulate the course, excite,<br>Restrain: because the whole machine should march<br>Impelled by those diversely-moving parts,<br>Each blind to aught beside its little bent.<br>Out of the turnings round and round inside,<br>Comes that straightforward world-advance, I want,<br>And none of them supposes God wants too<br>And gets through just their hindrance and my help.<br>I think that to have held the balance straight<br>For twenty years, say, weighing claim and claim,<br>And giving each its due, no less no more,<br>This was good service to humanity,<br>Right usage of my power in head and heart,<br>And reasonable piety beside.<br>Keep those three points in mind while judging me!<br>You stand, perhaps, for some one man, not men, —<br>Represent this or the other interest,<br>Nor mind the general welfare, — so, impugn<br>My practice and dispute my value: why?<br>You man of faith, I did not tread the world<br>Into a paste, and thereof make a smooth<br>Uniform mound whereon to plant your flag,<br>The lily-white, above the blood and brains!<br>Nor yet did I, you man of faithlessness,<br>So roll things to the level which you love,<br>That you could stand at ease there and survey<br>The universal Nothing undisgraced<br>By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire<br>I' the distance! Neither friend would I content,<br>Nor, as the world were simply meant for him.<br>Thrust out his fellow and mend God's mistake.<br>Why, you two fools, — my dear friends all the same, —<br>Is it some change o' the world and nothing else<br>Contents you? Should whatever was, not be?<br>How thanklessly you view things! There 's the root<br>Of the evil, source of the entire mistake: <br>You see no worth i' the world, nature and life,<br>Unless we change what is to what may be.<br>Which means, — may be, i' the brain of one of you!<br>"Reject what is?" — all capabilities —<br>Nay, you may style them chances if you choose —<br>All chances, then, of happiness that lie<br>Open to anybody that is born,<br>Tumbles into this life and out again, —<br>All that may happen, good and evil too,<br>I' the space between, to each adventurer<br>Upon this 'sixty, Anno Domini:<br>A life to live — and such a life a world<br>To learn, one's lifetime in, — and such a world!<br>However did the foolish pass for wise<br>By calling life a burden, man a fly<br>Or worm or what's most insignificant?<br>"O littleness of man!" deplores the bard;<br>And then, for fear the Powers should punish him,<br>I' the space between, to each adventurer<br>Upon this 'sixty, Anno Domini:<br>A life to live — and such a life a world<br>To learn, one's lifetime in, — and such a world!<br>However did the foolish pass for wise<br>By calling life a burden, man a fly<br>Or worm or what's most insignificant?<br>"O littleness of man!" deplores the bard;<br>And then, for fear the Powers should punish him,<br>"O grandeur of the visible universe<br>Our human littleness contrasts withal!<br>O sun, O moon, ye mountains and thou sea,<br>Thou emblem of immensity, thou this,<br>That and the other, — what impertinence<br>In man to eat and drink and walk about<br>And have his little notions of his own,<br>The while some wave sheds foam upon the shore!"<br>First of all, 't is a lie some three-times thick:<br>The bard, — this sort of speech being poetry, —<br>The bard puts mankind well outside himself<br>And then begins instructing them: "This way<br>I and my friend the sea conceive of you!<br>What would you give to think such thoughts as ours<br>Of you and the sea together? "Down they go<br>On the humbled knees of them: at once they draw<br>Distinction, recognize no mate of theirs<br>In one, despite his mock humility,<br>So plain a match for what he plays with. Next,<br>The turn of the great ocean-play-fellow,<br>When the bard, leaving Bond Street very far<br>From ear-shot, cares not to ventriloquize,<br>But tells the sea its home-truths: "You, my match?<br>You, all this terror and inmiensity<br>And what not? Shall I tell you what you are?<br>Just fit to hitch into a stanza, so<br>Wake up and set in motion who's asleep<br>O' the other side of you, in England, else<br>Unaware, as folk pace their Bond Street now,<br>Somebody here despises them so much!<br>Between us, — they are the ultimate! to them<br>And their perception go these lordly thoughts:<br>Since what were ocean — mane and tail, to boot —<br>Mused I not here, how make thoughts thinkable?<br>Start forth my stanza and astound the world!<br>Back, billows, to your insignificance!<br>Deep, you are done with!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Learn, my gifted friend,<br>There are two things i' the world, still wiser folk<br>Accept — intelligence and sympathy.<br>You pant about unutterable power<br>I' the ocean, all you feel but cannot speak?<br>Why, that's the plainest speech about it all.<br>You did not feel what was not to be felt.<br>Well, then, all else but what man feels is naught —<br>The wash o' the liquor that o'erbrims the cup<br>Called man, and runs to waste adown his side,<br>Perhaps to feed a cataract, — who cares?<br>I'll tell you: all the more I know mankind,<br>The more I thank God, like my grandmother,<br>For making me a little lower than<br>The angels, honour-clothed and glory-crowned:<br>This is the honour, — that no thing I know,<br>Feel or conceive, but I can make my own<br>Somehow, by use of hand or head or heart:<br>This is the glory, — that in all conceived.<br>Or felt or known, I recognize a mind<br>Not mine but like mine, — for the double joy, —<br>Making all things for me and me for Him.<br>There's folly for you at this time of day!<br>So think it! and enjoy your ignorance<br>Of what — no matter for the worthy's name —<br>Wisdom set working in a noble heart,<br>When he, who was earth's best geometer<br>Up to that time of day, consigned his life<br>With its results into one matchless book,<br>The triumph of the human mind so far.<br>All in geometry man yet could do:<br>And then wrote on the dedication-page<br>In place of name the universe applauds,<br>"But, God, what a geometer art Thou!"<br>I suppose Heaven is, through Eternity,<br>The equalizing, ever and anon,<br>In momentary rapture, great with small,<br>Omniscience with intelligency, God<br>With man, — the thunder-glow from pole to pole<br>Abolishing, a blissful moment-space,<br>Great cloud alike and small cloud, in one fire —<br>As sure to ebb as sure again to flow<br>When the new receptivity deserves<br>The new completion. There's the Heaven for me.<br>And I say, therefore, to live out one's life<br>I' the world here, with the chance, — whether by pain<br>Or pleasure be the process, long or short<br>The time, august or mean the circumstance<br>To human eye, — of learning how set foot<br>Decidedly on some one path to Heaven,<br>Touch segment in the circle whence all lines<br>Lead to the centre equally, red lines<br>Or black lines, so they but produce themselves —<br>This, I do say, — and here my sermon ends, —<br>This makes it worth our while to tenderly<br>Handle a state of things which mend we might.<br>Mar we may, but which meanwhile helps so far.<br>Therefore my end is — save society!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And that's all?" twangs the never-failing taunt<br>O' the foe — "No novelty, creativeness,<br>Mark of the master that renews the age?"<br>"Nay, all that?" rather will demur my judge<br>I look to hear some day, nor friend nor foe —<br>"Did you attain, then, to perceive that God<br>Knew what He undertook when He made things?"<br>Ay: that my task was to co-operate<br>Rather than play the rival, chop and change<br>The order whence comes all the good we know,<br>With this, — good's last expression to our sense, —<br>That there's a further good conceivable<br>Beyond the utmost earth can realize:<br>And, therefore, that to change the agency,<br>The evil whereby good is brought about —<br>Try to make good do good as evil does —<br>Were just as if a chemist, wanting white.<br>And knowing black ingredients bred the dye.<br>Insisted these too should be white forsooth!<br>Correct the evil, mitigate your best,<br>Blend mild with harsh, and soften black to gray<br>If gray may follow with no detriment<br>To the eventual perfect purity!<br>But as for hazarding the main result<br>By hoping to anticipate one half<br>In the intermediate process, — no, my friends!<br>This bad world, I experience and approve;<br>Your good world, — with no pity, courage, hope.<br>Fear, sorrow, joy, — devotedness, in short,<br>Which I account the ultimate of man,<br>Of which there's not one day nor hour but brings<br>In flower or fruit, some sample of success,<br>Out of this same society I save —<br>None of it for me! That I might have none,<br>I rapped your tampering knuckles twenty years.<br>Such was the task imposed me, such my end.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now for the means thereto. Ah, confidence —<br>Keep we together or part company?<br>This is the critical minute! "Such my end?"<br>Certainly; how could it be otherwise?<br>Can there be question which was the right task —<br>To save or to destroy society?<br>Why, even prove that, by some miracle,<br>Destruction were the proper work to choose,<br>And that a torch best remedies what's wrong<br>I' the temple, whence the long procession wound<br>Of powers and beauties, earth's achievements all.<br>The human strength that strove and overthrew, —<br>The human love that, weak itself, crowned strength,—<br>The instinct crying "God is whence I came!" —<br>The reason laying down the law "And such<br>His will i' the world must be! " — the leap and shout<br>Of genius "For I hold His very thoughts,<br>The meaning of the mind of Him!" — nay, more<br>The ingenuities, each active force<br>That turning in a circle on itselt<br>Looks neither up nor down but keeps the spot.<br>Mere creature-like and, for religion, works,<br>Works only and works ever, makes and shapes<br>And changes, still wrings more of good from less,<br>Still stamps some bad out, where was worst before.<br>So leaves the handiwork, the act and deed.<br>Were it but house and land and wealth, to show<br>Here was a creature perfect in the kind —<br>Whether as bee, beaver, or behemoth,<br>What's the importance? he has done his work<br>For work's sake, worked well, earned a creature's praise; —<br>I say, concede that same fane, whence deploys<br>Age after age, all this humanity,<br>Diverse but ever dear, out of the dark<br>Behind the altar into the broad day<br>By the portal — enter, and, concede there mocks<br>Each lover of free motion and much space<br>A perplexed length of apse and aisle and nave, —<br>Pillared roof and carved screen, and what care I?<br>That irk the movement and impede the march, —<br>Nay, possibly, bring flat upon his nose<br>At some odd break-neck angle, by some freak<br>Of old-world artistry, that personage<br>Who, could he but have kept his skirts from grief<br>And catching at the hooks and crooks about,<br>Had stepped out on the daylight of our time<br>Plainly the man of the age, — still, still, I bar<br>Excessive conflagration in the case.<br>"Shake the flame freely!" shout the multitude:<br>The architect approves I stuck my torch<br>Inside a good stout lantern, hung its light<br>Above the hooks and crooks, and ended so. <br>To save society was well: the means<br>Whereby to save it, — there begins the doubt<br>Permitted you, imperative on me;<br>Were mine the best means? Did I work aright<br>With powers appointed me? — since powers denied<br>Concern me nothing.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, my work reviewed<br>Fairly, leaves more hope than discouragement.<br>First, there's the deed done: what I found, I leave,-<br>What tottered, I kept stable: if it stand<br>One month, without sustainment, still thank me<br>The twenty years' sustainer! Now, observe,<br>Sustaining is no brilliant self-display<br>Like knocking down or even setting up:<br>Much bustle these necessitate; and still<br>To vulgar eye, the mightier of the myth<br>Is Hercules, who substitutes his own<br>For Atlas' shoulder and supports the globe<br>A whole day, — not the passive and obscure<br>Atlas who bore, ere Hercules was born,<br>And is to go on bearing that same load<br>When Hercules turns ash on OEta's top.<br>'T is the transition-stage, the tug and strain.<br>That strike men: standing still is stupid-like.<br>My pressure was too constant on the whole<br>For any part's eruption into space<br>Mid sparkles, crackling, and much praise of me.<br>I saw that, in the ordinary life,<br>Many of the little make a mass of men<br>Important beyond greatness here and there;<br>As certainly as, in life exceptional,<br>When old things terminate and new commence,<br>A solitary great man's worth the world.<br>God takes the business into His own hands<br>At such time: who creates the novel flower<br>Contrives to guard and give it breathing-room:<br>I merely tend the corn-field, care for crop,<br>And weed no acre thin to let emerge<br>What prodigy may stifle there perchance,<br>— No, though my eye have noted where he lurks.<br>Oh those mute myriads that spoke loud to me —<br>The eyes that craved to see the light, the mouths<br>That sought the daily bread and nothing more,<br>The hands that supplicated exercise,<br>Men that had wives, and women that had babes,<br>And all these making suit to only live!<br>Was I to turn aside from husbandry,<br>Leave hope of harvest for the corn, my care,<br>To play at horticulture, rear some rose<br>Or poppy into perfect leaf and bloom<br>When, mid the furrows, up was pleased to sprout<br>Some man, cause, system, special interest<br>I ought to study, stop the world meanwhile?<br>"But I am Liberty, Philanthropy,<br>Enhghtenment, or Patriotism, the power<br>Whereby you are to stand or fall!" cries each:<br>"Mine and mine only be the flag you flaunt!"<br>And, when I venture to object "Meantime,<br>What of yon myriads with no flag at all —<br>My crop which, who flaunts flag must tread across?"<br>"Now, this it is to have a puny mind!"<br>Admire my mental prodigies: "down — down —<br>Ever at home o' the level and the low.<br>There bides he brooding! Could he look above,<br>With less of the owl and more of the eagle eye,<br>He'd see there's no way helps the little cause<br>Like the attainment of the great. Dare first<br>The chief emprise; dispel yon cloud between<br>The sun and us; nor fear that, though our heads<br>Find earlier warmth and comfort from his ray,<br>What Hes about our feet, the multitude,<br>Will fail of benefaction presently.<br>Come now, let each of us awhile cry truce<br>To special interests, make common cause<br>Against the adversary — or perchance<br>Mere dullard to his own plain interest!<br>Which of us will you choose? — since needs must be<br>Some one o' the warring causes you incline<br>To hold, i' the main, has right and should prevail;<br>Why not adopt and give it prevalence?<br>Choose strict Faith or lax Incredulity, —<br>King, Caste and Cultus — or the Rights of Man,<br>Sovereignty of each Proudhon o'er himself,<br>And all that follows in just consequence!<br>Go free the stranger from a foreign yoke;<br>Or stay, concentrate energy at home;<br>Succeed! — when he deserves, the stranger will.<br>Comply with the Great Nation's impulse, print<br>By force of arms, — since reason pleads in vain,<br>And, mid the sweet compulsion, pity weeps, —<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau on the universe! <br>Snub the Great Nation, cure the impulsive itch<br>With smartest fillip on a restless nose<br>Was ever launched by thumb and finger! Bid<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau first repeal the tax<br>On pig-tails and pomatum and then mind<br>Abstruser matters for next century!<br>Is your choice made? Why then, act up to choice!<br>Leave the illogical touch now here now there<br>I' the way of work, the tantalizing help<br>First to this then the other opposite:<br>The blowing hot and cold, sham policy,<br>Sure ague of the mind and nothing more,<br>Disease of the perception or the Will,<br>That fain would hide in a fine name! Your choice,<br>Speak it out and condemn yourself thereby!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, Leicester-square is not the Residenz:<br>Instead of shrugging shoulder, turning friend<br>The deaf ear, with a wink to the police —<br>I'll answer — by a question, wisdom's mode.<br>How many years, o' the average, do men<br>Live in this world? Some score, say computists.<br>Quintuple me that term and give mankind<br>The likely hundred, and with all my heart<br>I'll take your task upon me, work your way,<br>Concentrate energy on some one cause:<br>Since, counseller, I also have my cause,<br>My flag, my faith in its effect, my hope<br>In its eventual triumph for the good<br>O' the world. And once upon a time, when I<br>Was like all you, mere voice and nothing more,<br>Myself took wings, soared sun-ward, and thence sang<br>"Look where I live i' the loft, come up to me,<br>Groundlings, nor grovel longer I gain this height.<br>And prove you breathe here better than below!<br>Why, what emancipation far and wide<br>Will follow in a trice! They too can soar,<br>Each tenant of the earth's circumference<br>Claiming to elevate humanity,<br>They also must attain such altitude,<br>Live in the luminous circle that surrounds<br>The planet, not the leaden orb itself.<br>Press out, each point, from surface to yon verge<br>Which one has gained and guaranteed your realm!"<br>Ay, still my fragments wander, music-fraught,<br>Sighs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and mine<br>For ever! Crumbled arch, crushed aqueduct,<br>Alive with tremors in the shaggy growth<br>Of wild-wood, crevice-sown, that triumphs there<br>Imparting exultation to the hills!<br>Sweep of the swathe when only the winds walk<br>And waft my words above the grassy sea<br>Under the blinding blue that basks o'er Rome, —<br>Hear ye not still — "Be Italy again?"<br>And ye, what strikes the panic to your heart?<br>Decrepit council-chambers, — where some lamp<br>Drives the unbroken black three paces off<br>From where the greybeards huddle in debate,<br>Dim cowls and capes, and midmost glimmers one<br>Like tarnished gold, and what they say is doubt.<br>And what they think is fear, and what suspends<br>The breath in them is not the plaster-patch<br>Time disengages from the painted wall<br>Where Rafael moulderingly bids adieu,<br>Nor tick of the insect turning tapestry<br>To dust, which a queen's finger traced of old;<br>But some word, resonant, redoubtable.<br>Of who once felt upon his head a hand<br>Whereof the head now apprehends his foot.<br>"Light in Rome, Law in Rome, and Liberty<br>O' the soul in Rome — the free Church, the free State!<br>Stamp out the nature that's best typified<br>By its embodiment in Peter's Dome,<br>The scorpion-body with the greedy pair<br>Of outstretched nippers, either colonnade<br>Agape for the advance of heads and hearts!"<br>There's one cause for you! one and only one.<br>For I am vocal through the universe,<br>I' the work-shop, manufactory, exchange<br>And market-place, sea-port and custom-house<br>O' the frontier: listen if the echoes die —<br>"Unfettered commerce! Power to speak and hear,<br>And print and read! The universal vote!<br>Its rights for labour!" This, with much beside,<br>I spoke when I was voice and nothing more,<br>But altogether such an one as you<br>My censors. "Voice, and nothing more, indeed!"<br>Re-echoes round me: "that's the censure, there's<br>Involved the ruin of you soon or late!<br>Voice, — when its promise beat the empty air:<br>And nothing more, — when solid earth's your stage.<br>And we desiderate performance, deed<br>For word, the realizing all you dreamed<br>In the old days: now, for deed, we find at door<br>O' the council-chamber posted, mute as mouse,<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau, sentry and safeguard<br>O' the greybeards all a-chuckle, cowl to cape.<br>Who challenge Judas, — that 's endearment's style, —<br>To stop their mouths or let escape grimace,<br>While they keep cursing Italy and him.<br>The power to speak, hear, print and read is ours?<br>Ay, we learn where and how, when clapped inside<br>A convict-transport bound for cool Cayenne!<br>The universal vote we have: its urn,<br>We also have where votes drop, fingered-o'er<br>By the universal Prefect. Say, Trade's free<br>And Toil turned master out o' the slave it was:<br>What then? These feed man's stomach, but his soul<br>Craves finer fare, nor lives by bread alone.<br>As somebody says somewhere. Hence you stand<br>Proved and recorded either false or weak, <br>Faulty in promise or performance: which?"<br>Neither, I hope. Once pedestalled on earth,<br>To act not speak, I found earth was not air.<br>I saw that multitude of mine, and not<br>The nakedness and nullity of air<br>Fit only for a voice to float in free.<br>Such eyes I saw that craved the light alone.<br>Such mouths that wanted bread and nothing else,<br>Such hands that supplicated handiwork,<br>Men with the wives, and women with the babes,<br>Yet all these pleading just to live, not die!<br>Did I believe one whit less in belief.<br>Take truth for falsehood, wish the voice revoked<br>That told the truth to heaven for earth to hear?<br>No, this should be, and shall; but when and how?<br>At what expense to these who average<br>Your twenty years of life, my computists?<br>"Not bread alone" but bread before all else<br>For these: the bodily want serve first, said I;<br>If earth-space and the life-time help not here,<br>Where is the good of body having been?<br>But, helping body, if we somewhat baulk<br>The soul of finer fare, such food's to find<br>Elsewhere and afterward — all indicates.<br>Even this self-same fact that soul can starve<br>Yet body still exist its twenty years:<br>While, stint the body, there's an end at once<br>O' the revel in the fancy that Rome's free.<br>And superstition's fettered, and one prints<br>Whate'er one pleases and who pleases reads<br>The same, and speaks out and is spoken to.<br>And divers hundred thousand fools may vote<br>A vote untampered with by one wise man,<br>And so elect Barabbas deputy<br>In lieu of his concurrent. I who trace<br>The purpose written on the face of things,<br>For my behoof and guidance — (whoso needs<br>No such sustainment, sees beneath my signs,<br>Proves, what I take for writing, penmanship,<br>Scribble and flourish with no sense for me<br>O' the sort I solemnly go spelling out, —<br>Let him! there 's certain work of mine to show<br>Alongside his work: which gives warranty<br>Of shrewder vision in the workman — judge!)<br>I who trace Providence without a break<br>I' the plan of things, drop plumb on this plain print<br>Of an intention with a view to good,<br>That man is made in sympathy with man<br>At outset of existence, so to speak;<br>But in dissociation, more and more,<br>Man from his fellow, as their lives advance<br>In culture; still humanity, that's born<br>A mass, keeps flying off, fining away<br>Ever into a multitude of points,<br>And ends in isolation, each from each:<br>Peerless above i' the sky, the pinnacle, —<br>Absolute contact, fusion, all below<br>At the base of being. How comes this about?<br>This stamp of God characterizing man<br>And nothing else but man in the universe —<br>That, while he feels with man (to use man's speech)<br>I' the little things of life, its fleshly wants<br>Of food and rest and health and happiness,<br>Its simplest spirit-motions, loves and hates,<br>Hopes, fears, soul-cravings on the ignoblest scale,<br>O' the fellow-creature, — owns the bond at base, —<br>He tends to freedom and divergency<br>In the upward progress, plays the pinnacle<br>When life's at greatest (grant again the phrase!<br>Because there's neither great nor small in life.)<br>"Consult thou for thy kind that have the eyes<br>To see, the mouths to eat, the hands to work,<br>Men with the wives, and women with the babes!"<br>Prompts Nature. "Care thou for thyself alone<br>I' the conduct of the mind God made thee with!<br>Think, as if man had never thought before!<br>Act, as if all creation hung attent<br>On the acting of such faculty as thine,<br>To take prime pattern from thy masterpiece!"<br>Nature prompts also: neither law obeyed<br>To the uttermost by any heart and soul<br>We know or have in record: both of them<br>Acknowledged blindly by whatever man<br>We ever knew or heard of in this world.<br>"Will you have why and wherefore, and the fact<br>Made plain as pikestaff?" modern Science asks.<br>"That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lump<br>Once on a time; he kept an after course<br>Through fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast,<br>Till he attained to be an ape at last<br>Or last but one. And if this doctrine shock<br>In aught the natural pride" . . . Friend, banish fear,<br>The natural humility replies!<br>Do you suppose, even I, poor potentate,<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau, who once ruled the roast, —<br>I was born able at all points to ply<br>My tools? or did I have to learn my trade,<br>Practise as exile ere perform as prince?<br>The world knows something of my ups and downs:<br>But grant me time, give me the management <br>And manufacture of a model me.<br>Me fifty-fold, a prince without a flaw, —<br>Why, there's no social grade, the sordidest,<br>My embryo potentate should blink and scape.<br>King, all the better he was cobbler once,<br>He should know, sitting on the throne, how tastes<br>Life to who sweeps the doorway. But life's hard,<br>Occasion rare; you cut probation short,<br>And, being half-instructed, on the stage<br>You shuffle through your part as best you may,<br>And bless your stars, as I do. God takes time.<br>I like the thought He should have lodged me once<br>I' the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement.<br>The mansion and the palace; made me learn<br>The feel o' the first, before I found myself<br>Loftier i' the last, not more emancipate<br>From first to last of lodging, I was I,<br>And not at all the place that harboured me.<br>Do I refuse to follow farther yet<br>I' the backwardness, repine if tree and flower,<br>Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place<br>Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusc?<br>As well account that way for many a thrill<br>Of kinship, I confess to, with the powers<br>Called Nature: animate, inanimate.<br>In parts or in the whole, there's something there<br>Man-like that somehow meets the man in me.<br>My pulse goes altogether with the heart<br>O' the Persian, that old Xerxes, when he stayed<br>His march to conquest of the world, a day<br>I' the desert, for the sake of one superb<br>Plane-tree which queened it there in solitude:<br>Giving her neck its necklace, and each arm<br>Its armlet, suiting soft waist, snowy side.<br>With cincture and apparel. Yes, I lodged<br>In those successive tenements; perchance<br>Taste yet the straitness of them while I stretch<br>Limb and enjoy new liberty the more.<br>And some abodes are lost or ruinous;<br>Some, patched-up and pieced out, and so transformed<br>They still accommodate the traveller<br>His day of life-time. O you count the links,<br>Descry no bar of the unbroken man?<br>Yes, — and who welds a lump of ore, suppose<br>He likes to make a chain and not a bar.<br>And reach by link on link, link small, link large,<br>Out to the due length — why, there's forethought still<br>Outside o' the series, forging at one end.<br>While at the other there's — no matter what<br>The kind of critical intelligence<br>Believing that last link had last but one<br>For parent, and no link was, first of all,<br>Fitted to anvil, hammered into shape.<br>Else, I accept the doctrine, and deduce<br>This duty, that I recognize mankind,<br>In all its height and depth and length and breadth.<br>Mankind i' the main have little wants, not large:<br>I, being of will and power to help, i' the main,<br>Mankind, must help the least wants first. My friend,<br>That is, my foe, without such power and will,<br>May plausibly concentrate all he wields,<br>And do his best at helping some large want,<br>Exceptionally noble cause, that's seen<br>Subordinate enough from where I stand.<br>As he helps, I helped once, when like himself.<br>Unable to help better, work more wide;<br>And so would work with heart and hand to-day,<br>Did only computists confess a fault,<br>And multiply the single score by five,<br>Five only, give man's life its hundred years.<br>Change life, in me shall follow change to match!<br>Time were then, to work here, there, everywhere,<br>By turns and try experiment at ease!<br>Full time to mend as well as mar: why wait<br>The slow and sober uprise all around<br>O' the building? Let us run up, right to roof.<br>Some sudden marvel, piece of perfectness,<br>And testify what we intend the whole!<br>Is the world losing patience? "Wait!" say we:<br>"There's time: no generation needs to die<br>Unsolaced; you Ve a century in store!"<br>But, no: I sadly let the voices wing<br>Their way i' the upper vacancy, nor test<br>Truth on this solid as I promised once.<br>Well, and what is there to be sad about?<br>The world's the world, life's life, and nothing else.<br>'T is part of life, a property to prize.<br>That those o' the higher sort engaged i' the world,<br>Should fancy they can change its ill to good.<br>Wrong to right, ugliness to beauty: find<br>Enough success in fancy turning fact.<br>To keep the sanguine kind in countenance<br>And justify the hope that busies them:<br>Failure enough, — to who can follow change<br>Beyond their vision, see new good prove ill<br>I' the consequence, see blacks and whites of life<br>Shift square indeed, but leave the chequered face<br>Unchanged i' the main, — failure enough for such.<br>To bid ambition keep the whole from change,<br>As their best service. I hope naught beside. <br>No, my brave thinkers, whom I recognize,<br>Gladly, myself the first, as, in a sense,<br>All that our world's worth, flower and fruit of man!<br>Such minds myself award supremacy<br>Over the common insignificance,<br>When only Mind's in question, — Body bows<br>To quite another government, you know.<br>Be Kant crowned king o' the castle in the air!<br>Hans Slouch, — his own, and children's mouths to feed<br>I' the hovel on the ground, — wants meat, nor chews<br>"The Critique of Pure Reason" in exchange.<br>But, now, — suppose I could allow your claims<br>And quite change life to please you, — would it please?<br>Would life comport with change and still be life?<br>Ask, now, a doctor for a remedy:<br>There's his prescription. Bid him point you out<br>Which of the five or six ingredients saves<br>The sick man. "Such the efficacity?<br>Then why not dare and do things in one dose<br>Simple and pure, all virtue, no alloy<br>Of the idle drop and powder?" What's his word?<br>The efficacity, neat, were neutralized:<br>It wants dispersing and retarding, — nay<br>Is put upon its mettle, plays its part<br>Precisely through such hindrance everywhere,<br>Finds some mysterious give and take i' the case,<br>Some gain by opposition, he foregoes<br>Should he unfetter the medicament.<br>So with this thought of yours that fain would work<br>Free in the world: it wants just what it finds —<br>The ignorance, stupidity, the hate,<br>Envy and malice and uncharitableness<br>That bar your passage, break the flow of you<br>Down from those happy heights where many a cloud<br>Combined to give you birth and bid you be<br>The royalest of rivers: on you glide<br>Silverly till you reach the summit-edge,<br>Then over, on to all that ignorance.<br>Stupidity, hate, envy, bluffs and blocks.<br>Posted to fret you into foam and noise.<br>What of it? Up you mount in minute mist,<br>And bridge the chasm that crushed your quietude,<br>A spirit-rainbow, earthborn jewelry<br>Outsparkling the insipid firmament<br>Blue above Terni and its orange-trees.<br>Do not mistake me! You, too, have your rights!<br>Hans must not burn Kant's house above his head,<br>Because he cannot understand Kant's book:<br>And still less must Hans' pastor bum Kant's self<br>Because Kant understands some books too well.<br>But, justice seen to on this little point,<br>Answer me, is it manly, is it sage<br>To stop and struggle with arrangements here<br>It took so many lives, so much of toil,<br>To tinker up into efficiency?<br>Can't you contrive to operate at once, —<br>Since time is short and art is long, — to show<br>Your quality i' the world, whatever you boast,<br>Without this fractious call on folks to crush<br>The world together just to set you free,<br>Admire the capers you will cut perchance,<br>Nor mind the mischief to your neighbours?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Age!<br>Age and experience bring discouragement,"<br>You taunt me: I maintain the opposite.<br>Am I discouraged who, — perceiving health.<br>Strength, beauty, as they tempt the eye of soul,<br>Are uncombinable with flesh and blood, —<br>Resolve to let my body live its best,<br>And leave my soul what better yet may be<br>Or not be, in this life or afterward?<br>— In either fortune, wiser than who waits<br>Till magic art procure a miracle.<br>In virtue of my very confidence<br>Mankind ought to outgrow its babyhood,<br>I prescribe rocking, deprecate rough hands,<br>While thus the cradle holds it past mistake.<br>Indeed, my task's the harder — equable<br>Sustainment everywhere, all strain, no push —<br>Whereby friends credit me with indolence,<br>Apathy, hesitation. "Stand stock-still<br>If able to move briskly? 'All a-strain' —<br>So must we compliment your passiveness?<br>Sound asleep, rather!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Just the judgment passed<br>Upon a statue, luckless like myself,<br>I saw at Rome once! 'T was some artist's whim<br>To cover all the accessories close<br>I' the group, and leave you only Laocoön<br>With neither sons nor serpents to denote<br>The purpose of his gesture. Then a crowd<br>Was called to try the question, criticize<br>Wherefore such energy of legs and arms.<br>Nay, eyeballs, starting from the socket. One —<br>I give him leave to write my history —<br>Only one said "I think the gesture strives<br>Against some obstacle we cannot see."<br>All the rest made their minds up. "'T is a yawn<br>Of sheer fatigue subsiding to repose:<br>The Statue's 'Somnolency' clear enough!"<br>There, my arch stranger-friend, my audience both<br>And arbitress, you have one half your wish, <br>At least: you know the thing I tried to do!<br>All, so far, to my praise and glory — all<br>Told as befits the self-apologist, —<br>Who ever promises a candid sweep<br>And clearance of those errors miscalled crimes<br>None knows more, none laments so much as he,<br>And ever rises from confession, proved<br>A god whose fault was — trying to be man.<br>Just so, fair judge, — if I read smile aright —<br>I condescend to figure in your eyes<br>As biggest heart and best of Europe's friends,<br>And hence my failure. God will estimate<br>Success one day; and, in the mean time — you!<br>I daresay there's some fancy of the sort<br>Frolicking round this final puff I send<br>To die up yonder in the ceiling-rose, —<br>Some consolation-stakes, we losers win!<br>A plague of the return to "I — I — I<br>Did this, meant that, hoped, feared the other thing!"<br>Autobiography, adieu! The rest<br>Shall make amends, be pure blame, history<br>And falsehood: not the ineffective truth,<br>But Thiers-and-Victor-Hugo exercise.<br>Hear what I never was, but might have been<br>I' the better world where goes tobacco-smoke!<br>Here lie the dozen volumes of my life:<br>(Did I say "lie?" the pregnant word will serve.)<br>Cut on to the concluding chapter, though!<br>Because the little hours begin to strike.<br>Hurry Thiers-Hugo to the labour's end!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Something like this the unwritten chapter reads.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Exemplify the situation thus!<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau, being, no dispute,<br>Absolute mistress, chose the Assembly, first,<br>To serve her: chose this man, its President<br>Afterward, to serve also, — specially<br>To see that they did service one and all.<br>And now the proper term of years was out.<br>When the Head-servant must vacate his place;<br>And nothing lay so patent to the world<br>As that his fellow-servants one and all<br>Were — mildly make we mention — knaves or fools,<br>Each of them with his purpose flourished full<br>I' the face of you by word and impudence,<br>Or filtered slyly out by nod and wink<br>And nudge upon your sympathetic rib —<br>That not one minute more did knave or fool<br>Mean to keep faith and serve as he had sworn<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau, once that Head away.<br>Why did such swear except to get the chance,<br>When time should ripen and confusion bloom,<br>Of putting Hohenstielers-Schwangauese<br>To the true use of human property?<br>Restoring souls and bodies, this to Pope,<br>And that to King, that other to his planned<br>Perfection of a Share-and-share-alike,<br>That other still, to Empire absolute<br>In shape of the Head-servant's very self<br>Transformed to master whole and sole: each scheme<br>Discussible, concede one circumstance —<br>That each scheme's parent were, beside himself,<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau, not her serving-man<br>Sworn to do service in the way she chose<br>Rather than his way: way superlative,<br>Only, — by some infatuation, — his<br>And his and his and everyone's but hers<br>Who stuck to just the Assembly and the Head.<br>I niake no doubt the Head, too, had his dream<br>Of doing sudden duty swift and sure<br>On all that heap of untrustworthiness —<br>Catching each vaunter of the villany<br>He meant to perpetrate when time was ripe,<br>Once the Head-servant fairly out of doors, —<br>And, caging here a knave and there a fool,<br>Cry "Mistress of the servants, these and me,<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau! I, their trusty Head,<br>Pounce on a pretty scheme concocting here<br>That's stopped, extinguished by my vigilance.<br>Your property is safe again: but mark!<br>Safe in these hands, not yours, who lavish trust<br>Too lightly. Leave my hands their charge awhile!<br>I know your business better than yourself:<br>Let me alone about it! Some fine day,<br>Once we are rid of the embarrassment,<br>You shall look up and see your longings crowned!"<br>Such fancy may have tempted to be false,<br>But this man chose truth and was wiser so.<br>He recognized that for great minds i' the world<br>There is no trial like the appropriate one<br>Of leaving little minds their liberty<br>Of littleness to blunder on through life,<br>Now, aiming at right end by foolish means.<br>Now, at absurd achievement through the aid<br>Of good and wise means: trial to acquiesce<br>In folly's life-long privilege — though with power<br>To do the little minds the good they need,<br>Despite themselves, by just abolishing<br>Their right to play the part and fill the place<br>I' the scheme of things He schemed who made alike<br>Great minds and little minds, saw use for each. <br>Could the orb sweep those puny particles<br>It just half-lights at distance, hardly leads<br>I' the leash — sweep out each speck of them from space<br>They anticize in with their days and nights<br>And whirlings round and dancings off, forsooth,<br>And all that fruitless individual life<br>One cannot lend a beam to but they spoil —<br>Sweep them into itself and so, one star,<br>Preponderate henceforth i' the heritage<br>Of heaven! No! in less senatorial phrase.<br>The man endured to help, not save outright<br>The multitude by substituting him<br>For them, his knowledge, will and way, for God's:<br>Not change the world, such as it is, and was<br>And will be, for some other, suiting all<br>Except the purpose of the maker. No!<br>He saw that weakness, wickedness will be,<br>And therefore should be: that the perfect man<br>As we account perfection — at most pure<br>0' the special gold, whate'er the form it take,<br>Head-work or heart-work, fined and thrice-refined<br>I' the crucible of life, whereto the powers<br>Of the refiner, one and all, were flung<br>To feed the flame their utmost, — e'en that block.<br>He holds out breathlessly triumphant, — breaks<br>Into some poisonous ore, its opposite.<br>At the very purest, so compensating<br>The Adversary — what if we believe?<br>For earlier stern exclusion of his stuff.<br>See the sage, with the hunger for the truth,<br>And see his system that's all true, except<br>The one weak place that's stanchioned by a lie!<br>The moralist, that walks with head erect<br>I' the crystal clarity of air so long.<br>Until a stumble, and the man's one mire!<br>Philanthropy undoes the social knot<br>With axe-edge, makes love room 'twixt head and trunk!<br>Religion — but, enough, the thing's too clear!<br>Well, if these sparks break out i' the greenest tree.<br>Our topmost of performance, yours and mine,<br>AVhat will be done i' the dry ineptitude<br>Of ordinary mankind, Ipark and bole.<br>All seems ashamed of but their mother-earth?<br>Therefore throughout his term of servitude<br>He did the appointed service, and forbore<br>Extraneous action that were duty else,<br>Done by some other servant, idle now<br>Or mischievous: no matter, each his own —<br>Own task, and, in the end, own praise or blame!<br>He suffered them strut, prate and brag their best.<br>Squabble at odds on every point save one,<br>And there shake hands, — agree to trifle time,<br>Obstruct advance with, each, his cricket-cry<br>"Wait till the Head be off the shoulders here!<br>Then comes my King, my Pope, my Autocrat,<br>My Socialist Republic to her own —<br>To-wit, that property of only me,<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau who conceits herself<br>Free, forsooth, and expects I keep her so!"<br>— Nay, suffered when, perceiving with dismay<br>His silence paid no tribute to their noise,<br>They turned on him. "Dumb menace in that mouth,<br>Malice in that unstridulosity!<br>He cannot but intend some stroke of state<br>Shall signalize his passage into peace<br>Out of the creaking, — hinder transference<br>O' the Hohenstielers-Schwangauese to king.<br>Pope, autocrat, or socialist republic! That's<br>Exact the cause his lips unlocked would cry!<br>Therefore be stirring: brave, beard, bully him!<br>Dock, by the million, of its friendly joints,<br>The electoral body short at once! who did,<br>May do again, and undo us beside.<br>Wrest from his hands the sword for self-defence,<br>The right to parry any thrust in play<br>We peradventure please to meditate!"<br>And so forth; creak, creak, creak: and ne'er a line<br>His locked mouth oped the wider, till at last<br>O' the long degraded and insulting day,<br>Sudden the clock told it was judgment-time.<br>Then he addressed himself to speak indeed<br>To the fools, not knaves: they saw him walk straight down<br>Each step of the eminence, as he first engaged,<br>And stand at last o' the level, — all he swore.<br>"People, and not the people's varletry,<br>This is the task you set myself and these!<br>Thus I performed my part of it, and thus<br>They thwarted me throughout, here, here, and here:<br>Study each instance! yours the loss, not mine.<br>What they intend now is demonstrable<br>As plainly: here's such man, and here's such mode<br>Of making you some other than the thing<br>You, wisely or unwisely, choose to be,<br>And only set him up to keep you so.<br>Do you approve this? Yours the loss, not mine.<br>Do you condemn it? There's a remedy.<br>Take me — who know your mind, and mean your good,<br>With clearer head and stouter arm than they,<br>Or you, or haply anybody else —<br>And make me master for the moment! Choose <br>What time, what power you trust me with: I too<br>Will choose as frankly ere I trust myself<br>With time and power: they must be adequate<br>To the end and aim, since mine the loss, with yours<br>If means be wanting; once their worth approved,<br>Grant them, and I shall forthwith operate —<br>Ponder it well! — to the extremest stretch<br>0' the power you trust me: if with unsuccess,<br>God wills it, and there's nobody to blame."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Whereon the people answered with a shout<br>"The trusty one! no tricksters any more!"<br>How could they other? He was in his place.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">What followed? Just what he foresaw, what proved<br>The soundness of both judgments, — his, o' the knaves<br>And fools, each trickster with his dupe, — and theirs<br>The people, in what head and arm should help.<br>There was uprising, masks dropped, flags unfurled,<br>Weapons outflourished in the wind, my faith!<br>Heavily did he let his fist fall plumb<br>On each perturber of the public peace,<br>No matter whose the wagging head it broke —<br>From bald-pate craft and greed and impudence<br>Of night-hawk at first cliance to prowl and prey<br>For glory and a little gain beside,<br>Passing for eagle in the dusk of the age, —<br>To florid head-top, foamy patriotism<br>And tribunitial daring, breast laid bare<br>Thro' confidence in rectitude, with hand<br>On private pistol in the pocket: these<br>And all the dupes of these, who lent themselves<br>As dust and feather do, to help offence<br>O' the wind that whirls them at you, then subsides<br>In safety somewhere, leaving filth afloat,<br>Annoyance you may brush from eyes and beard, —<br>These he stopped: bade the wind's spite howl or whine<br>Its worst outside the building, wind conceives<br>Meant to be pulled together and become<br>Its natural playground so. What foolishness<br>Of dust or feather proved importunate<br>And fell 'twixt thumb and finger, found them gripe<br>To detriment of bulk and buoyancy.<br>Then followed silence and submission. Next,<br>The inevitable comment came on work<br>And work's cost; he was censured as profuse<br>Of human life and liberty: too swift<br>And thorough his procedure, who had lagged<br>At the outset, lost the opportunity<br>Through timid scruples as to right and wrong.<br>"There's no such certain mark of a small mind"<br>(So did Sagacity explain the fault)<br>"As when it needs must square away and sink<br>To its own small dimensions, private scale<br>Of right and wrong, — humanity i' the large,<br>The right and wrong of the universe, forsooth!<br>This man addressed himself to guard and guide<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau. When the case demands<br>He frustrate villany in the egg, unhatched,<br>With easy stamp and minimum of pang<br>E'en to the punished reptile, 'There's my oath<br>Restrains my foot,' objects our guide and guard,<br>'I must leave guardianship and guidance now:<br>Rather than stretch one handbreadth of the law,<br>I am bound to see it break from end to end.<br>First show me death i' the body politic:<br>Then prescribe pill and potion, what may please<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau! all is for her sake:<br>'T was she ordained my service should be so.<br>What if the event demonstrate her unwise,<br>If she unwill the thing she willed before?<br>I hold to the letter and obey the bond<br>And leave her to perdition loyally.'<br>Whence followed thrice the expenditure we blame<br>Of human life and liberty: for want<br>O' the by-blow, came deliberate butcher's-work!"<br>"Elsewhere go carry your complaint!" bade he.<br>"Least, largest, there's one law for all the minds,<br>Here or above: be true at any price!<br>'T is just o' the great scale, that such happy stroke<br>Of falsehood would be found a failure. Truth<br>Still stands unshaken at her base by me,<br>Reigns paramount i' the world, for the large good<br>O' the long late generations, — I and you<br>Forgotten like this buried foohshness!<br>Not so the good I rooted in its grave."</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This is why he refused to break his oath,<br>Rather appealed to the people, gained the power<br>To act as he thought best, then used it, once<br>For all, no matter what the consequence<br>To knaves and fools. As thus began his sway,<br>So, through its twenty years, one rule of right<br>Sufficed him: govern for the many first,<br>The poor mean multitude, all mouths and eyes:<br>Bid the few, better favoured in the brain,<br>Be patient, nor presume on privilege.<br>Help him, or else be quiet, — never crave<br>That he help them, — increase, forsooth, the gulf<br>Yawning so terribly 'twixt mind and mind<br>I' the world here, which his purpose was to block<br>At bottom, were it by an inch, and bridge,<br>If by a filament, no more, at top, <br>Equalize things a little! And the way<br>He took to work that purpose out, was plain<br>Enough to intellect and honesty<br>And — superstition, style it if you please,<br>So long as you allow there was no lack<br>O' the quality imperative in man —<br>Reverence. You see deeper? thus saw he,<br>And by the light he saw, must walk: how else<br>Was he to do his part? the man's, with might<br>And main, and not a faintest touch of fear<br>Sure he was in the hand of God who comes<br>Before and after, with a work to do<br>Which no man helps nor hinders. Thus the man,<br>So timid when the business was to touch<br>The uncertain order of humanity,<br>Imperil, for a problematic cure<br>Of grievance on the surface, any good<br>I' the deep of things, dim yet discernible —<br>This same man, so irresolute before,<br>Show him a true excrescence to cut sheer,<br>A devil's-graft on God's foundation-stone,<br>Then — no complaint of indecision more!<br>He wrenched out the whole canker, root and branch,<br>Deaf to who cried the world would tumble in<br>At its four corners if he touched a twig.<br>Witness that lie of lies, arch-infamy.<br>When the Republic, with all life involved<br>In just this law — "Each people rules itself<br>Its own way, not as any stranger please" —<br>Turned, and for first proof she was living, bade<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau fasten on the throat<br>Of the first neighbour that claimed benefit<br>O' the law herself established: "Hohenstiel<br>For Hohenstielers! Rome, by parity<br>Of reasoning, for Romans? That 's a jest<br>Wants proper treatment, — lancet-puncture suits<br>The proud flesh: Rome ape Hohenstiel forsooth!"<br>And so the siege and slaughter and success<br>Whereof we nothing doubt that Hohenstiel<br>Will have to pay the price, in God's good time,<br>Which does not always fall on Saturday<br>When the world looks for wages. Any how.<br>He found this infamy triumphant. Well, —<br>Sagacity suggested, make this speech!<br>"The work was none of mine: suppose wrong wait,<br>Stand over for redressing? Mine for me,<br>My predecessors' work on their own head!<br>Meantime, there's plain advantage, should we leave<br>Things as we find them. Keep Rome manacled<br>Hand and foot: no fear of unruliness!<br>Her foes consent to even seem our friends<br>So long, no longer. Then, there's glory got<br>I' the boldness and bravado to the world.<br>The disconcerted world must grin and bear<br>The old saucy writing, — 'Grunt thereat who may,<br>So shall things be, for such my pleasure is —<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau.' How that reads in Rome<br>I' the Capitol where Brennus broke his pate!<br>And what a flourish for our journalists!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Only, it was nor read nor flourished of,<br>Since, not a moment did such glory stay<br>Excision of the canker! Out it came,<br>Root and branch, with much roaring, and some blood,<br>And plentiful abuse of him from friend<br>And foe. Who cared? Not Nature, that assuaged<br>The pain and set the patient on his legs<br>Promptly: the better! had it been the worse,<br>'T is Nature you must try conclusions with,<br>Not he, since nursing canker kills the sick<br>For certain, while to cut may cure, at least.<br>"Ah," groaned a second time Sagacity,<br>"Again the little mind, precipitate,<br>Rash, rude, when even in the right, as here!<br>The great mind knows the power of gentleness,<br>Only tries force because persuasion fails.<br>Had this man, by prelusive trumpet-blast,<br>Signified 'Truth and Justice mean to come.<br>Nay, fast approach your threshold! Ere they knock,<br>See that the house be set in order, swept<br>And garnished, windows shut, and doors thrown wide!<br>The free State comes to visit the free Church:<br>Receive her! or . . or . . never mind what else!'<br>Thus moral suasion heralding brute force,<br>How had he seen the old abuses die,<br>And new life kindle here, there, everywhere.<br>Roused simply by that mild yet potent spell —<br>Beyond or beat of drum or stroke of sword —<br>Public opinion!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"How, indeed?" he asked,<br>"When all to see, after some twenty years,<br>Were your own fool-face waiting for the sight.<br>Faced by as wide a grin from ear to ear<br>O' the knaves that, while the fools were waiting, worked —<br>Broke yet another generation's heart —<br>Twenty years' respite helping! Teach your nurse<br>'Compliance with, before you suck, the teat!'<br>Find what that means, and meanwhile hold your tongue!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Whereof the war came which he knew must be.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now, this had proved the dry-rot of the race<br>He ruled o'er, that, in the old day, when was need<br>They fought for their own liberty and life,<br>Well did they fight, none better: whence, such love<br>Of fighting somehow still for fighting's sake<br>Against no matter whose the liberty<br>And life, so long as self-conceit should crow<br>And clap the wing, while justice sheathed her claw, —<br>That what had been the glory of the world<br>When thereby came the world's good, grew its plague<br>Now that the champion-armour, donned to dare<br>The dragon once, was clattered up and down<br>Highway and by-path of the world at peace,<br>Merely to mask marauding, or for sake<br>O' the shine and rattle that apprized the fields<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau was a fighter yet.<br>And would be, till the weary world suppressed<br>A peccant humour out of fashion now.<br>Accordingly the world spoke plain at last.<br>Promised to punish who next played with fire.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So, at his advent, such discomfiture<br>Taking its true shape of beneficence,<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau, half-sad and part-wise,<br>Sat: if with wistful eye reverting oft<br>To each pet weapon rusty on its peg,<br>Yet, with a sigh of satisfaction too<br>That, peacefulness become the law, herself<br>Got the due share of godsends in its train,<br>Cried shame and took advantage quietly.<br>Still, so the dry-rot had been nursed into<br>Blood, bones and marrow, that, from worst to best,<br>All, — clearest brains and soundest hearts, save here, —<br>All had this lie acceptable for law<br>Plain as the sun at noonday — "War is best,<br>Peace is worst; peace we only tolerate<br>As needful preparation for new war:<br>War may be for whatever end we will —<br>Peace only as the proper help thereto.<br>Such is the law of right and wrong for us<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau: for the other world,<br>As naturally, quite another law.<br>Are we content? The world is satisfied.<br>Discontent? Then the world must give us leave<br>Strike right and left to exercise our arm<br>Torpid of late through overmuch repose,<br>And show its strength is still superlative<br>At somebody's expense in life or limb:<br>Which done, — let peace succeed and last a year!"<br>Such devil's-doctrine was so judged God's law,<br>We say, when this man stepped upon the stage,<br>That it had seemed a venial fault at most<br>Had he once more obeyed Sagacity.<br>"You come i' the happy interval of peace,<br>The favourable weariness from war:<br>Prolong it! — artfully, as if intent<br>On ending peace as soon as possible.<br>Quietly so increase the sweets of ease<br>And safety, so employ the multitude.<br>Put hod and trowel so in idle hands.<br>So stuff and stop the wagging jaws with bread.<br>That selfishness shall surreptitiously<br>Do wisdom's office, whisper in the ear<br>Of Hohenstiel-Schwangau, there's a pleasant feel<br>In being gently forced down, pinioned fast<br>To the easy arm-chair by the pleading arms<br>O' the world beseeching her to there abide<br>Content with all the harm done hitherto,<br>And let herself be petted in return,<br>Free to re-wage, in speech and prose and verse,<br>The old unjust wars, nay — in verse and prose<br>And speech, — to vaunt new victories, as vile<br>A plague o' the future, — so that words suffice<br>For present comfort, and no deeds denote<br>That, — tired of illimitable line on line<br>Of boulevard-building, tired o' the theatre<br>With the tuneful thousand in their thrones above.<br>For glory of the male intelligence.<br>And Nakedness in her due niche below,<br>For illustration of the female use —<br>She, 'twixt a yawn and sigh, prepares to slip<br>Out of the arm-chair, wants some blood again<br>From over the boundary, to colour-up<br>The sheeny sameness, keep the world aware<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau must have exercise<br>Despite the petting of the universe!<br>Come, you're a city-builder: what's the way<br>Wisdom takes when time needs that she entice<br>Some fierce tribe, castled on the mountain-peak,<br>Into the quiet and amenity<br>O' the meadow-land below? By crying 'Done<br>With fight now, down with fortress?' Rather — 'Dare<br>On, dare ever, not a stone displaced!'<br>Cries Wisdom, 'Cradle of our ancestors.<br>Be bulwark, give our children safety still!<br>Who of our children please, may stoop and taste<br>O' the valley-fatness, unafraid, — for why?<br>At first alarm, they have thy mother-ribs<br>To run upon for refuge; foes forget<br>Scarcely what Terror on her vantage-coigne,<br>Couchant supreme among the powers of air,<br>Watches — prepared to pounce — the country wide!<br>Meanwhile the encouraged valley holds its own,<br>From the first hut's adventure in descent. <br>Half home, half hiding place, — to dome and spire<br>Befitting the assured metropolis:<br>Nor means offence to the fort which caps the crag,<br>All undismantled of a turret-stone,<br>And bears the banner-pole that creaks at times<br>Embarrassed by the old emblazonment,<br>When festal days are to commemorate.<br>Otherwise left untenanted, no doubt,<br>Since, never fear, our myriads from below<br>Would rush, if needs were, man the walls once more.<br>Renew the exploits of the earlier time<br>At moment's notice! But till notice sound,<br>Inhabit we in ease and opulence!'<br>And so, till one day thus a notice sounds,<br>Not trumpeted, but in a whisper-gust<br>Fitfully playing through mute city streets<br>At midnight weary of day's feast and game —<br>'Friends, your famed fort's a ruin past repair!<br>Its use is — to proclaim it had a use<br>Stolen away long since. Climb to study there<br>How to paint barbican and battlement<br>I' the scenes of our new theatre! We fight<br>Now — by forbidding neighbours to sell steel<br>Or buy wine, not by blowing out their brains!<br>Moreover, while we let time sap the strength<br>O' the walls omnipotent in menace once,<br>Neighbours would seem to have prepared surprise —<br>Run up defences in a mushroom-growth,<br>For all the world like what we boasted: brief —<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau's policy is peace!' "</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ay, so Sagacity advised him filch<br>Folly from fools: handsomely substitute<br>The dagger o' lath, while gay they sang and danced<br>For that long dangerous sword they liked to feel,<br>Even at feast-time, clink and make friends start.<br>No! he said "Hear the truth, and bear the truth,<br>And bring the truth to bear on all you are<br>And do, assured that only good comes thence<br>Whate'er the shape good take! While I have rule.<br>Understand! — war for war's sake, war for the sake<br>O' the good war gets you as war's sole excuse,<br>Is damnable and damned shall be. You want<br>Glory? Why so do I, and so does God.<br>Where is it found, — in this paraded shame, —<br>One particle of glory? Once you warred<br>For liberty against the world, and won:<br>There was the glory. Now, you fain would war<br>Because the neighbour prospers overmuch, —<br>Because there has been silence half-an-hour,<br>Like Heaven on earth, without a cannon-shot<br>Announcing Hohenstielers-Schwangauese<br>Are minded to disturb the jubilee, —<br>Because the loud tradition echoes faint,<br>And who knows but posterity may doubt<br>If the great deeds were ever done at all,<br>Much less believe, were such to do again,<br>So the event would follow: therefore, prove<br>The old power, at the expense of somebody!<br>Oh, Glory, — gilded bubble, bard and sage<br>So nickname rightly, — would thy dance endure<br>One moment, would thy mocking make believe<br>Only one upturned eye thy ball was gold,<br>Had'st thou less breath to buoy thy vacancy<br>Than a whole multitude expends in praise,<br>Less range for roaming than from head to head<br>Of a whole people? Flit, fall, fly again,<br>Only, fix never where the resolute hand<br>May prick thee, prove the lie thou art, at once!<br>Give me real intellect to reason with,<br>No multitude, no entity that apes<br>One wise man, being but a million fools!<br>How and whence wishest glory, thou wise one?<br>Would'st get it, — did'st thyself guide Providence, —<br>By stinting of his due each neighbour round<br>In strength and knowledge and dexterity<br>So as to have thy littleness grow large<br>By all those somethings, once, turned nothings, now,<br>As children make a molehill mountainous<br>By scooping out the plain into a trench<br>And saving so their favourite from approach?<br>Quite otherwise the cheery game of life.<br>True yet mimetic warfare, whereby man<br>Does his best with his utmost, and so ends<br>The victor most of all in fair defeat.<br>Who thinks, — would he have no one think beside?<br>Who knows, who does, — must other learning die<br>And action perish? Why, our giant proves<br>No better than a dwarf, with rivalry<br>Prostrate around him. 'Let the whole race stand<br>And try conclusions fairly!' he cries first.<br>Show me the great man would engage his peer<br>Rather by grinning 'Cheat, thy gold is brass!'<br>Than granting 'Perfect piece of purest ore!<br>Still, is it less good mintage, this of mine?'<br>Well, and these right and sound results of soul<br>I' the strong and healthy one wise man, — shall such<br>Be vainly sought for, scornfully renounced<br>I' the multitude that make the entity —<br>The people? — to what purpose, if no less.<br>In power and purity of soul, below <br>The reach of the unit than, in multiplied<br>Might of the body, vulgarized the more,<br>Above, in thick and threefold brutishness?<br>See! you accept such one wise man, myself:<br>Wiser or less wise, still I operate<br>From my own stock of wisdom, nor exact<br>Of other sort of natures you admire.<br>That whoso rhymes a sonnet pays a tax,<br>Who paints a landscape dips brush at his cost,<br>Who scores a septett true for strings and wind<br>Mulcted must be — else how should I impose<br>Properly, attitudinize aright,<br>Did such conflicting claims as these divert<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau from observing me?<br>Therefore, what I find facile, you be sure,<br>With effort or without it, you shall dare —<br>You, I aspire to make my better self<br>And truly the Great Nation. No more war<br>For war's sake, then! and, — seeing, wickedness<br>Springs out of folly, — no more foolish dread<br>O' the neighbour waxing too inordinate<br>A rival, through his gain of wealth and ease!<br>What? — keep me patient, Powers! — the people here,<br>Earth presses to her heart, nor owns a pride<br>Above her pride i' the race all flame and air<br>And aspiration to the boundless Great,<br>The incommensurably Beautiful —<br>Whose very faulterings groundward come of flight<br>Urged by a pinion all too passionate<br>For heaven and what it holds of gloom and glow:<br>Bravest of thinkers, bravest of the brave<br>Doers, exalt in Science, rapturous<br>In Art, the — more than all — magnetic race<br>To fascinate their fellows, mould mankind<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau-fashion, — these, what? — these<br>Will have to abdicate their primacy<br>Should such a nation sell them steel untaxed,<br>And such another take itself, on hire<br>For the natural sen'night, somebody for lord<br>Unpatronized by me whose back was turned?<br>Or such another yet would fain build bridge,<br>Lay rail, drive tunnel, busy its poor self<br>With its appropriate fancy: so there's — flash —<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau up in arms at once!<br>Genius has somewhat of the infantine:<br>But of the childish, not a touch nor taint<br>Except through self-will, which, being foolishness,<br>Is certain, soon or late, of punishment.<br>Which Providence avert! — and that it may<br>Avert what both of us would so deserve.<br>No foolish dread o' the neighbour, I enjoin!<br>By consequence, no wicked war with him,<br>While I rule!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Does that mean — no war at all<br>When just the wickedness I here proscribe<br>Comes, haply, from the neighbour? Does my speech<br>Precede the praying that you beat the sword<br>To plough-share, and the spear to pruning-hook.<br>And sit down henceforth under your own vine<br>And fig-tree through the sleepy summer month,<br>Letting what hurly-burly please explode<br>On the other side the mountain-frontier? No,<br>Beloved! I foresee and I announce<br>Necessity of warfare in one case,<br>For one cause: one way, I bid broach the blood<br>O' the world. For truth and right, and only right<br>And truth, — right, truth, on the absolute scale of God,<br>No pettiness of man's admeasurement, —<br>In such case only, and for such one cause,<br>Fight your hearts out, whatever fate betide<br>Hands energetic to the uttermost!<br>Lie not! Endure no lie which needs your heart<br>And hand to push it out of mankind's path —<br>No lie that lets the natural forces work<br>Too long ere lay it plain and pulverized —<br>Seeing man's life lasts only twenty years!<br>And such a lie, before both man and God,<br>Being, at this time present, Austria's rule<br>O'er Italy, — for Austria's sake the first,<br>Italy's next, and our sake last of all.<br>Come with me and deliver Italy!<br>Smite hip and thigh until the oppressor leave<br>Free from the Adriatic to the Alps<br>The oppressed one! We were they who laid her low<br>In the old bad day when Villany braved Truth<br>And Right, and laughed 'Henceforward, God deposed,<br>The Devil is to rule for evermore<br>I' the world!' — whereof to stop the consequence,<br>And for atonement of false glory there<br>Gaped at and gabbled over by the world,<br>We purpose to get God enthroned again<br>For what the world will gird at as sheer shame<br>I' the cost of blood and treasure. 'All for naught —<br>Not even, say, some patch of province, splice<br>O' the frontier? — some snug honorarium-fee<br>Shut into glove and pocketed apace?'<br>(Questions Sagacity) 'in deference<br>To the natural susceptibility<br>Of folks at home, unwitting of that pitch<br>You soar to, and misdoubting if Truth, Right<br>And the other such augustnesses repay <br>Expenditure in coin o' the realm, — but prompt<br>To recognize the cession of Savoy<br>And Nice as marketable value!' No,<br>Sagacity, go preach to Metternich,<br>And, sermon ended, stay where he resides I<br>Hohenstiel-Schwangau, you and I must march<br>The other road! war for the hate of war,<br>Not love, this once!" So Italy was free.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">What else noteworthy and commendable<br>I' the man's career? — that he was resolute<br>No trepidation, much less treachery<br>On his part, should imperil from its poise<br>The ball o' the world, heaved up at such expense<br>Of pains so far, and ready to rebound,<br>Let but a finger maladroitly fall,<br>Under pretence of making fast and sure<br>The inch gained by late volubility,<br>And run itself back to the ancient rest<br>At foot o' the mountain. Thus he ruled, gave proof<br>The world had gained a point, progressive so,<br>By choice, this time, as will and power concurred,<br>0' the fittest man to rule; not chance of birth,<br>Or such-like dice-throw. Oft Sagacity<br>Was at his ear: "Confirm this clear advance,<br>Support this wise procedure! You, elect<br>O' the people, mean to justify their choice<br>And out-king all the kingly imbeciles;<br>But that's just half the enterprise: remains<br>You find them a successor like yourself,<br>In head and heart and eye and hand and aim,<br>Or all done's undone; and whom hope to mould<br>So like you as the pupil Nature sends,<br>The son and heir's completeness which you lack?<br>Lack it no longer! Wed the pick o' the world,<br>Where'er you think you find it. Should she be<br>A queen, — tell Hohenstielers-Schwangauese<br>'So do the old enthroned decrepitudes<br>Acknowledge, in the rotten hearts of them,<br>Their knell is knolled, they hasten to make peace<br>With the new order, recognize in me<br>Your right to constitute what king you will.<br>Cringe therefore crown in hand and bride on arm,<br>To both of us: we triumph, I suppose!'<br>Is it the other sort of rank? — bright eye,<br>Soft smile, and so forth, all her queenly boast?<br>Undaunted the exordium — 'I, the man<br>O' the people, with the people mate myself:<br>So stand, so fall. Kings, keep your crowns and brides!<br>Our progeny (if Providence agree)<br>Shall live to tread the baubles underfoot<br>And bid the scarecrows consort with their kin.<br>For son, as for his sire, be the free wife<br>In the free state!' "</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">That is. Sagacity<br>Would prop up one more lie, the most of all<br>Pernicious fancy that the son and heir<br>Receives the genius from the sire, himself<br>Transmits as surely, — ask experience else!<br>Which answers, — never was so plain a truth<br>As that God drops his seed of heavenly flame<br>Just where He wills on earth: sometimes where man<br>Seems to tempt — such the accumulated store<br>Of faculties — one spark to fire the heap;<br>Sometimes where, fire-ball-like, it falls upon<br>The naked unpreparedness of rock,<br>Burns, beaconing the nations through their night.<br>Faculties, fuel for the flame? All helps<br>Come, ought to come, or come not, crossed by chance,<br>From culture and transmission. What's your want<br>I' the son and heir? Sympathy, aptitude.<br>Teachableness, the fuel for the flame?<br>You'll have them for your pains: but the flame's self,<br>The novel thought of God shall light the world?<br>No, poet, though your offspring rhyme and chime<br>I' the cradle, — painter, no, for all your pet<br>Draws his first eye, beats Salvatore's boy, —<br>And thrice no, statesman, should your progeny<br>Tie bib and tucker with no tape but red,<br>And make a foolscap-kite of protocols!<br>Critic and copyist and bureaucrat<br>To heart's content! The seed o' the apple-tree<br>Brings forth another tree which bears a crab:<br>'T is the great gardener grafts the excellence<br>On wildings where he will.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"How plain I view,<br>Across those misty years 'twixt me and Rome " —<br>(Such the man's answer to Sagacity)<br>The little wayside temple, halfway down<br>To a mild river that makes oxen white<br>Miraculously, un-mouse-colours hide,<br>Or so the Roman country people dream!<br>I view that sweet small shrub-embedded shrine<br>On the declivity, was sacred once<br>To a transmuting Genius of the land,<br>Could touch and turn its dunnest natures bright,<br>— Since Italy means the Land of the Ox, we know.<br>Well, how was it the due succession fell<br>From priest to priest who ministered i' the cool<br>Calm fane o' the Clitumnian god? The sire<br>Brought forth a son and sacerdotal sprout,<br>Endowed instinctively with good and grace<br>To suit the gliding gentleness below — <br>Did he? Tradition tells another tale.<br>Each priest obtained his predecessor's staff,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Robe, fillet and insignia, blamelessly.<br>By springing out of ambush, soon or late.<br>And slaying him: the initiative rite<br>Simply was murder, save that murder took,<br>I' the case, another and religious name.<br>So it was once, is now, shall ever be<br>With genius and its priesthood in this world:<br>The new power slays the old — but handsomely.<br>There he lies, not diminished by an inch<br>Of stature that he graced the altar with.<br>Though somebody of other bulk and build<br>Cries 'What a goodly personage lies here<br>Reddening the water where the bulrush roots!<br>May I conduct the service in his place.<br>Decently and in order, as did he,<br>And, as he did not, keep a wary watch<br>When meditating 'neath a willow shade!'<br>Find out your best man, sure the son of him,<br>Will prove best man again, and, better still<br>Somehow than best, the grandson-prodigy!<br>You think the world would last another day<br>Did we so make us masters of the trick<br>Whereby the works go, we could pre-arrange<br>Their play and reach perfection when we please?<br>Depend on it, the change and the surprise<br>Are part o' the plan: 't is we wish steadiness;<br>Nature prefers a motion by unrest,<br>Advancement through this force that jostles that.<br>And so, since much remains i' the world to see.<br>Here is it still, affording God the sight."<br>Thus did the man refute Sagacity,<br>Ever at this one whisper in his ear:<br>"Here are you picked out, by a miracle,<br>And placed conspicuously enough, folks say<br>And you believe, by Providence outright<br>Taking a new way — nor without success —<br>To put the world upon its mettle: good!<br>But Fortune alternates with Providence;<br>Resource is soon exhausted. Never count<br>On such a happy hit occurring twice!<br>Try the old method next time!"</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Old enough,"<br>(At whisper in his ear, the laugh outbroke)<br>"And most discredited of all the modes<br>By just the men and women who make boast<br>They are kings and queens thereby! Mere self-defence<br>Should teach them, on one chapter of the law<br>Must be no sort of trifling — chastity:<br>They stand or fall, as their progenitors<br>Were chaste or unchaste. Now, run eye around<br>My crowned acquaintance, give each life its look<br>And no more, — why, you'd think each life was led<br>Purposely for example of what pains<br>Who leads it took to cure the prejudice.<br>And prove there's nothing so unproveable<br>As who is who, what son of what a sire,<br>And, — inferentially, — how faint the chance<br>That the next generation needs to fear<br>Another fool o' the selfsame type as he<br>Happily regnant now by right divine<br>And luck o' the pillow! No: select your lord<br>By the direct employment of your brains<br>As best you may, — bad as the blunder prove,<br>A far worse evil stank beneath the sun<br>When some legitimate blockhead managed so<br>Matters that high time was to interfere,<br>Though interference came from hell itself<br>And not the blind mad miserable mob<br>Happily ruled so long by pillow-luck<br>And divine right, — by lies in short, not truth.<br>And meanwhile use the allotted minute . . . "</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">One, —<br>Two, three, four, five — yes, five the pendule warns!<br>Eh? Why, this wild work wanders past all bound<br>And bearing! Exile, Leicester-square, the life<br>I' the old gay miserable time, rehearsed,<br>Tried on again like cast clothes, still to serve<br>At a pinch, perhaps? "Who's who?" was aptly asked,<br>Since certainly I am not I! since when?<br>Where is the bud-mouthed arbitress? A nod<br>Out-Homering Homer! Stay — there flits the clue<br>I fain would find the end of! Yes, — "Meanwhile,<br>Use the allotted minute!" Well, you see,<br>(Veracious and imaginary Thiers,<br>Who map out thus the life I might have led,<br>But did not, — all the worse for earth and me —<br>Doff spectacles, wipe pen, shut book, decamp!)<br>You see 't is easy in heroics! Plain<br>Pedestrian speech shall help me perorate.<br>Ah, if one had no need to use the tongue!<br>How obvious and how easy 't is to talk<br>Inside the soul, a ghostly dialogue —<br>Instincts with guesses, — instinct, guess, again<br>With dubious knowledge, half-experience: each<br>And all the interlocutors alike<br>Subordinating, — as decorum bids,<br>Oh, never fear! but still decisively, —<br>Claims from without that take too high a tone,<br>— ("God wills this, man wants that, the dignity<br>Prescribed a prince would wish the other thing") — <br>Putting them back to insignificance<br>Beside one intimatest fact — myself<br>Am first to be considered, since I live<br>Twenty years longer and then end, perhaps!<br>But, where one ceases to soliloquize,<br>Somehow the motives, that did well enough<br>I' the darkness, when you bring them into light<br>Are found, like those famed cave-fish, to lack eye<br>And organ for the upper magnitudes.<br>The other common creatures, of less fine<br>Existence, that acknowledge earth and heaven,<br>Have it their own way in the argument.<br>Yes, forced to speak, one stoops to say — one's aim<br>Was — what it peradventure should have been; —<br>To renovate a people, mend or end<br>That bane come of a blessing meant the world —<br>Inordinate culture of the sense made quick<br>By soul, — the lust o' the flesh, lust of the eye,<br>And pride of life, — and, consequent on these,<br>The worship of that prince o' the power o' the air<br>Who paints the cloud and fills the emptiness<br>And bids his votaries, famishing for truth.<br>Feed on a lie.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Alack, one lies oneself<br>Even in the stating that one's end was truth,<br>Truth only, if one states as much in words!<br>Give me the inner chamber of the soul<br>For obvious easy argument! 't is there<br>One pits the silent truth against a lie —<br>Truth which breaks shell a careless simple bird,<br>Nor wants a gorget nor a beak filed fine,<br>Steel spurs and the whole armoury o' the tongue,<br>To equalize the odds. But, do your best,<br>Words have to come: and somehow words deflect<br>As the best cannon ever rifled will.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Deflect" indeed! nor merely words from thoughts<br>But names from facts: "Clitumnus" did I say?<br>As if it had been his ox-whitening wave<br>Whereby folk practised that grim cult of old —<br>The murder of their temple's priest by who<br>Would qualify for his succession. Sure —<br>Nemi was the true lake's style. Dream had need<br>Of the ox-whitening piece of prettiness<br>And so confused names, well known once awake.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So, i' the Residenz yet, not Leicester-square,<br>Alone, — no such congenial intercourse! —<br>My reverie concludes, as dreaming should,<br>With daybreak: nothing done and over yet,<br>Except cigars! The adventure thus may be,<br>Or never needs to be at all: who knows?<br>My Cousin-Duke, perhaps, at whose hard head<br>— Is it, now — is this letter to be launched,<br>The sight of whose grey oblong, whose grim seal,<br>Set all these fancies floating for an hour?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116367" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Twenty years are good gain, come what come will!<br>Double or quits! The letter goes! Or stays?</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></div>

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