The broad backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us....
Yet he is merely flesh and blood.
Flesh-and-blood is weak and frail,
Susceptible to nervous shock;
While the True Church can never fail
For it is based upon a rock.
The hippo's feeble steps may err
In compassing material ends,
While the True Church need never stir
To gather in its dividends.
The potamus can never reach
The mango on the mango-tree,
But fruits of pomegranate and peach
Refresh the Church from over sea.
At mating time the hippo's voice
Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd,
But every week we hear rejoice
The Church, at being one with God.
The hippopotamus's day
Is past in sleep; at night he hunts;
God works in a mysterious way--
The Church can sleep and feed at once
I saw the potamus take wing
Ascending from the damp savannas,
And quiring angels round him sing
The praise of God, in loud hosannas.
Blood of the Lamb shall wash him clean
And him shall heavenly arms enfold,
Among the saints he shall be seen
Performing on a harp of gold.
He shall be washed as white as snow,
By all the martyr'd virgins kist,
While the True Church remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.
This cold sardonic statement is definitely of the school of Théophile
Gautier; as definitely as Eliot's "Conversation Galante" is in the
manner of Jules Laforgue. There is a great deal in the rest of Mr.
Eliot's poetry which is personal, and in no wise derivative either from
the French or from Webster and Tourneur; just as there is in "The
Hippopotamus" a great deal which is not Théophile Gautier. I quote the
two present poems simply to emphasize a certain lineage and certain
French virtues and qualities, which are, to put it most mildly, a great
and blessed relief after the official dullness and Wordsworthian
lignification of the "Georgian" Anthologies and their descendants and
derivatives as upheld by _The New Statesman_, that nadir of the planet
of hebetude, that apogee of the kulturesque.