quoth the de’il, etc.” Perhaps the only English Institution
which the Hindu appreciates is that of English Law—_but not
as a system of Justice_. To his acute mind it is a remarkably
clever and most ingenious _gambling game_. It is said that two
Hindus will even fabricate mutual complaints, the one against
the other, to bring before the Courts—and that it is almost
equivalent to a patent of nobility to have had a case taken to
the Privy Council. The following incident actually happened to
a friend of mine who was Resident in a Native State. Sitting
in his judicial capacity he reproved a Hindu gentleman for
his excessive litigiousness. The latter retorted that it was
a case of the pot calling the kettle black; that he had seen
the Resident put his rupees on the totalisator the day before;
and the British race-course wasn’t a bit more of a gamble than
the British Law Courts. For his part he preferred to have his
flutter on the latter.
* * * * *
BALDER’S RETURN TO EARTH[27]
He sat down in a lonely land
Of mountain, moor, and mere,
And watch’d, with chin upon his hand,
Dark maids that milk’d the deer.
And while the sun set in the skies,
And stars shone in the blue,
They sang sweet songs, till Balder’s eyes
Were sad with kindred dew.
He passed along the hamlets dim
With twilight’s breath of balm,
And whatsoe’er was touch’d by him
Grew beautiful and calm....
He came unto a hut forlorn
As evening shadows fell,
And saw the man among the corn,
The woman at the well.
And entering the darken’d place,
He found the cradled child;
Stooping he lookt into its face,
Until it woke and smiled!
Then Balder passed into the night
With soft and shining tread,
The cataract called upon the height,
The stars gleam’d overhead.
He raised his eyes to those cold skies
Which he had left behind,—
And saw the banners of the gods
Blown back upon the wind.
He watched them as they came and fled,
Then his divine eyes fell.
“I love the green Earth best,” he said,
“And I on Earth will dwell!” ...
Then Balder said, “The Earth is fair, and fair
Yea fairer than the stormy lives of gods,
The lives of gentle dwellers on the Earth;
For shapen are they in the likenesses
Of goddesses and gods, and on their limbs
Sunlight and moonlight mingle, and they lie
Happy and calm in one another’s arms
O’er-canopied with greenness; and their hands
Have fashioned fire that springeth beautiful
Straight as a silvern lily from the ground,
Wondrously blowing; and they measure out
Glad seasons by the pulses of the stars.”...
And Balder bends above them, glory-crown’d.
Marking them as they creep upon the ground.
Busy as ants that toil without a sound,
With only gods to mark.
But list! O list! what is that cry of pain,
Faint as the far-off murmur of the main?
Stoop low and hearken, Balder! List again!
“Lo! Death makes all things dark!”
Ay me, it is the earthborn souls that sigh,
Coming and going underneath the sky;
They move, they gather, clearer grows their cry—
O Balder, bend, and hark!...
(Oh, listen! listen!) “Blessed is the light,
We love the golden day, the silvern night, ...
“And yet though life is glad and love divine,
This Shape we fear is here i’ the summer shine,—
He blights the fruit we pluck, the wreath we twine,
And soon he leaves us stark.
“He haunts us fleetly on the snowy steep,
He finds us as we sow and as we reap,
He creepeth in to slay us as we sleep,—
Ah, Death makes all things dark.”
Bright Balder cried, “Curst be this thing
Which will not let man rest,
Slaying with swift and cruel sting
The very babe at breast!
“On man and beast, on flower and bird,
He creepeth evermore;
Unseen he haunts the Earth; unheard
He crawls from door to door.
“I will not pause in any land,
Nor sleep beneath the skies,
Till I have held him by the hand
And gazed into his eyes!”...
He sought him on the mountains bleak and bare
And on the windy moors;
He found his secret footprints everywhere,
Yea, ev’n by human doors.
All round the deerfold on the shrouded height
The starlight glimmer’d clear;
Therein sat Death, wrapt round with vapours white
Touching the dove-eyed deer.
And thither Balder silent-footed flew,
But found the Phantom not;
The rain-wash’d moon had risen cold and blue
Above that lonely spot.
Then as he stood and listen’d, gazing round
In the pale silvern glow,
He heard a wailing and a weeping sound
From the wild huts below.
He marked the sudden flashing of the lights
He heard cry answering cry—
And lo! he saw upon the silent heights
A shadowy form pass by.
Wan was the face, the eyeballs pale and wild,
The robes like rain wind-blown,
And as it fled it clasp’d a naked child
Unto its cold breast-bone.
And Balder clutch’d its robe with fingers weak
To stay it as it flew—
A breath of ice blew chill upon his cheek,
Blinding his eyes of blue.
’Twas Death! ’twas gone!—All night the shepherds sped,
Searching the hills in fear;
At dawn they found their lost one lying dead
Up by the lone black mere.
...
R. BUCHANAN (_Balder the Beautiful_).
I retain this extract from Buchanan’s poem for the reason set
out in the preface.
* * * * *
How many an acorn falls to die
For one that makes a tree!
How many a heart must pass me by
For one that cleaves to me!
How many a suppliant wave of sound
Must still unheeded roll,
For one low utterance that found
An echo in my soul.
JOHN BANISTER TABB (b. 1845)
I have “Compensation” as the title of these verses, but it must
surely be incorrect. If a man passes through life unrecognised
by kindred souls, it is the reverse of ‘compensation’ to him if
he also fails to recognise other sympathetic natures.
The author is, or was, an American Catholic priest.
* * * * *
What we gave, we have;
What we spent, we had;
What we left, we lost.
(_Epitaph on Earl of Devonshire_, about
1200 A.D.)
* * * * *
ALL SUNG
What shall I sing when all is sung
And every tale is told,
And in the world is nothing young
That was not long since old?
Why should I fret unwilling ears
With old things sung anew
While voices from the old dead year
Still go on singing too?
A dead man singing of his maid
Makes all my rhymes in vain,
Yet his poor lips must fade and fade,
And mine shall sing again.
Why should I strive thro’ weary moons
To make my music true?
Only the dead men know the tunes
The live world dances to.
R. LE GALLIENNE.
Mr. le Gallienne was not the first to complain that poetic
subjects were exhausted. A recent _Spectator_ quotes the
following from Choerilus, a Samian poet of the Fifth Century,
B.C. (2,000 years before Shakespeare): “Happy was the follower
of the muses in that time, when the field was still virgin
soil. But now when all has been divided up and the arts have
reached their limits, we are left behind in the race, and, look
where’er we may, there is no room anywhere for a new-yoked
chariot to make its way to the front.” (St. John Thackeray,
_Anthologia Graeca_).
* * * * *
Go out into the woods and valleys, when your heart is rather harassed
than bruised, and when you suffer from vexation more than grief. Then
the trees all hold out their arms to you to relieve you of the burthen
of your heavy thoughts; and the streams under the trees glance at you
as they run by, and will carry away your trouble along with the fallen
leaves; and the sweet-breathing air will draw it off together with the
silver multitudes of the dew. But let it be with anguish or remorse in
your heart that you go forth into Nature, and instead of your speaking
her language, you make her speak yours. Your distress is then infused
through all things and clothes all things, and Nature only echoes and
seems to authenticate your self-loathing or your hopelessness. Then you
find the device of your sorrow on the argent shield of the moon, and see
all the trees of the field weeping and wringing their hands with you,
while the hills, seated at your side in sackcloth, look down upon you
prostrate, and reprove you like the comforters of Job.
ROBERT ALFRED VAUGHAN (1823-1857) (_Hours with the Mystics_).
If this fine writer had lived, much might have been expected of
him. He is one of the many instances of “the fatal thirty-fours
and thirty-sevens.”
* * * * *
First man appeared in the class of inorganic things,
Next he passed therefrom into that of plants,
For years he lived as one of the plants,
Remembering nought of his inorganic state so different;
And, when he passed from the vegetive to the animal state,
He had no remembrance of his state as a plant,
Except the inclination he felt to the world of plants,
Especially at the time of spring and sweet flowers;
Like the inclination of infants towards their mothers,
Which know not the cause of their inclination to the breast.
Again, the great Creator, as you know,
Drew man out of the animal into the human state.
Thus man passed from one order of nature to another,
Till he became wise and knowing and strong as he is now.
Of his first souls he has now no remembrance,
And he will be again changed from his present soul.[28]
MASNAIR (Bk. IV) of Jalal ad Din (13th century).
* * * * *
The gases gather to the solid firmament; the chemic lump arrives at the
plant and grows; arrives at the quadruped and walks; arrives at the man
and thinks.
EMERSON (_Uses of Great Men_).
* * * * *
HIAWATHA’S PHOTOGRAPHING
From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
This he perched upon a tripod—
Crouched beneath its dusky cover—
Stretched his hand, enforcing silence—
Said, “Be motionless, I beg you!”
Mystic, awful was the process.
All the family in order
Sat before him for their pictures:
Each in turn, as he was taken,
Volunteered his own suggestions,
His ingenious suggestions.
First the Governor, the Father:
He suggested velvet curtains
Looped about a massy pillar;
And the corner of a table,
Of a rosewood dining-table.
He would hold a scroll of something,
Hold it firmly in his left-hand;
He would keep his right-hand buried
(Like Napoleon) in his waistcoat;
He would contemplate the distance
With a look of pensive meaning,
As of ducks that die in tempests.
Grand, heroic was the notion:
Yet the picture failed entirely:
Failed, because he moved a little,
Moved, because he couldn’t help it,
Next, his better half took courage;
_She_ would have her picture taken,
She came dressed beyond description,
Dressed in jewels and in satin
Far too gorgeous for an empress.
Gracefully she sat down sideways,
With a simper scarcely human,
Holding in her hand a bouquet
Rather larger than a cabbage.
All the while that she was sitting,
Still the lady chattered, chattered,
Like a monkey in the forest,
“Am I sitting still?” she asked him
“Is my face enough in profile?
Shall I hold the bouquet higher?
Will it come into the picture?”
And the picture failed completely.
Next the Son, the Stunning-Cantab
He suggested curves of beauty,
Curves pervading all his figure,
Which the eye might follow onward,
Till they centered in the breast-pin,
Centered in the golden breast-pin.
He had learnt it all from Ruskin
And perhaps he had not fully
Understood his author’s meaning;
But, whatever was the reason,
All was fruitless, as the picture
Ended in an utter failure.
Next to him the eldest daughter:
She suggested very little,
Only asked if he would take her
With her look of “passive beauty.”
Her idea of passive beauty
Was a squinting of the left-eye,
Was a drooping of the right-eye,
Was a smile that went up sideways
To the corner of the nostrils.
Hiawatha, when she asked him,
Took no notice of the question,
Looked as if he hadn’t heard it;
But, when pointedly appealed to,
Smiled in his peculiar manner,
Coughed and said it “didn’t matter,”
Bit his lip and changed the subject.
Nor in this was he mistaken,
As the picture failed completely.
So in turn the other sisters.
Last, the youngest son was taken:
Very rough and thick his hair was,
Very round and red his face was,
Very dusty was his jacket,
Very fidgety his manner.
And his overbearing sisters
Called him names he disapproved of:
Called him Johnny, “Daddy’s Darling,”
Called him Jacky, “Scrubby School-boy.”
And, so awful was the picture,
In comparison the others
Seemed, to his bewildered fancy,
To have partially succeeded.
Finally my Hiawatha
Tumbled all the tribe together,
(“Grouped” is not the right expression).
And, as happy chance would have it,
Did at last obtain a picture
Where the faces all succeeded:
Each came out a perfect likeness.
Then they joined and all abused it,
Unrestrainedly abused it,
As “the worst and ugliest picture
They could possibly have dreamed of.
Giving one such strange expressions—
Sullen, stupid, pert expressions.
Really any one would take us
(Any one that did not know us)
For the most unpleasant people!”
(Hiawatha seemed to think so,
Seemed to think it not unlikely).
All together rang their voices,
Angry, loud, discordant voices,
As of dogs that howl in concert,
As of cats that wail in chorus.
But my Hiawatha’s patience,
His politeness and his patience,
Unaccountably had vanished,
And he left that happy party.
Neither did he leave them slowly,
With the calm deliberation,
The intense deliberation
Of a photographic artist:
But he left them in a hurry,
Left them in a mighty hurry,
Stating that he would not stand it,
Stating in emphatic language
What he’d be before he’d stand it.
Thus departed Hiawatha.
LEWIS CARROLL (C. L. Dodgson) 1832-1898.
* * * * *
It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man’s death
hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too,—as if it were
comparatively a light thing to fail in love and reverence to the brother
who has to climb the whole toilsome steep with us, and all our tears and
tenderness were due to the one who is spared that hard journey.
GEORGE ELIOT (_Janet’s Repentance_).
* * * * *
It has been said by Schiller, in his letters on aesthetic culture, that
the sense of beauty never farthered the performance of a single duty.
Although this gross and inconceivable falsity will hardly be accepted
by any one in so many terms, seeing that there are few so utterly lost
but that they receive, and know that they receive, at certain moments,
strength of some kind, or rebuke from the appealings of outward things;
and that it is not possible for a Christian man to walk across so much
as a rood of the natural earth, with mind unagitated and rightly poised,
without receiving strength and hope from stone, flower, leaf or sound,
nor without a sense of a dew falling upon him out of the sky; though I
say this falsity is not wholly and in terms admitted, yet it seems to
be partly and practically so in much of the doing and teaching even of
holy men, who in the recommending of the love of God to us, refer but
seldom to those things in which it is most abundantly and immediately
shown; though they insist much on his giving of bread, and raiment, and
health (which he gives to all inferior creatures), they require us not
to thank him for that glory of his works which he has permitted us alone
to perceive: they tell us often to meditate in the closet, but they send
us not, like Isaac, into the fields at even; they dwell on the duty of
self-denial, but they exhibit not the _duty of delight_.[29]
JOHN RUSKIN (_Modern Painters_, III, I, XV).
* * * * *
Not on the vulgar mass
Called “work” must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O’er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
But all, the world’s coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s amount:
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All, I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped,
So, take and use thy work:
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.
ROBERT BROWNING (_Rabbi ben Ezra_).
“All (that) I could never be, All (that) man ignored in me.”
All that the world could not know, a man’s thoughts, desires,
and intentions, all that he wished or tried to be or do,
although unknown to his fellows, have their value in God’s
eyes. Man is the Cup, whose shape (i.e., character) has been
formed by the wheel of the great Potter, God. See further as to
this Eastern metaphor.
The late Mrs. A. W. Verrall, widow of Doctor Verrall and
herself a brilliant scholar, pointed out in the _Proceedings_
of the Society for Psychical Research, June, 1911, a probable
connection between “Rabbi ben Ezra,” and “Omar Khayyam,” and
I do not think that her interesting views have been published
elsewhere.
Both poems centre round the idea of man as a Cup, but treat the
metaphor from very different standpoints. Omar’s cup (quoting
from the first edition) is to be filled with “Life’s Liquor”
(ii), with “Wine! _Red_ Wine!” (vi), with what “clears To-Day
of past regrets” (xx); the object is to drown the memory of the
fact that “without asking” we are “hurried hither” and “hurried
hence” (xxx); the “Ruby Vintage” is to be drunk “with old
Khayyam,” and “when the Angel with his darker Draught draws up”
to us we are to take that draught without shrinking (xlviii).
On the other hand Rabbi ben Ezra’s Cup is to be used by the
great Potter. We are told to look “not down but up! to uses of
a cup” (30). The Rabbi asks “God who mouldest men ... to take
and use His work” (32) and the ultimate purpose of the Cup,
when it has been made “perfect as planned,” is to slake the
thirst of the Master.
The comparison of man to the Clay of the Potter in both poems
is not sufficient in itself to show any connection between
them. Such a comparison is found, as Fitzgerald reminds us, “in
the Literature of the World from the Hebrew Prophets to the
present time”[30]; and it is as appropriately employed by the
Hebrew as by the Persian thinker. But Mrs. Verrall has other
grounds:
The little pamphlet in its brown wrapper containing the
_Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_ was first published by Edward
Fitzgerald in 1859, and, as is well known, attracted so little
attention that, although there were only 250 copies, it found
its way into the two-penny boxes of the book-sellers, (It now
sells for about £50!) But, nevertheless, the poem was eagerly
read and enthusiastically praised by a small group, among whom
were Swinburne and Rossetti. In 1861 Robert Browning came to
live in London, and often saw Rossetti, who was his friend.
It is, therefore, very improbable that he did not learn of the
poem, which had so impressed Rossetti. In 1864 “Rabbi ben Ezra”
was published in the volume called _Dramatis Personae_.
Again, there is intrinsic evidence that Browning intended a
direct refutation of Omar’s theory of life. Compare verses 26
and 27 of “Rabbi ben Ezra” with verses xxxvi and xxxvii of
“Omar Khayyam” (first edition).
Omar says that he “watched the Potter thumping his wet clay,”
and, thereupon advises:
Ah, fill the Cup;—what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!
Rabbi ben Ezra says:
... Note that Potter’s wheel.
That metaphor!
and proceeds:
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,
“Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize To-day!”
Fool! all that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.
Although the “carpe diem” (“seize to-day”) theory of life is no
doubt common to all literatures, the cumulative effect of Mrs.
Verrall’s argument is strong, although not conclusive.
As regards the above verses, compare the next quotation.
* * * * *
From Thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, Thy dread Sabaoth:
_I_ will?—the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth
To look that, even that, in the face too? Why is it I dare
Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?
This:—’tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!
R. BROWNING (_Saul_).
_Sabaoth_, armies, hosts. “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of
Sabaoth.”
* * * * *
Let the thick curtain fall;
I better know than all
How little I have gained.
How vast the unattained.
Not by the page word-painted
Let life be banned or sainted;
Deeper than written scroll
The colours of the soul.
Sweeter than any sung
My songs that found no tongue;
Nobler than any fact
My wish that failed of act.
J. G. WHITTIER (_My Triumph_).
* * * * *
Between the great things that we _cannot_ do, and the small things we
_will_ not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing.
ADOLPH MONOD (1802-1856).
* * * * *
Reputation is what men and women think of us; Character is what God and
the angels know of us.
THOMAS PAINE.
* * * * *
Love is the Amen of the Universe.
NOVALIS.
* * * * *
He (Dr. Johnson) would not allow Scotland to derive any credit from Lord
Mansfield, for he was educated in England. “Much,” said he, “may be made
of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.”
BOSWELL (_Life of Johnson_).
* * * * *
(A Mr. Strahan, a Scotchman, asked Dr. Johnson what he thought of
Scotland) “That it is a very vile country to be sure, Sir,” returned for
answer Dr. Johnson. “Well, Sir!” replied the other, somewhat mortified,
“God made it.” “Certainly he did,” answered Mr. Johnson again, “but we
must always remember that _he made it for Scotchmen_.”
MRS. PIOZZI (_Johnsoniana_).
These are the two best of Johnson’s chaffing jibes against
Scotchmen. The neatness of the latter is, to my mind, spoilt by
the words at the end, which I have omitted: “and—comparisons
are odious, Mr. Strahan,—but God made hell.” The following
may also be quoted as showing both Johnson and that clever
charlatan, Wilkes, quizzing Boswell (year 1781):
_Wilkes_: “Pray, Boswell, how much may be got in a year by an
advocate at the Scotch bar?”
_Boswell_: “I believe two thousand pounds.”
_Wilkes_: “How can it be possible to spend that money in
Scotland?”
_Johnson_: “Why, Sir, the money may be spent in _England_;
but there is a harder question. If one man in Scotland gets
possession of two thousand pounds, what remains for all the
rest of the nation?”
Many Scotchmen undoubtedly enjoy chaff against themselves and
their country, and I think this was so with Boswell. It is a
phase of social psychology that needs explaining.
In these jokes Johnson was, consciously or not, influenced by
the fine Royalist poet, John Cleveland (1613-1658); but the
latter was very much in earnest. He detested the Scotch for
fighting against Charles I. His references to Scotland in _The
Rebel Scot_ are wonderfully clever:—
A land that brings in question and suspense
God’s omnipresence.
And again:—
Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom;
Not forced him wander, but confined him home!
* * * * *
God is present by His essence; which, because it is infinite, cannot
be contained within the limits of any place; and because He is of an
essential purity and spiritual nature, He cannot be undervalued by being
supposed present in the places of unnatural uncleanness: because, as the
sun, reflecting upon the mud of strands and shores, is unpolluted in its
beams, so is God not dishonoured when we suppose Him in every one of His
creatures, and in every part of every one of them.
JEREMY TAYLOR (_Holy Living_, Ch. 1, Sec. 3).
There is an old Scottish proverb, “The sun is no waur for
shining on the midden.”
* * * * *
I dare say Alexander the Great was somewhat staggered in his plans of
conquest by Parmenio’s way of putting things. “After you have conquered
Persia what will you do?” “Then I shall conquer India.” “After you have
conquered India, what will you do?” “Conquer Scythia.” “And after you
have conquered Scythia, what will you do?” “Sit down and rest.” “Well,”
said Parmenio to the conqueror, “why not sit down and rest now?”
A. K. H. BOYD (_The Recreations of a Country Parson_).
I include this because it is a good short paraphrase
of the actual story of Pyrrhus and Cineas (_Plutarch’s
Lives_—“_Pyrrhus_”) and because of the curious absurdity of
attributing such philosophic advice to the warrior, Parmenio.
This general was the only one of Alexander’s old advisers who
urged him to invade Asia! (_Plutarch’s Lives_—“_Alexander_”).
* * * * *
Sorrow and care and anxiety may quite well live in Elizabethan cottages,
grown over with honeysuckle and jasmine; and very sad eyes may look forth
from windows around which roses twine.
A. K. H. BOYD (_The Recreations of a Country Parson_).
This book had a great vogue, but not sufficient merit to
preserve it from oblivion.
* * * * *
CANADIAN BOAT-SONG
_From the Gaelic._