_Sp._ Oh,

You’ll go to church of course, you know;

Or at the least will take a pew

To send your wife and servants to.

Trust me, I make a point of that;

No infidelity, that’s flat.

_Di._ Religion is not in a pew, say some;

Cucullus, _you_ hold, _facit_ monachum.

_Sp._ Why, as to feelings of devotion

I interdict all vague emotion;

But if you will, for once and all

Compound with ancient Juvenal

Orandum est, one perfect prayer

For savoir-vivre and savoir-faire.

Theology—don’t recommend you,

Unless, turned lawyer, Heaven should send you

In your profession’s way a case

Of Baptism and prevenient grace;

But that’s not likely. I’m inclined,

All circumstances borne in mind,

To think (to keep you in due borders)

You’d better enter holy orders.

_Di._ On that, my friend, you’d better not insist.

_Sp._ Well, well, ’tis but a good thing missed.

The item’s optional, no doubt;

But how to get you bread without?

You’ll marry; I shall find the lady.

Make your proposal, and be steady.

_Di._ Marry, ill spirit! and at your sole choice?

_Sp._ _De rigueur!_ can’t give you a voice.

What matter? Oh, trust one who knows you,

You’ll make an admirable sposo.

_Di._ Enough. But action—look to that well, mind me;

See that some not unworthy work you find me;

If man I be, then give the man expression.

_Sp._ Of course you’ll enter a profession;

If not the Church, why then the Law.

By Jove, we’ll teach you how to draw!

Besides, the best of the concern is

I’m hand and glove with the attorneys.

With them and me to help, don’t doubt

But in due season you’ll come out;

Leave Kelly, Cockburn, in the lurch.

But yet, do think about the Church.

_Di._ ’Tis well, ill spirit, I admire your wit;

As for your wisdom, I shall think of it.

And now farewell.

SCENE IV.—_In St. Mark’s. Dipsychus alone._

The Law! ’twere honester, if ’twere genteel,

To say the dung-cart. What! shall I go about,

And like the walking shoeblack roam the flags

To see whose boots are dirtiest? Oh, the luck

To stoop and clean a pair!

Religion, if indeed it be in vain

To expect to find in this more modern time

That which the old world styled, in old-world phrase

Walking with God. It seems His newer will

We should not think of Him at all, but trudge it,

And of the world He has assigned us make

What best we can.

Then love: I scarce can think

That these be-maddening discords of the mind

To pure melodious sequence could be changed,

And all the vext conundrums of our life

Solved to all time by this old pastoral

Of a new Adam and a second Eve

Set in a garden which no serpent seeks.

And yet I hold heart can beat true to heart:

And to hew down the tree which bears this fruit,

To do a thing which cuts me off from hope,

To falsify the movement of Love’s mind,

To seat some alien trifler on the throne

A queen may come to claim—that were ill done.

What! to the close hand of the clutching Jew

Hand up that rich reversion! and for what?

This would be hard, did I indeed believe

’Twould ever fall. That love, the large repose

Restorative, not to mere outside needs

Skin-deep, but throughly to the total man,

Exists, I will believe, but so, so rare,

So doubtful, so exceptional, hard to guess;

When guessed, so often counterfeit; in brief,

A thing not possibly to be conceived

An item in the reckonings of the wise.

Action, that staggers me. For I had hoped,

’Midst weakness, indolence, frivolity,

Irresolution, still had hoped: and this

Seems sacrificing hope. Better to wait:

The wise men wait; it is the foolish haste,

And ere the scenes are in the slides would play,

And while the instruments are tuning, dance.

I see Napoleon on the heights intent

To arrest that one brief unit of loose time

Which hands high Victory’s thread; his marshals fret,

His soldiers clamour low: the very guns

Seem going off of themselves; the cannon strain

Like hell-dogs in the leash. But he, he waits;

And lesser chances and inferior hopes

Meantime go pouring past. Men gnash their teeth;

The very faithful have begun to doubt;

But they molest not the calm eye that seeks

’Midst all this huddling silver little worth

The one thin piece that comes, pure gold; he waits.

O me, when the great deed e’en now has broke

Like a man’s hand the horizon’s level line,

So soon to fill the zenith with rich clouds;

Oh, in this narrow interspace, this marge,

This list and selvage of a glorious time,

To despair of the great and sell unto the mean!

O thou of little faith, what hast thou done?

Yet if the occasion coming should find us

Undexterous, incapable? In light things

Prove thou the arms thou long’st to glorify,

Nor fear to work up from the lowest ranks

Whence come great Nature’s Captains. And high deeds

Haunt not the fringy edges of the fight,

But the pell-mell of men. Oh, what and if

E’en now by lingering here I let them slip,

Like an unpractised spyer through a glass,

Still pointing to the blank, too high! And yet,

In dead details to smother vital ends

Which would give life to them; in the deft trick

Of prentice-handling to forget great art,

To base mechanical adroitness yield

The Inspiration and the Hope a slave!

Oh, and to blast that Innocence which, though

Here it may seem a dull unopening bud,

May yet bloom freely in celestial clime!

Were it not better done, then, to keep off

And see, not share, the strife; stand out the waltz

Which fools whirl dizzy in? Is it possible?

Contamination taints the idler first;

And without base compliance, e’en that same

Which buys bold hearts free course, Earth lends not these

Their pent and miserable standing-room.

Life loves no lookers-on at his great game,

And with boy’s malice still delights to turn

The tide of sport upon the sitters-by,

And set observers scampering with their notes.

Oh, it is great to do and know not what,

Nor let it e’er be known. The dashing stream

Stays not to pick his steps among the rocks,

Or let his water-breaks be chronicled.

And though the hunter looks before he leap,

’Tis instinct rather than a shaped-out thought

That lifts him his bold way. Then, instinct, hail!

And farewell hesitation. If I stay,

I am not innocent; nor if I go—

E’en should I fall—beyond redemption lost.

Ah, if I had a course like a full stream,

If life were as the field of chase! No, no;

The life of instinct has, it seems, gone by,

And will not be forced back. And to live now

I must sluice out myself into canals,

And lose all force in ducts. The modern Hotspur

Shrills not his trumpet of ‘To Horse, To Horse!’

But consults columns in a Railway Guide;

A demigod of figures; an Achilles

Of computation;

A verier Mercury, express come down

To do the world with swift arithmetic.

Well, one could bear with that, were the end ours,

One’s choice and the correlative of the soul;

To drudge were then sweet service. But indeed

The earth moves slowly, if it move at all,

And by the general, not the single force

Of the linked members of the vast machine.

In all these crowded rooms of industry,

No individual soul has loftier leave

Than fiddling with a piston or a valve.

Well, one could bear that also: one would drudge

And do one’s petty part, and be content

In base manipulation, solaced still

By thinking of the leagued fraternity,

And of co-operation, and the effect

Of the great engine. If indeed it work,

And is not a mere treadmill! which it may be.

Who can confirm it is not? We ask action.

And dream of arms and conflict; and string up

All self-devotion’s muscles; and are set

To fold up papers. To what end? we know not.

Other folks do so; it is always done;

And it perhaps is right. And we are paid for it,

For nothing else we can be. He that eats

Must serve; and serve as other servants do:

And don the lacquey’s livery of the house.

Oh, could I shoot my thought up to the sky,

A column of pure shape, for all to observe!

But I must slave, a meagre coral-worm,

To build beneath the tide with excrement

What one day will be island, or be reef,

And will feed men, or wreck them. Well, well, well.

Adieu, ye twisted thinkings. I submit: it must be.

Action is what one must get, it is clear,

And one could dream it better than one finds,

In its kind personal, in its motive not;

Not selfish as it now is, nor as now

Maiming the individual. If we had that,

It would cure all indeed. Oh, how would then

These pitiful rebellions of the flesh,

These caterwaulings of the effeminate heart,

These hurts of self-imagined dignity,

Pass like the seaweed from about the bows

Of a great vessel speeding straight to sea!

Yes, if we could have that; but I suppose

We shall not have it, and therefore I submit!

_Sp._ (_from within_). Submit, submit!

’Tis common sense, and human wit

Can claim no higher name than it.

Submit, submit!

Devotion, and ideas, and love,

And beauty claim their place above;

But saint and sage and poet’s dreams

Divide the light in coloured streams,

Which this alone gives all combined,

The _siccum lumen_ of the mind

Called common sense: and no high wit

Gives better counsel than does it.

Submit, submit!

To see things simply as they are

Here at our elbows, transcends far

Trying to spy out at midday

Some ‘bright particular star,’ which may,

Or not, be visible at night,

But clearly is not in daylight;

No inspiration vague outweighs

The plain good common sense that says,

Submit, submit!

’Tis common sense, and human wit

Can ask no higher name than it.

Submit, submit!

SCENE V.—_The Piazza at Night._

_Di._ There have been times, not many, but enough

To quiet all repinings of the heart;

There have been times, in which my tranquil soul,

No longer nebulous, sparse, errant, seemed

Upon its axis solidly to move,

Centred and fast: no mere elastic blank

For random rays to traverse unretained,

But rounding luminous its fair ellipse

Around its central sun. Ay, yet again,

As in more faint sensations I detect,

With it too, round an Inner, Mightier orb,

Maybe with that too—this I dare not say—

Around, yet more, more central, more supreme,

Whate’er how numerous soe’er they be,

I am and feel myself, where’er I wind,

What vagrant chance soe’er I seem to obey

Communicably theirs.

O happy hours!

O compensation ample for long days

Of what impatient tongues call wretchedness!

O beautiful, beneath the magic moon,

To walk the watery way of palaces!

O beautiful, o’ervaulted with gemmed blue,

This spacious court, with colour and with gold,

With cupolas, and pinnacles, and points,

And crosses multiplex, and tips and balls

(Wherewith the bright stars unreproving mix,

Nor scorn by hasty eyes to be confused);

Fantastically perfect this low pile

Of Oriental glory; these long ranges

Of classic chiselling, this gay flickering crowd.

And the calm Campanile. Beautiful!

O beautiful! and that seemed more profound,

This morning by the pillar when I sat

Under the great arcade, at the review,

And took, and held, and ordered on my brain

The faces, and the voices, and the whole mass

O’ the motley facts of existence flowing by!

O perfect, if ’twere all! But it is not;

Hints haunt me ever of a more beyond:

I am rebuked by a sense of the incomplete,

Of a completion over soon assumed,

Of adding up too soon. What we call sin,

I could believe a painful opening out

Of paths for ampler virtue. The bare field,

Scant with lean ears of harvest, long had mocked

The vext laborious farmer; came at length

The deep plough in the lazy undersoil

Down-driving; with a cry earth’s fibres crack,

And a few months, and lo! the golden leas,

And autumn’s crowded shocks and loaded wains.

Let us look back on life; was any change,

Any now blest expansion, but at first

A pang, remorse-like, shot to the inmost seats

Of moral being? To do anything,

Distinct on any one thing to decide,

To leave the habitual and the old, and quit

The easy-chair of use and wont, seems crime

To the weak soul, forgetful how at first

Sitting down seemed so too. And, oh! this woman’s heart,

Fain to be forced, incredulous of choice,

And waiting a necessity for God.

Yet I could think, indeed, the perfect call

Should force the perfect answer. If the voice

Ought to receive its echo from the soul,

Wherefore this silence? If it _should_ rouse my being,

Why this reluctance? Have I not thought o’ermuch

Of other men, and of the ways of the world?

But what they are, or have been, matters not.

To thine own self be true, the wise man says.

Are then my fears myself? O double self!

And I untrue to both? Oh, there are hours,

When love, and faith, and dear domestic ties,

And converse with old friends, and pleasant walks,

Familiar faces, and familiar books,

Study, and art, upliftings unto prayer,

And admiration of the noblest things,

Seem all ignoble only; all is mean,

And nought as I would have it. Then at others,

My mind is in her rest; my heart at home

In all around; my soul secure in place,

And the vext needle perfect to her poles.

Aimless and hopeless in my life I seem

To thread the winding byways of the town,

Bewildered, baffled, hurried hence and thence,

All at cross-purpose even with myself,

Unknowing whence or whither. Thence at once,

At a step, I crown the Campanile’s top,

And view all mapped below; islands, lagoon,

A hundred steeples and a million roofs,

The fruitful champaign, and the cloud-capt Alps,

And the broad Adriatic. Be it enough;

If I lose this, how terrible! No, no,

I am contented, and will not complain.

To the old paths, my soul! Oh, be it so!

I bear the workday burden of dull life

About these footsore flags of a weary world,

Heaven knows how long it has not been; at once,

Lo! I am in the spirit on the Lord’s day

With John in Patmos. Is it not enough,

One day in seven? and if this should go,

If this pure solace should desert my mind,

What were all else? I dare not risk this loss.

To the old paths, my soul!

_Sp._ O yes.

To moon about religion; to inhume

Your ripened age in solitary walks,

For self-discussion; to debate in letters

Vext points with earnest friends; past other men

To cherish natural instincts, yet to fear them

And less than any use them; oh, no doubt,

In a corner sit and mope, and be consoled

With thinking one is clever, while the room

Rings through with animation and the dance.

Then talk of old examples; to pervert

Ancient real facts to modern unreal dreams

And build up baseless fabrics of romance

And heroism upon historic sand;

To burn, forsooth, for action, yet despise

Its merest accidence and alphabet;

Cry out for service, and at once rebel

At the application of its plainest rules:

This you call life, my friend, reality;

Doing your duty unto God and man—

I know not what. Stay at Venice, if you will;

Sit musing in its churches hour on hour

Cross-kneed upon a bench; climb up at whiles

The neighbouring tower, and kill the lingering day

With old comparisons; when night succeeds,

Evading, yet a little seeking, what

You would and would not, turn your doubtful eyes

On moon and stars to help morality;

Once in a fortnight say, by lucky chance

Of happier-tempered coffee, gain (great Heaven!)

A pious rapture: is it not enough?

_Di._ ’Tis well: thou cursed spirit, go thy way!

I am in higher hands than yours. ’Tis well;

Who taught you menaces? Who told you, pray,

Because I asked you questions, and made show

Of hearing what you answered, therefore——

_Sp._ Oh,

As if I didn’t know!

_Di._ Come, come, my friend,

I may have wavered, but I have thought better.

We’ll say no more of it.

_Sp._ Oh, I dare say:

But as you like; ’tis your own loss; once more,

Beware!

_Di._ (_alone._) Must it be then? So quick upon my thought

To follow the fulfilment and the deed?

I counted not on this; I counted ever

To hold and turn it over in my hands

Much longer, much: I took it up indeed,

For speculation rather; to gain thought,

New data. Oh, and now to be goaded on

By menaces, entangled among tricks;

That I won’t suffer. Yet it is the law;

’Tis this makes action always. But for this

We ne’er should act at all; and act we must.

Why quarrel with the fashion of a fact

Which, one way, must be, one time, why not now?

_Sp._ Submit, submit!

For tell me then, in earth’s great laws

Have you found any saving clause,

Exemption special granted you

From doing what the rest must do?

Of common sense who made you quit,

And told you, you’d no need of it,

Nor to submit?

To move on angels’ wings were sweet;

But who would therefore scorn his feet?

It cannot walk up to the sky;

It therefore will lie down and die.

Rich meats it don’t obtain at call;

It therefore will not eat at all.

Poor babe, and yet a babe of wit!

But common sense, not much of it,

Or ’twould submit.

Submit, submit!

As your good father did before you,

And as the mother who first bore you,

O yes! a child of heavenly birth!

But yet it _was_ born too on earth.

Keep your new birth for that far day

When in the grave your bones you lay,

All with your kindred and connection,

In hopes of happy resurrection.

But how meantime to live is fit,

Ask common sense; and what says it?

Submit, submit!

SCENE VI.—_On a Bridge._

_Di._ ’Tis gone, the fierce inordinate desire,

The burning thirst for action—utterly;

Gone, like a ship that passes in the night

On the high seas: gone, yet will come again:

Gone, yet expresses something that exists.

Is it a thing ordained, then? is it a clue

For my life’s conduct? is it a law for me

That opportunity shall breed distrust,

Not passing until that pass? Chance and resolve,

Like two loose comets wandering wide in space,

Crossing each other’s orbits time on time,

Meet never. Void indifference and doubt

Let through the present boon, which ne’er turns back

To await the after sure-arriving wish.

How shall I then explain it to myself,

That in blank thought my purpose lives?

The uncharged cannon mocking still the spark

_When_ come, which _ere_ come it had loudly claimed.

Am I to let it be so still? For truly

The need exists, I know; the wish but sleeps

(Sleeps, and anon will wake and cry for food);

And to put by these unreturning gifts,

Because the feeling is not with me now,

Seems folly more than merest babyhood’s.

But must I then do violence to myself,

And push on nature, force desire (that’s ill),

Because of knowledge? which is great, but works

By rules of large exception; to tell which

Nought is more fallible than mere caprice.

What need for action yet? I am happy now,

I feel no lack—what cause is there for haste?

Am I not happy? is not that enough?

Depart!

_Sp._ O yes! you thought you had escaped, no doubt,

This worldly fiend that follows you about,

This compound of convention and impiety,

This mongrel of uncleanness and propriety.

What else were bad enough? but, let me say,

I too have my _grandes manières_ in my way;

Could speak high sentiment as well as you,

And out-blank-verse you without much ado;

Have my religion also in my kind,

For dreaming unfit, because not designed.

What! you know not that I too can be serious,

Can speak big words, and use the tone imperious;

Can speak, not honiedly, of love and beauty,

But sternly of a something much like duty.

Oh, do you look surprised? were never told,

Perhaps, that all that glitters is not gold.

The Devil oft the Holy Scripture uses,

But God can act the Devil when He chooses.

Farewell! But, _verbum sapienti satis_—

I do not make this revelation gratis.

Farewell: beware!

_Di._ Ill spirits can quote holy books I knew;

What will they _not_ say? what not dare to do?

_Sp._ Beware, beware!

_Di._ What, loitering still? Still, O foul spirit, there?

Go hence, I tell thee, go! I _will_ beware.

(_Alone._) It must be then. I feel it in my soul;

The iron enters, sundering flesh and bone,

And sharper than the two-edged sword of God.

I come into deep waters—help, O help!

The floods run over me.

Therefore, farewell! a long and last farewell,

Ye pious sweet simplicities of life,

Good books, good friends, and holy moods, and all

That lent rough life sweet Sunday seeming rests,

Making earth heaven-like. Welcome, wicked world,

The hardening heart, the calculating brain

Narrowing its doors to thought, the lying lips,

The calm-dissembling eyes; the greedy flesh,

The world, the Devil—welcome, welcome, welcome!

_Sp._ (_from within._) This stern necessity of things

On every side our being rings;

Our sallying eager actions fall

Vainly against that iron wall.

Where once her finger points the way,

The wise thinks only to obey;

Take life as she has ordered it,

And come what may of it, submit,

Submit, submit!

Who take implicitly her will,

For these her vassal chances still

Bring store of joys, successes, pleasures;

But whoso ponders, weighs, and measures,

She calls her torturers up to goad

With spur and scourges on the road;

He does at last with pain whate’er

He spurned at first. Of such, beware,

Beware, beware!

_Di._ O God, O God! The great floods of the soul

Flow over me! I come into deep waters

Where no ground is!

_Sp._ Don’t be the least afraid;

There’s not the slightest reason for alarm;

I only meant by a perhaps rough shake

To rouse you from a dreamy, unhealthy sleep.

Up, then—up, and be going: the large world,

The thronged life waits us.

Come, my pretty boy,

You have been making mows to the blank sky

Quite long enough for good. We’ll put you up

Into the higher form. ’Tis time you learn

The Second Reverence, for things around.

Up, then, and go amongst them; don’t be timid;

Look at them quietly a bit: by-and-by

Respect will come, and healthy appetite.

So let us go.

How now! not yet awake?

Oh, you will sleep yet, will you! Oh, you shirk,

You try and slink away! You cannot, eh?

Nay now, what folly’s this? Why will you fool yourself?

Why will you walk about thus with your eyes shut?

Treating for facts the self-made hues that flash

On tight-pressed pupils, which you know are not facts.

To use the undistorted light of the sun

Is not a crime; to look straight out upon

The big plain things that stare one in the face

Does not contaminate; to see pollutes not

What one must feel if one won’t see, what _is_,

And will be too, howe’er we blink, and must

One way or other make itself observed.

Free walking’s better than being led about; and

What will the blind man do, I wonder, if

Some one should cut the string of his dog? Just think!

What could you do, if I should go away?

Oh, you have paths of your own before you, have you?

What shall it take to? literature, no doubt?

Novels, reviews? or poems! if you please!

The strong fresh gale of life will feel, no doubt,

The influx of your mouthful of soft air.

Well, make the most of that small stock of knowledge

You’ve condescended to receive from me;

That’s your best chance. Oh, you despise that! Oh.

Prate then of passions you have known in dreams,

Of huge experience gathered by the eye;

Be large of aspiration, pure in hope,

Sweet in fond longings, but in all things vague;

Breathe out your dreamy scepticism, relieved

By snatches of old songs. People will like that, doubtless.

Or will you write about philosophy?

For a waste far-off _maybe_ overlooking

The fruitful _is_ close by, live in metaphysic,

With transcendental logic fill your stomach,

Schematise joy, effigiate meat and drink;

Or, let me see, a mighty work, a volume,

The Complemental of the inferior Kant,

The Critic of Pure Practice, based upon

The Antinomies of the Moral Sense: for, look you,

We cannot act without assuming _x_,

And at the same time _y_, its contradictory;

Ergo, to act. People will buy that, doubtless.

Or you’ll perhaps teach youth (I do not question

Some downward turn you may find, some evasion

Of the broad highway’s glaring white ascent);

Teach youth, in a small way, that is, always,

So as to have much time left you for yourself;

This you can’t sacrifice, your leisure’s precious.

Heartily you will not take to anything;

Whatever happen, don’t I see you still,

Living no life at all? Even as now

An o’ergrown baby, sucking at the dugs

Of instinct, dry long since. Come, come, you are old enough

For spoon-meat surely.

Will you go on thus

Until death end you? if indeed it does.

For what it does, none knows. Yet as for you,

You’ll hardly have the courage to die outright;

You’ll somehow halve even it. Methinks I see you,

Through everlasting limbos of void time,

Twirling and twiddling ineffectively,

And indeterminately swaying for ever.

Come, come, spoon-meat at any rate.

Well, well,

I will not persecute you more, my friend.

Only do think, as I observed before,

What can you do, if I should go away?

_Di._ Is the hour here, then? Is the minute come—

The irreprievable instant of stern time?

O for a few, few grains in the running glass,

Or for some power to hold them! O for a few

Of all that went so wastefully before!

It must be then, e’en now.

_Sp._ (_from within._) It must, it must.

’Tis common sense! and human wit

Can claim no higher name than it.

Submit, submit!

Necessity! and who shall dare

Bring to _her_ feet excuse or prayer?

Beware, beware!

We must, we must.

Howe’er we turn, and pause and tremble—

Howe’er we shrink, deceive, dissemble—

Whate’er our doubting, grief, disgust,

The hand is on us, and we must,

We must, we must.

’Tis common sense! and human wit

Can find no better name than

Submit, submit!

SCENE VII.—_At Torcello._ _Dipsychus alone._

_Di._ I had a vision; was it in my sleep?

And if it were, what then? But sleep or wake,

I saw a great light open o’er my head;

And sleep or wake, uplifted to that light,

Out of that light proceeding heard a voice

Uttering high words, which, whether sleep or wake,

In me were fixed, and in me must abide.

When the enemy is near thee,

Call on us!

In our hands we will upbear thee,

He shall neither scathe nor scare thee,

He shall fly thee, and shall fear thee.

Call on us!

Call when all good friends have left thee,

Of all good sights and sounds bereft thee;

Call when hope and heart are sinking,

And the brain is sick with thinking,

Help, O help!

Call, and following close behind thee

There shall haste, and there shall find thee,

Help, sure help.

When the panic comes upon thee,

When necessity seems on thee,

Hope and choice have all foregone thee,

Fate and force are closing o’er thee,

And but one way stands before thee—

Call on us!

Oh, and if thou dost not call,

Be but faithful, that is all.

Go right on, and close behind thee

There shall follow still and find thee,

Help, sure help.

SCENE VIII.—_In the Piazza._

_Di._ Not for thy service, thou imperious fiend,

Not to do thy work, or the like of thine;

Not to please thee, O base and fallen spirit!

But One Most High, Most True, whom without thee

It seems I cannot.

O the misery

That one must truck and pactise with the world

To gain the ’vantage-ground to assail it from,

To set upon the Giant one must first,

O perfidy! have eat the Giant’s bread.

If I submit, it is but to gain time

And arms and stature: ’tis but to lie safe

Until the hour strike to arise and slay:

’Tis the old story of the adder’s brood

Feeding and nestling till the fangs be grown.

Were it not nobler done, then, to act fair,

To accept the service with the wages, do

Frankly the devil’s work for the devil’s pay?

Oh, but another my allegiance holds

Inalienably his. How much soe’er

I might submit, it must be to rebel.

Submit then sullenly, that’s no dishonour.

Yet I could deem it better too to starve

And die untraitored. O, who sent me, though?

Sent me, and to do something—O hard master!—

To do a treachery. But indeed ’tis done;

I have already taken of the pay

And curst the payer; take I must, curse too.

Alas! the little strength that I possess

Derives, I think, of him. So still it is,

The timid child that clung unto her skirts,

A boy, will slight his mother, and, grown a man,

His father too. There’s Scripture too for that!

Do we owe fathers nothing—mothers nought?

Is filial duty folly? Yet He says,

‘He that loves father, mother more than me;’

Yea, and ‘the man his parents shall desert,’

The Ordinance says, ‘and cleave unto his wife.’

O man, behold thy wife, the hard naked world;

Adam, accept thy Eve.

So still it is,

The tree exhausts the soil; creepers kill it,

Their insects them: the lever finds its fulcrum

On what it then o’erthrows; the homely spade

In labour’s hand unscrupulously seeks

Its first momentum on the very clod

Which next will be upturned. It seems a law.

And am not I, though I but ill recall

My happier age, a kidnapped child of Heaven,

Whom these uncircumcised Philistines

Have by foul play shorn, blinded, maimed, and kept

For what more glorious than to make them sport?

Wait, then, wait, O my soul! grow, grow, ye locks,

Then perish they, and if need is, I too.

_Sp._ (_aside._) A truly admirable proceeding!

Could there be finer special pleading

When scruples would be interceding?

There’s no occasion I should stay;

He is working out, his own queer way,

The sum I set him; and this day

Will bring it, neither less nor bigger,

Exact to my predestined figure.

SCENE IX.—_In the Public Garden._

_Di._ Twenty-one past—twenty-five coming on;

One-third of life departed, nothing done.

Out of the mammon of unrighteousness

That we make friends, the Scripture is express.

My Spirit, come, we will agree;

Content, you’ll take a moiety.

_Sp._ A moiety, ye gods, he, he!

_Di._ Three-quarters then? O griping beast;

Leave me a decimal at least.

_Sp._ Oh, one of ten! to infect the nine

And make the devil a one be mine!

Oh, one! to jib all day, God wot,

When all the rest would go full trot!

One very little one, eh? to doubt with,

Just to pause, think, and look about with?

In course! you counted on no less—

You thought it likely I’d say yes!

_Di._ Be it then thus—since that it must, it seems.

Welcome, O world, henceforth; and farewell dreams!

Yet know, Mephisto, know, nor you nor I

Can in this matter either sell or buy;

For the fee simple of this trifling lot

To you or me, trust me, pertaineth not.

I can but render what is of my will,

And behind it somewhat remaineth still.

Oh, your sole chance was in the childish mind

Whose darkness dreamed that vows like this could bind;

Thinking all lost, it made all lost, and brought

In fact the ruin which had been but thought.

Thank Heaven (or you) that’s past these many years,

And we have knowledge wiser than our fears.

So your poor bargain take, my man,

And make the best of it you can.

_Sp._ With reservations! oh, how treasonable!

When I had let you off so reasonable.

However, I don’t fear; be it so!

Brutus is honourable, I know;

So mindful of the dues of others,

So thoughtful for his poor dear brothers,

So scrupulous, considerate, kind—

He wouldn’t leave the devil behind

If he assured him he had claims

For his good company to hell-flames!

No matter, no matter, the bargain’s made;

And I for my part will not be afraid.

With reservations! oh! ho, ho!

But time, my friend, has yet to show

Which of us two will closest fit

The proverb of the Biter Bit.

_Di._ Tell me thy name, now it is over.

_Sp._ Oh!

Why, Mephistophiles, you know—

At least you’ve lately called me so;

Belial it was some days ago.

But take your pick; I’ve got a score—

Never a royal baby more.

For a brass plate upon a door

What think you of _Cosmocrator_?

_Di._ Τοὺς κοσμοκράτορας τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου.

And that you are indeed, I do not doubt you.

_Sp._ Ephesians, ain’t it? near the end

You dropt a word to spare your friend.

What follows, too, in application

Would be absurd exaggeration.

_Di._ The Power of this World! hateful unto God.

_Sp._ Cosmarchon’s shorter, but sounds odd:

One wouldn’t like, even if a true devil,

To be taken for a vulgar Jew devil.

_Di._ Yet in all these things we—’tis Scripture too—

Are more than conquerors, even over you.

_Sp._ Come, come, don’t maunder any longer,

Time tests the weaker and the stronger;

And we, without procrastination,

Must set, you know, to our vocation.

O goodness; won’t you find it pleasant

To own the positive and present;

To see yourself like people round,

And feel your feet upon the ground! (_Exeunt._)

END OF DIPSYCHUS.

EPILOGUE TO DIPSYCHUS.

‘I don’t very well understand what it’s all about,’ said my uncle. ‘I

won’t say I didn’t drop into a doze while the young man was drivelling

through his latter soliloquies. But there was a great deal that was

unmeaning, vague, and involved; and what was most plain, was least decent

and least moral.’

‘Dear sir,’ said I, ‘says the proverb—“Needs must when the devil drives;”

and if the devil is to speak——’

‘Well,’ said my uncle, ‘why should he? Nobody asked him. Not that he

didn’t say much which, if only it hadn’t been for the way he said it, and

that it was he who said it, would have been sensible enough.’

‘But, sir,’ said I, ‘perhaps he wasn’t a devil after all. That’s the

beauty of the poem; nobody can say. You see, dear sir, the thing which it

is attempted to represent is the conflict between the tender conscience

and the world. Now, the over-tender conscience will, of course,

exaggerate the wickedness of the world; and the Spirit in my poem may be

merely the hypothesis or subjective imagination formed——’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, my dear boy,’ interrupted my uncle, ‘don’t

go into the theory of it. If you’re wrong in it, it makes bad worse;

if you’re right, you may be a critic, but you can’t be a poet. And

then you know very well I don’t understand all those new words. But as

for that, I quite agree that consciences are much too tender in your

generation—schoolboys’ consciences, too! As my old friend the Canon says

of the Westminster students, “They’re all so pious.” It’s all Arnold’s

doing; he spoilt the public schools.’

‘My dear uncle,’ said I, ‘how can so venerable a sexagenarian utter so

juvenile a paradox? How often have I not heard you lament the idleness

and listlessness, the boorishness and vulgar tyranny, the brutish manners

alike, and minds——’

‘Ah!’ said my uncle, ‘I may have fallen in occasionally with the talk

of the day; but at seventy one begins to see clearer into the bottom

of one’s mind. In middle life one says so many things in the way of

business. Not that I mean that the old schools were perfect, any more

than we old boys that were there. But whatever else they were or did,

they certainly were in harmony with the world, and they certainly did not

disqualify the country’s youth for after-life and the country’s service.’

‘But, my dear sir, this bringing the schools of the country into harmony

with public opinion is exactly——’

‘Don’t interrupt me with public opinion, my dear nephew; you’ll quote me

a leading article next. “Young men must be young men,” as the worthy head

of your college said to me touching a case of rustication. “My dear sir,”

said I, “I only wish to heaven they would be; but as for my own nephews,

they seem to me a sort of hobbadi-hoy cherub, too big to be innocent, and

too simple for anything else. They’re full of the notion of the world

being so wicked and of their taking a higher line, as they call it. I

only fear they’ll never take any line at all.” What is the true purpose

of education? Simply to make plain to the young understanding the laws

of the life they will have to enter. For example—that lying won’t do,

thieving still less; that idleness will get punished; that if they are

cowards, the whole world will be against them; that if they will have

their own way, they must fight for it. As for the conscience, mamma, I

take it—such as mammas are now-a-days, at any rate—has probably set that

agoing fast enough already. What a blessing to see her good little child

come back a brave young devil-may-care!’

‘Exactly, my dear sir. As if at twelve or fourteen a roundabout boy, with

his three meals a day inside him, is likely to be over-troubled with

scruples.’

‘Put him through a strong course of confirmation and sacraments, backed

up with sermons and private admonitions, and what is much the same as

auricular confession, and really, my dear nephew, I can’t answer for it

but he mayn’t turn out as great a goose as you—pardon me—_were_ about the

age of eighteen or nineteen.’

‘But to have passed _through_ that, my dear sir! surely that can be no

harm.’

‘I don’t know. Your constitutions don’t seem to recover it, quite. We did

without these foolish measles well enough in my time.’

‘Westminster had its Cowper, my dear sir; and other schools had theirs

also, mute and inglorious, but surely not few.’

‘Ah, ah! the beginning of troubles——’

‘You see, my dear sir, you must not refer it to Arnold, at all at all.

Anything that Arnold did in this direction——’

‘Why, my dear boy, how often have I not heard from you, how he used to

attack offences, not as offences—the right view—against discipline, but

as sin, heinous guilt, I don’t know what beside! Why didn’t he flog them

and hold his tongue? Flog them he did, but why preach?’

‘If he did err in this way, sir, which I hardly think, I ascribe it to

the spirit of the time. The real cause of the evil you complain of, which

to a certain extent I admit, was, I take it, the religious movement of

the last century, beginning with Wesleyanism, and culminating at last in

Puseyism. This over-excitation of the religious sense, resulting in this

irrational, almost animal irritability of consciences, was, in many ways,

as foreign to Arnold as it is proper to——’

‘Well, well, my dear nephew, if you like to make a theory of it, pray

write it out for yourself nicely in full; but your poor old uncle does

not like theories, and is moreover sadly sleepy.’

‘Good night, dear uncle, good night. Only let me say you six more

verses.’

_DIPSYCHUS CONTINUED._

A FRAGMENT.

[_An interval of thirty years._]

SCENE I.—_In London. Dipsychus in his Study._

_Dipsychus._ O God! O God! and must I still go on

Doing this work—I know not, hell’s or thine;

And these rewards receiving—sure not thine;

The adulation of a foolish crowd,

Half foolish and half greedy; upright judge—

Lawyer acute—the Mansfield and the Hale

In one united to bless modern Courts.

O God! O God! According to the law,

With solemn face to solemn sentence fit,

Doing the justice that is but half just;

Punishing wrong that is not truly wrong!

Administering, alas, God! not Thy law.

(_Knock at the door._)

What? Is the hour already for the Court?

Come in. Now, Lord Chief Justice, to thy work.

(_Enter a Servant._)

_Serv._ My lord, a woman begging to be seen.

_Di._ A woman begging to be seen? What’s this?

’Tis not the duty of your post, my friend,

To give admittance on the busy days

Of a hard labourer in this great world

To all poor creatures begging to be seen.

Something unusual in it? Bid her wait

In the room below, I’ll see her as I pass.

Is the horse there?

_Serv._ He’s coming round, my lord.

_Di._ Say I will see her as I pass. (_Exit Servant._)

I have but one way left; but that one way,

On which once entered, there is no return;

And as there’s no return, no looking back,

Amidst the smoky tumult of this field

Whereon, enlisted once, in arms we stand,

Nor know, nor e’en remotely can divine

The sense, or purport, or the probable end,

One only guide to our blind work we keep,

To obey orders, and to fight it out.

Some hapless sad petitioner, no doubt,

With the true plaintiveness of real distress,

Twisting her misery to a marketable lie,

To waste my close-shorn interval of rest.

_She_ came upon me in my weaker thoughts,

Those weaker thoughts that still indeed recur,

But come, my servants, at a word to go.

(_Enter Woman._)

What is it? what have you to say to me?

Who are you?

_Wom._ Once you knew me well enough.

_Di._ Oh, you! I had been told that you were dead.

_Wom._ So your creatures said;

But I shall live, I think, till you die too.

_Di._ What do you want? Money, subsistence, bread?

_Wom._ I wanted bread, money, all things, ’tis true,

But wanted, above all things, to see you.

_Di._ This cannot be. What has been done is o’er.

You have no claim or right against me more;

I have dealt justly with you to the uttermost.

_Wom._ I did not come to say you were unjust—

I came to see you only.

_Di._ Hear me now.

Remember, it was not the marriage vow,

Nor promise e’er of chaste fidelity,

That joined us thirty years ago in a tie

Which I, I think, scarce sought. It was not I

That took your innocence; you spoiled me of mine.

And yet, as though the vow had been divine,

Was I not faithful? Were you so to me?

Had you been white in spotless purity,

Could I have clung to you more faithfully?

I left you, after wrongs I blush with shame

E’en now through all my fifty years to name.

I left you; yet I stinted still my ease,—

Curtailed my pleasures—toil still extra toil,—

To repay you for what you never gave.

Is it not true?

_Wom._ Go on, say all and more.

Upon this body, as the basis, lies

The ladder that has raised you to the skies.

_Di._ Is that so much? am I indeed so high?

Am I not rather

The slave and servant of the wretched world,

Liveried and finely dressed—yet all the same

A menial and lacquey seeking place

For hire, and for his hire’s sake doing work?

_Wom._ I do not know; you have wife and child I know

Domestic comfort and a noble name,

And people speak in my ears too your praise.

O man, O man! do you not know in your heart

It was for this you came to me—

It was for this I took you to my breast?

O man, man, man!

You come to us with your dalliance in the street,

You pay us with your miserable gold,

You do not know how in the——

_Di._ (_looks at his watch_). You must go now. Justice

calls me elsewhere;

Justice—might keep you here.

You may return again; stay, let me see—

Six weeks to-morrow you shall see me again;

Now you must go. Do you need money? here,

It is your due: take it, that you may live;

And see me, six weeks from to-morrow, elsewhere.

_Wom._ I will not go;

You must stay here and hear me, or I shall die!

It were ill for you that I should.

_Di._ What! shall the nation wait?

Woman, if I have wronged you, it was for good—

Good has come of it. Lo, I have done some work.

Over the blasted and the blackened spot

Of our unhappy and unhallowed deed

I have raised a mausoleum of such acts

As in this world do honour unto me,

But in the next to thee.

_Wom._ Hear me, I cannot go!

_Di._ It cannot be; the court, the nation waits.

Is not the work, too, yours?

_Wom._ I go, to die this night!

_Di._ I cannot help it. Duty lies here. Depart!

_Wom._ Listen; before I die, one word! In old times

You called me Pleasure—my name now is Guilt.

SCENE II.—_In Westminster Hall._

_1st Barrister._ They say the Lord Chief Justice is unwell;

Did you observe how, after that decision

Which all the world admired so, suddenly

He became pale and looked in the air and staggered,

As if some phantom floated on his eyes?

He is a strange man.

_Bar. 2._ He is unwell, there is no doubt of that,

But why or how is quite another question.

It is odd to find so stern and strong a man

Give way before he’s sixty. Many a mind,

Apparently less vigorous than his,

Has kept its full judicial faculty,

And sat the woolsack past threescore and ten.

_Bar. 3._ No business to be done to-day. Have you heard

The Chief Justice is lying dangerously ill?

Apoplexy, paralysis, Heaven knows what—some seizure.

_Bar. 1._ Heavens! that will be a loss indeed!

_Bar. 2._ A loss

Which will be some one’s gain, however.

_Bar. 1._ Not the nation’s,

If this sage Chancellor give it to ——

But is he really sure to die, do you think?

_Bar. 3._ A very sudden and very alarming attack.

And now you know to the full as much as I,

Or, as I fancy, any lawyer here.

_Bar. 2._ Do you know anything of his early life?

_Bar. 1._ My father knew him at college: a reading man,

The quietest of the quiet, shy and timid.

And college honours past,

No one believed he ever would do anything.

_Bar. 2._ He was a moral sort of prig, I’ve heard,

Till he was twenty-five; and even then

He never entered into life as most men.

That is the reason why he fails so soon.

It takes high feeding and a well-taught conscience

To breed your mighty hero of the law.

So much the worse for him; so much the better

For all expectants now.

_Bar. 3._ For ——, for one.

_Bar. 2._ Well, there’ll be several changes, as I think.

Not that I think the shock of new promotion

Will vibrate quite perceptibly down here.

There was a story that I once was told,

Some woman that they used to tease him with.

_Bar. 1._ He grew too stern for teasing before long;

A man with greater power of what I think

They call, in some new sense of the word, Repulsion,

I think I never saw in all my life.

_Bar. 2._ A most forbidding man in private life,

I’ve always heard. What’s this new news?

_Bar. 4._ The Lord Chief Justice has resigned.

_Bar. 1, 2, 3._ Is it true?

Really? Quite certain?

_Bar. 4._ Publicly announced.

You’re quite behind. Most probably ere this

The _Times_ has got it in a new edition.

SCENE III.—_Dipsychus in his own house, alone._

_Di._ She will come yet, I think, although she said

She would go hence and die; I cannot tell.

Should I have made the nation’s business wait,

That I might listen to an old sad tale

Uselessly iterated? Ah—ah me!

I am grown weak indeed; those old black thoughts

No more as servants at my bidding go,

But as stern tyrants look me in the face,

And mock my reason’s inefficient hand

That sways to wave them hence.

_Serv._ You rung, my lord?

_Di._ Come here, my friend. The woman,

A beggar-woman, whom six weeks ago,

As you remember, you admitted to me,

You may admit again if she returns. [_Exit Servant._

Will she return? or did she die? I searched

Newspaper columns through to find a trace

Of some poor corpse discovered in the Thames,

Weltering in filth or stranded on the shoals.

‘You called me Pleasure once, I now am Guilt.’

Is that her voice?—

‘Once Pleasure and now Guilt—and after this

Guilt evermore.’ I hear her voice again.

‘Once Guilt, but now’—I know not what it says;—

Some word in some strange language, that my ears

Have never heard, yet seem to long to know.

‘Once Pleasure and now Guilt, and after this’—

What does she say?—...

POEMS ON LIFE AND DUTY.

_DUTY._

Duty—that’s to say, complying

With whate’er’s expected here;

On your unknown cousin’s dying,

Straight be ready with the tear;

Upon etiquette relying,

Unto usage nought denying,

Lend your waist to be embraced,

Blush not even, never fear;

Claims of kith and kin connection,

Claims of manners honour still,

Ready money of affection

Pay, whoever drew the bill.

With the form conforming duly,

Senseless what it meaneth truly,

Go to church—the world require you,

To balls—the world require you too,

And marry—papa and mamma desire you,

And your sisters and schoolfellows do.

Duty—’tis to take on trust

What things are good, and right, and just;

And whether indeed they be or be not,

Try not, test not, feel not, see not:

’Tis walk and dance, sit down and rise

By leading, opening ne’er your eyes;

Stunt sturdy limbs that Nature gave,

And be drawn in a Bath chair along to the grave.

’Tis the stern and prompt suppressing

As an obvious deadly sin,

All the questing and the guessing

Of the soul’s own soul within:

’Tis the coward acquiescence

In a destiny’s behest,

To a shade by terror made,

Sacrificing, aye, the essence

Of all that’s truest, noblest, best:

’Tis the blind non-recognition

Or of goodness, truth, or beauty,

Save by precept and submission;

Moral blank, and moral void,

Life at very birth destroyed.

Atrophy, exinanition!

Duty!

Yea, by duty’s prime condition

Pure nonentity of duty!

_LIFE IS STRUGGLE._

To wear out heart, and nerves, and brain,

And give oneself a world of pain;

Be eager, angry, fierce, and hot,

Imperious, supple—God knows what,

For what’s all one to have or not;

O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!

For ’tis not joy, it is not gain,

It is not in itself a bliss,

Only it is precisely this

That keeps us all alive.

To say we truly feel the pain,

And quite are sinking with the strain;—

Entirely, simply, undeceived,

Believe, and say we ne’er believed

The object, e’en were it achieved,

A thing we e’er had cared to keep;

With heart and soul to hold it cheap,

And then to go and try it again;

O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!

O, ’tis not joy, and ’tis not bliss,

Only it is precisely this

That keeps us still alive.

_IN THE GREAT METROPOLIS._

Each for himself is still the rule;

We learn it when we go to school—

The devil take the hindmost, O!

And when the schoolboys grow to men,

In life they learn it o’er again—

The devil take the hindmost, O!

For in the church, and at the bar,

On ’Change, at court, where’er they are,

The devil takes the hindmost, O!

Husband for husband, wife for wife,

Are careful that in married life

The devil takes the hindmost, O!

From youth to age, whate’er the game,

The unvarying practice is the same—

The devil takes the hindmost, O!

And after death, we do not know,

But scarce can doubt, where’er we go,

The devil takes the hindmost, O!

Ti rol de rol, ti rol de ro,

The devil take the hindmost, O!

_THE LATEST DECALOGUE._

Thou shalt have one God only; who

Would be at the expense of two?

No graven images may be

Worshipped, except the currency:

Swear not at all; for, for thy curse

Thine enemy is none the worse:

At church on Sunday to attend

Will serve to keep the world thy friend:

Honour thy parents; that is, all

From whom advancement may befall;

Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive

Officiously to keep alive:

Do not adultery commit;

Advantage rarely comes of it:

Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,

When it’s so lucrative to cheat:

Bear not false witness; let the lie

Have time on its own wings to fly:

Thou shalt not covet, but tradition

Approves all forms of competition.

_THE QUESTIONING SPIRIT._

The human spirits saw I on a day,

Sitting and looking each a different way;

And hardly tasking, subtly questioning,

Another spirit went around the ring

To each and each: and as he ceased his say,

Each after each, I heard them singly sing,

Some querulously high, some softly, sadly low,

We know not—what avails to know?

We know not—wherefore need we know?

This answer gave they still unto his suing,

We know not, let us do as we are doing.

Dost thou not know that these things only seem?—

I know not, let me dream my dream.

Are dust and ashes fit to make a treasure?—

I know not, let me take my pleasure.

What shall avail the knowledge thou hast sought?—

I know not, let me think my thought.

What is the end of strife?—

I know not, let me live my life.

How many days or e’er thou mean’st to move?—

I know not, let me love my love.

Were not things old once new?—

I know not, let me do as others do.

And when the rest were over past,

I know not, I will do my duty, said the last.

Thy duty do? rejoined the voice,

Ah, do it, do it, and rejoice;

But shalt thou then, when all is done,

Enjoy a love, embrace a beauty

Like these, that may be seen and won

In life, whose course will then be run;

Or wilt thou be where there is none?

I know not, I will do my duty.

And taking up the word around, above, below,

Some querulously high, some softly, sadly low,

We know not, sang they all, nor ever need we know;

We know not, sang they, what avails to know?

Whereat the questioning spirit, some short space,

Though unabashed, stood quiet in his place.

But as the echoing chorus died away

And to their dreams the rest returned apace,

By the one spirit I saw him kneeling low,

And in a silvery whisper heard him say:

Truly, thou know’st not, and thou need’st not know;

Hope only, hope thou, and believe alway;

I also know not, and I need not know,

Only with questionings pass I to and fro,

Perplexing these that sleep, and in their folly

Imbreeding doubt and sceptic melancholy;

Till that, their dreams deserting, they with me

Come all to this true ignorance and thee.

1847

_BETHESDA._

A SEQUEL.

I saw again the spirits on a day,

Where on the earth in mournful case they lay;

Five porches were there, and a pool, and round,

Huddling in blankets, strewn upon the ground,

Tied-up and bandaged, weary, sore and spent,

The maimed and halt, diseased and impotent.

For a great angel came, ’twas said, and stirred

The pool at certain seasons, and the word

Was, with this people of the sick, that they

Who in the waters here their limbs should lay

Before the motion on the surface ceased

Should of their torment straightway be released.

So with shrunk bodies and with heads down-dropt,

Stretched on the steps, and at the pillars propt,

Watching by day and listening through the night,

They filled the place, a miserable sight.

And I beheld that on the stony floor

He too, that spoke of duty once before,

No otherwise than others here to-day,

Foredone and sick and sadly muttering lay.

‘I know not, I will do—what is it I would say?

What was that word which once sufficed alone for all,

Which now I seek in vain, and never can recall?’

And then, as weary of in vain renewing

His question, thus his mournful thought pursuing,

‘I know not, I must do as other men are doing.’

But what the waters of that pool might be,

Of Lethe were they, or Philosophy;

And whether he, long waiting, did attain

Deliverance from the burden of his pain

There with the rest; or whether, yet before,

Some more diviner stranger passed the door

With his small company into that sad place,

And breathing hope into the sick man’s face,

Bade him take up his bed, and rise and go,

What the end were, and whether it were so,

Further than this I saw not, neither know.

1849

_HOPE EVERMORE AND BELIEVE!_

Hope evermore and believe, O man, for e’en as thy thought

So are the things that thou see’st; e’en as thy hope and belief.

Cowardly art thou and timid? they rise to provoke thee against them;

Hast thou courage? enough, see them exulting to yield.

Yea, the rough rock, the dull earth, the wild sea’s furying waters

(Violent say’st thou and hard, mighty thou think’st to destroy),

All with ineffable longing are waiting their Invader,

All, with one varying voice, call to him, Come and subdue;

Still for their Conqueror call, and, but for the joy of being conquered

(Rapture they will not forego), dare to resist and rebel;

Still, when resisting and raging, in soft undervoice say unto him,

Fear not, retire not, O man; hope evermore and believe.

Go from the east to the west, as the sun and the stars direct thee,

Go with the girdle of man, go and encompass the earth.

Not for the gain of the gold; for the getting, the hoarding, the having,

But for the joy of the deed; but for the Duty to do.

Go with the spiritual life, the higher volition and action,

With the great girdle of God, go and encompass the earth.

Go; say not in thy heart, And what then were it accomplished,

Were the wild impulse allayed, what were the use or the good!

Go, when the instinct is stilled, and when the deed is accomplished,

What thou hast done and shalt do, shall be declared to thee then.

Go with the sun and the stars, and yet evermore in thy spirit

Say to thyself: It is good: yet is there better than it.

This that I see is not all, and this that I do is but little;

Nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it.

_BLESSED ARE THEY THAT HAVE NOT SEEN!_

O happy they whose hearts receive

The implanted word with faith; believe

Because their fathers did before,

Because they learnt, and ask no more.

High triumphs of convictions wrought,

And won by individual thought;

The joy, delusive oft, but keen,

Of having with our own eyes seen,

What if they have not felt nor known

An amplitude instead they own,

By no self-binding ordinance prest

To toil in labour they detest:

By no deceiving reasoning tied

Or this or that way to decide.

O happy they! above their head

The glory of the unseen is spread;

Their happy heart is free to range

Thro’ largest tracts of pleasant change;

Their intellects encradled lie

In boundless possibility.

For impulses of varying kinds

The Ancient Home a lodging finds:

Each appetite our nature breeds,

It meets with viands for its needs.

Oh happy they! nor need they fear

The wordy strife that rages near:

All reason wastes by day, and more,

Will instinct in a night restore.

O happy, so their state but give

A clue by which a man can live;

O blest, unless ’tis proved by fact

A dream impossible to act.

_COLD COMFORT._

Say, will it, when our hairs are grey,

And wintry suns half light the day,

Which cheering hope and strengthening trust

Have left, departed, turned to dust,—

Say, will it soothe lone years to extract

From fitful shows with sense exact

Their sad residuum, small, of fact?

Will trembling nerves their solace find

In plain conclusions of the mind?

Or errant fancies fond, that still

To fretful motions prompt the will,

Repose upon effect and cause,

And action of unvarying laws,

And human life’s familiar doom,

And on the all-concluding tomb?

Or were it to our kind and race,

And our instructive selves, disgrace

To wander then once more in you,

Green fields, beneath the pleasant blue;

To dream as we were used to dream,

And let things be whate’er they seem?

O feeble shapes of beggars grey

That, tottering on the public way,

Die out in doting, dim decay,

Is it to you when all is past

Our would-be wisdom turns at last?

_SEHNSUCHT._

Whence are ye, vague desires,

Which carry men along,

However proud and strong;

Which, having ruled to-day,

To-morrow pass away?

Whence are ye, vague desires?

Whence are ye?

Which women, yielding to,

Find still so good and true;

So true, so good to-day,

To-morrow gone away,

Whence are ye, vague desires?

Whence are ye?

From seats of bliss above,

Where angels sing of love;

From subtle airs around,

Or from the vulgar ground,

Whence are ye, vague desires?

Whence are ye?

A message from the blest,

Or bodily unrest;

A call to heavenly good,

A fever in the blood:

What are ye, vague desires?

What are ye?

Which men who know you best

Are proof against the least,

And rushing on to-day,

To-morrow cast away.

What are ye, vague desires?

What are ye?

Which women, ever new,

Still warned, surrender to;

Adored with you to-day,

Then cast with you away,

What are ye, vague desires?

What are ye?

Which unto boyhood’s heart

The force of man impart,

And pass, and leave it cold,

And prematurely old,

What are ye, vague desires?

What are ye?

Which, tremblingly confest,

Pour in the young girl’s breast

Joy, joy—the like is none,

And leave her then undone—

What are ye, vague desires?

What are ye?

Ah yet! though man be marred,

Ignoble made, and hard;

Though broken women lie

In anguish down to die;

Ah yet! ye vague desires,

Ah yet!

By Him who gave you birth,

And blended you with earth,

Was some good end designed

For man and womankind;

Ah yet! ye vague desires,

Ah yet!

The petals of to-day,

To-morrow fallen away,

Shall something leave instead,

To live when they are dead;

When you, ye vague desires,

Have vanished;

A something to survive,

Of you though it derive

Apparent earthly birth,

But of far other worth

Than you, ye vague desires,

Than you.

_HIGH AND LOW._

The grasses green of sweet content

That spring, no matter high or low,

Where’er a living thing can grow,

On chilly hills and rocky rent,

And by the lowly streamlet’s side—

Oh! why did e’er I turn from these?—

The lordly, tall, umbrageous trees,

That stand in high aspiring pride,

With massive bulk on high sustain

A world of boughs with leaf and fruits,

And drive their wide-extending roots

Deep down into the subject plain.

Oh, what with these had I to do?—

That germs of things above their kind

May live, pent up and close confined

In humbler forms, it may be true;

Yet great is that which gives our lot;

High laws and powers our will transcend

And not for this, till time do end,

Shall any be what he is not.

Each in its place, as each was sent,

Just nature ranges side by side;

Alike the oak tree’s lofty pride

And grasses green of sweet content.

_ALL IS WELL._

Whate’er you dream with doubt possest,

Keep, keep it snug within your breast,

And lay you down and take your rest;

Forget in sleep the doubt and pain,

And when you wake, to work again.

The wind it blows, the vessel goes,

And where and whither, no one knows.

’Twill all be well: no need of care;

Though how it will, and when, and where,

We cannot see, and can’t declare.

In spite of dreams, in spite of thought,

’Tis not in vain, and not for nought,

The wind it blows, the ship it goes,

Though where and whither, no one knows.

_πάντα ῥεῖ· οὐδὲν μένει._

Upon the water, in the boat,

I sit and sketch as down I float:

The stream is wide, the view is fair,

I sketch it looking backward there.

The stream is strong, and as I sit

And view the picture that we quit,

It flows and flows, and bears the boat,

And I sit sketching as we float.

Each pointed height, each wavy line,

To new and other forms combine;

Proportions vary, colours fade,

And all the landscape is remade.

Depicted neither far nor near,

And larger there and smaller here,

And varying down from old to new,

E’en I can hardly think it true.

Yet still I look, and still I sit,

Adjusting, shaping, altering it;

And still the current bears the boat

And me, still sketching as I float.

Still as I sit, with something new

The foreground intercepts my view;

Even the distant mountain range

From the first moment suffers change.

_THE STREAM OF LIFE._

O stream descending to the sea,

Thy mossy banks between,

The flow’rets blow, the grasses grow,

The leafy trees are green.

In garden plots the children play,

The fields the labourers till,

And houses stand on either hand,

And thou descendest still.

O life descending into death,

Our waking eyes behold,

Parent and friend thy lapse attend,

Companions young and old.

Strong purposes our mind possess,

Our hearts affections fill,

We toil and earn, we seek and learn,

And thou descendest still.

O end to which our currents tend,

Inevitable sea,

To which we flow, what do we know,

What shall we guess of thee?

A roar we hear upon thy shore,

As we our course fulfil;

Scarce we divine a sun will shine

And be above us still.

_IN A LONDON SQUARE._

Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane,

East wind and frost are safely gone;

With zephyr mild and balmy rain

The summer comes serenely on;

Earth, air, and sun and skies combine

To promise all that’s kind and fair:—

But thou, O human heart of mine,

Be still, contain thyself, and bear.

December days were brief and chill,

The winds of March were wild and drear,

And, nearing and receding still,

Spring never would, we thought, be here.

The leaves that burst, the suns that shine,

Had, not the less, their certain date:—

And thou, O human heart of mine,

Be still, refrain thyself, and wait.

THE BOTHIE OF TOBER-NA-VUOLICH: A LONG-VACATION PASTORAL.

_Nunc formosissimus annus_

_Ite meæ felix quondam pecus, ite camenæ._

_THE BOTHIE OF TOBER-NA-VUOLICH._

I

_Socii cratera coronant._

It was the afternoon; and the sports were now at the ending.

Long had the stone been put, tree cast, and thrown the hammer;

Up the perpendicular hill, Sir Hector so called it,

Eight stout gillies had run, with speed and agility wondrous;

Run too the course on the level had been; the leaping was over:

Last in the show of dress, a novelty recently added,

Noble ladies their prizes adjudged for costume that was perfect,

Turning the clansmen about, as they stood with upraised elbows;

Bowing their eye-glassed brows, and fingering kilt and sporran.

It was four of the clock, and the sports were come to the ending,

Therefore the Oxford party went off to adorn for the dinner.

Be it recorded in song who was first, who last, in dressing.

Hope was first, black-tied, white-waistcoated, simple, His Honour;

For the postman made out he was heir to the earldom of Ilay

(Being the younger son of the younger brother, the Colonel),

Treated him therefore with special respect; doffed bonnet, and ever

Called him His Honour: His Honour he therefore was at the cottage;

Always His Honour at least, sometimes the Viscount of Ilay.

Hope was first, His Honour, and next to His Honour the Tutor.

Still more plain the Tutor, the grave man, nicknamed Adam,

White-tied, clerical, silent, with antique square-cut waistcoat

Formal, unchanged, of black cloth, but with sense and feeling beneath it;

Skilful in Ethics and Logic, in Pindar and Poets unrivalled;

_Shady_ in Latin, said Lindsay, but _topping_ in Plays and Aldrich.

Somewhat more splendid in dress, in a waistcoat work of a lady,

Lindsay succeeded; the lively, the cheery, cigar-loving Lindsay,

Lindsay the ready of speech, the Piper, the Dialectician,

This was his title from Adam because of the words he invented,

Who in three weeks had created a dialect new for the party;

This was his title from Adam, but mostly they called him the Piper.

Lindsay succeeded, the lively, the cheery, cigar-loving Lindsay.

Hewson and Hobbes were down at the _matutine_ bathing; of course too

Arthur, the bather of bathers, _par excellence_, Audley by surname,

Arthur they called him for love and for euphony; they had been bathing,

Where in the morning was custom, where over a ledge of granite

Into a granite basin the amber torrent descended,

Only a step from the cottage, the road and larches between them.

Hewson and Hobbes followed quick upon Adam; on them followed Arthur.

Airlie descended the last, effulgent as god of Olympus;

Blue, perceptibly blue, was the coat that had white silk facings,

Waistcoat blue, coral-buttoned, the white tie finely adjusted,

Coral moreover the studs on a shirt as of crochet of women:

When the fourwheel for ten minutes already had stood at the gateway,

He, like a god, came leaving his ample Olympian chamber.

And in the fourwheel they drove to the place of the clansmen’s meeting.

So in the fourwheel they came; and Donald the innkeeper showed them

Up to the barn where the dinner should be. Four tables were in it;

Two at the top and the bottom, a little upraised from the level,

These for Chairman and Croupier, and gentry fit to be with them,

Two lengthways in the midst for keeper and gillie and peasant.

Here were clansmen many in kilt and bonnet assembled,

Keepers a dozen at least; the Marquis’s targeted gillies;

Pipers five or six, among them the young one, the drunkard;

Many with silver brooches, and some with those brilliant crystals

Found amid granite-dust on the frosty scalp of the Cairn-Gorm;

But with snuff-boxes all, and all of them using the boxes.

Here too were Catholic Priest, and Established Minister standing

Catholic Priest; for many still clung to the Ancient Worship,

And Sir Hector’s father himself had built them a chapel;

So stood Priest and Minister, near to each other, but silent,

One to say grace before, the other after the dinner.

Hither anon too came the shrewd, ever-ciphering Factor,

Hither anon the Attaché, the Guardsman mute and stately,

Hither from lodge and bothie in all the adjoining shootings

Members of Parliament many, forgetful of votes and bluebooks,

Here, amid heathery hills, upon beast and bird of the forest

Venting the murderous spleen of the endless Railway Committee.

Hither the Marquis of Ayr, and Dalgarnish Earl and Croupier,

And at their side, amid murmurs of welcome, long looked-for, himself too

Eager, the grey, but boy-hearted Sir Hector, the Chief and the Chairman.

Then was the dinner served, and the Minister prayed for a blessing,

And to the viands before them with knife and with fork they beset them:

Venison, the red and the roe, with mutton; and grouse succeeding;

Such was the feast, with whisky of course, and at top and bottom

Small decanters of sherry, not overchoice, for the gentry.

So to the viands before them with laughter and chat they beset them.

And, when on flesh and on fowl had appetite duly been sated,

Up rose the Catholic Priest and returned God thanks for the dinner.

Then on all tables were set black bottles of well-mixed toddy,

And, with the bottles and glasses before them, they sat, digesting,

Talking, enjoying, but chiefly awaiting the toasts and speeches.

Spare me, O great Recollection! for words to the task were unequal,

Spare me, O mistress of Song! nor bid me remember minutely

All that was said and done o’er the well-mixed tempting toddy;

How were healths proposed and drunk ‘with all the honours,’

Glasses and bonnets waving, and three-times-three thrice over,

Queen, and Prince, and Army, and Landlords all, and Keepers;

Bid me not, grammar defying, repeat from grammar-defiers

Long constructions strange and plusquam-Thucydidean;

Tell how, as sudden torrent in time of speat[7] in the mountain

Hurries six ways at once, and takes at last to the roughest,

Or as the practised rider at Astley’s or Franconi’s

Skilfully, boldly bestrides many steeds at once in the gallop,

Crossing from this to that, with one leg here, one yonder,

So, less skilful, but equally bold, and wild as the torrent,

All through sentences six at a time, unsuspecting of syntax,

Hurried the lively good-will and garrulous tale of Sir Hector.

Left to oblivion be it, the memory, faithful as ever,

How the Marquis of Ayr, with wonderful gesticulation,

Floundering on through game and mess-room recollections,

Gossip of neighbouring forest, praise of targeted gillies,

Anticipation of royal visit, skits at pedestrians,

Swore he would never abandon his country, nor give up deer-stalking;

How, too, more brief, and plainer, in spite of the Gaelic accent,

Highland peasants gave courteous answer to flattering nobles.

Two orations alone the memorial song will render;

For at the banquet’s close spake thus the lively Sir Hector,

Somewhat husky with praises exuberant, often repeated,

Pleasant to him and to them, of the gallant Highland soldiers

Whom he erst led in the fight;—something husky, but ready, though weary,

Up to them rose and spoke the grey but gladsome chieftain:—

Fill up your glasses, my friends, once more,—With all the honours!

There was a toast I forgot, which our gallant Highland homes have

Always welcomed the stranger, delighted, I may say, to see such

Fine young men at my table—My friends! are you ready? the Strangers.

Gentlemen, here are your healths,—and I wish you—With all the honours!

So he said, and the cheers ensued, and all the honours,

All our Collegians were bowed to, the Attaché detecting His Honour,

Guardsman moving to Arthur, and Marquis sidling to Airlie,

And the small Piper below getting up and nodding to Lindsay.

But, while the healths were being drunk, was much tribulation and

trouble,

Nodding and beckoning across, observed of Attaché and Guardsman:

Adam wouldn’t speak,—indeed it was certain he couldn’t;

Hewson could, and would if they wished; Philip Hewson a poet,

Hewson a radical hot, hating lords and scorning ladies,

Silent mostly, but often reviling in fire and fury

Feudal tenures, mercantile lords, competition and bishops,

Liveries, armorial bearings, amongst other matters the Game-laws:

He could speak, and was asked to by Adam; but Lindsay aloud cried,

(Whisky was hot in his brain,) Confound it, no, not Hewson,

Ain’t he cock-sure to bring in his eternal political humbug?

However, so it must be, and after due pause of silence,

Waving his hand to Lindsay, and smiling oddly to Adam,

Up to them rose and spoke the poet and radical Hewson:—

I am, I think, perhaps the most perfect stranger present.

I have not, as have some of my friends, in my veins some tincture,

Some few ounces of Scottish blood; no, nothing like it.

I am therefore perhaps the fittest to answer and thank you.

So I thank you, sir, for myself and for my companions,

Heartily thank you all for this unexpected greeting,

All the more welcome, as showing you do not account us intruders,

Are not unwilling to see the north and the south forgather.

And, surely, seldom have Scotch and English more thoroughly mingled;

Scarcely with warmer hearts, and clearer feeling of manhood,

Even in tourney, and foray, and fray, and regular battle.

Where the life and the strength came out in the tug and tussle,

Scarcely, where man met man, and soul encountered with soul, as

Close as do the bodies and twining limbs of the wrestlers,

When for a final bout are a day’s two champions mated,—

In the grand old times of bows, and bills, and claymores,

At the old Flodden-field—or Bannockburn—or Culloden.

—(And he paused a moment, for breath, and because of some cheering,)

We are the better friends, I fancy, for that old fighting,

Better friends, inasmuch as we know each other the better,

We can now shake hands without pretending or shuffling.

On this passage followed a great tornado of cheering,

Tables were rapped, feet stamped, a glass or two got broken:

He, ere the cheers died wholly away, and while still there was stamping,

Added, in altered voice, with a smile, his doubtful conclusion.

I have, however, less claim than others perhaps to this honour,

For, let me say, I am neither game-keeper, nor game-preserver.

So he said, and sat down, but his satire had not been taken.

Only the _men_, who were all on their legs as concerned in the thanking,

Were a trifle confused, but mostly sat down without laughing;

Lindsay alone, close-facing the chair, shook his fist at the speaker.

Only a Liberal member, away at the end of the table,

Started, remembering sadly the cry of a coming election,

Only the Attaché glanced at the Guardsman, who twirled his moustachio,

Only the Marquis faced round, but, not quite clear of the meaning,

Joined with the joyous Sir Hector, who lustily beat on the table.

And soon after the chairman arose, and the feast was over:

Now should the barn be cleared and forthwith adorned for the dancing,

And, to make way for this purpose, the Tutor and pupils retiring

Were by the chieftain addressed and invited to come to the castle.

But ere the door-way they quitted, a thin man clad as the Saxon,

Trouser and cap and jacket of homespun blue, hand-woven,

Singled out, and said with determined accent, to Hewson,

Touching his arm: Young man, if ye pass through the Braes o’ Lochaber,

See by the loch-side ye come to the Bothie of Tober-na-vuolich.

II

_Et certamen erat, Corydon cum Thyrside, magnum._

Morn, in yellow and white, came broadening out from the mountains,

Long ere music and reel were hushed in the barn of the dancers.

Duly in _matutine_ bathed, before eight some two of the party,

Where in the morning was custom, where over a ledge of granite

Into a granite basin the amber torrent descended.

There two plunges each took Philip and Arthur together,

Duly in _matutine_ bathed, and read, and waited for breakfast:

Breakfast commencing at nine, lingered lazily on to noon-day.

Tea and coffee were there; a jug of water for Hewson;

Tea and coffee; and four cold grouse upon the sideboard;

Gaily they talked, as they sat, some late and lazy at breakfast,

Some professing a book, some smoking outside at the window.

By an aurora soft-pouring a still sheeny tide to the zenith,

Hewson and Arthur, with Adam, had walked and got home by eleven;

Hope and the others had stayed till the round sun lighted them bedward.

They of the lovely aurora, but these of the lovelier women

Spoke—of noble ladies and rustic girls, their partners.

Turned to them Hewson, the Chartist, the poet, the eloquent speaker.

Sick of the very names of your Lady Augustas and Floras

Am I, as ever I was of the dreary botanical titles

Of the exotic plants, their antitypes in the hot-house:

Roses, violets, lilies for me! the out-of-door beauties;

Meadow and woodland sweets, forget-me-nots and hearts-ease!

Pausing awhile, he proceeded anon, for none made answer.

Oh, if our high-born girls knew only the grace, the attraction.

Labour, and labour alone, can add to the beauty of women,

Truly the milliner’s trade would quickly, I think, be at discount,

All the waste and loss in silk and satin be saved us,

Saved for purposes truly and widely productive——

That’s right,

Take off your coat to it, Philip, cried Lindsay, outside in the garden,

Take off your coat to it, Philip.

Well, then, said Hewson, resuming;

Laugh if you please at my novel economy; listen to this, though;

As for myself, and apart from economy wholly, believe me,

Never I properly felt the relation between men and women,

Though to the dancing-master I went perforce, for a quarter,

Where, in dismal quadrille, were good-looking girls in abundance,

Though, too, school-girl cousins were mine—a bevy of beauties—

Never (of course you will laugh, but of course all the same I shall

say it),

Never, believe me, I knew of the feelings between men and women,

Till in some village fields in holidays now getting stupid,

One day sauntering ‘long and listless,’ as Tennyson has it,

Long and listless strolling, ungainly in hobbadiboyhood,

Chanced it my eye fell aside on a capless, bonnetless maiden,

Bending with three-pronged fork in a garden uprooting potatoes.

Was it the air? who can say? or herself, or the charm of the labour?

But a new thing was in me; and longing delicious possessed me,

Longing to take her and lift her, and put her away from her slaving.

Was it embracing or aiding was most in my mind? hard question!

But a new thing was in me; I, too, was a youth among maidens:

Was it the air I who can say! but in part ’twas the charm of the labour.

Still, though a new thing was in me, the poets revealed themselves to me,

And in my dreams by Miranda, her Ferdinand, often I wandered,

Though all the fuss about girls, the giggling and toying and coying,

Were not so strange as before, so incomprehensible purely;

Still, as before (and as now), balls, dances, and evening parties,

Shooting with bows, going shopping together, and hearing them singing,

Dangling beside them, and turning the leaves on the dreary piano,

Offering unneeded arms, performing dull farces of escort,

Seemed like a sort of unnatural up-in-the-air balloon-work

(Or what to me is as hateful, a riding about in a carriage),

Utter removal from work, mother earth, and the objects of living.

Hungry and fainting for food, you ask me to join you in snapping—

What but a pink-paper comfit, with motto romantic inside it?

Wishing to stock me a garden, I’m sent to a table of nosegays;

Better a crust of black bread than a mountain of paper confections,

Better a daisy in earth than a dahlia cut and gathered,

Better a cowslip with root than a prize carnation without it.

That I allow, said Adam.

But he, with the bit in his teeth, scarce

Breathed a brief moment, and hurried exultingly on with his rider,

Far over hillock, and runnel, and bramble, away in the champaign,

Snorting defiance and force, the white foam flecking his flanks, the

Rein hanging loose to his neck, and head projecting before him.

Oh, if they knew and considered, unhappy ones! oh, could they see,

could

But for a moment discern, how the blood of true gallantry kindles,

How the old knightly religion, the chivalry semi-quixotic

Stirs in the veins of a man at seeing some delicate woman

Serving him, toiling—for him, and the world; some tenderest girl, now

Over-weighted, expectant, of him, is it? who shall, if only

Duly her burden be lightened, not wholly removed from her, mind you

Lightened if but by the love, the devotion man only can offer,

Grand on her pedestal rise as urn-bearing statue of Hellas;—

Oh, could they feel at such moments how man’s heart, as into Eden

Carried anew, seems to see, like the gardener of earth uncorrupted,

Eve from the hand of her Maker advancing, an help meet for him,

Eve from his own flesh taken, a spirit restored to his spirit,

Spirit but not spirit only, himself whatever himself is,

Unto the mystery’s end sole helpmate meet to be with him;—

Oh, if they saw it and knew it; we soon should see them abandon

Boudoir, toilette, carriage, drawing-room, and ball-room,

Satin for worsted exchange, gros-de-naples for plain linsey-woolsey,

Sandals of silk for clogs, for health lackadaisical fancies!

So, feel women, not dolls; so feel the sap of existence

Circulate up through their roots from the far-away centre of all things.

Circulate up from the depths to the bud on the twig that is topmost!

Yes, we should see them delighted, delighted ourselves in the seeing,

Bending with blue cotton gown skirted up over striped linsey-woolsey,

Milking the kine in the field, like Rachel, watering cattle,

Rachel, when at the well the predestined beheld and kissed her,

Or, with pail upon head, like Dora beloved of Alexis,

Comely, with well-poised pail over neck arching soft to the shoulders,

Comely in gracefullest act, one arm uplifted to stay it,

Home from the river or pump moving stately and calm to the laundry;

Ay, doing household work, as many sweet girls I have looked at,

Needful household work, which some one, after all, must do,

Needful, graceful therefore, as washing, cooking, and scouring,

Or, if you please, with the fork in the garden uprooting potatoes.—

Or,—high-kilted perhaps, cried Lindsay, at last successful,

Lindsay this long time swelling with scorn and pent-up fury,

Or high-kilted perhaps, as once at Dundee I saw them,

Petticoats up to the knees, or even, it might be, above them,

Matching their lily-white legs with the clothes that they trod in the

wash-tub!

Laughter ensued at this; and seeing the Tutor embarrassed,

It was from them, I suppose, said Arthur, smiling sedately,

Lindsay learnt the tune we all have learnt from Lindsay,

_For oh, he was a roguey, the Piper o’ Dundee_.

Laughter ensued again; and the Tutor, recovering slowly,

Said, Are not these perhaps as doubtful as other attractions?

There is a truth in your view, but I think extremely distorted;

Still there is a truth, I own, I understand you entirely.

While the Tutor was gathering his purposes, Arthur continued,

Is not all this the same that one hears at common-room breakfasts,

Or perhaps Trinity wines, about Gothic buildings and Beauty?

And with a start from the sofa came Hobbes; with a cry from the sofa,

Where he was laid, the great Hobbes, contemplative, corpulent, witty,

Author forgotten and silent of currentest phrases and fancies,

Mute and exuberant by turns, a fountain at intervals playing,

Mute and abstracted, or strong and abundant as rain in the tropics;

Studious; careless of dress; inobservant; by smooth persuasions

Lately decoyed into kilt on example of Hope and the Piper,

Hope an Antinoüs mere, Hyperion of calves the Piper.

Beautiful! cried he up-leaping, analogy perfect to madness!

O inexhaustible source of thought, shall I call it, or fancy!

Wonderful spring, at whose touch doors fly, what a vista disclosing!

Exquisite germ; Ah no, crude fingers shall not soil thee;

Rest, lovely pearl, in my brain, and slowly mature in the oyster.

While at the exquisite pearl they were laughing and corpulent oyster,

Ah, could they only be taught, he resumed, by a Pugin of women,

How even churning and washing, the dairy, the scullery duties,

Wait but a touch to redeem and convert them to charms and attractions,

Scrubbing requires for true grace but frank and artistical handling,

And the removal of slops to be ornamentally treated.

Philip who speaks like a book, (retiring and pausing he added,)

Philip, here, who speaks—like a folio say’st thou, Piper?

Philip shall write us a book, a Treatise upon _The Laws of_

_Architectural Beauty in Application to Women_;

Illustrations, of course, and a Parker’s Glossary pendent.

Where shall in specimen seen be the sculliony stumpy-columnar

(Which to a reverent taste is perhaps the most moving of any),

Rising to grace of true woman in English the Early and Later,

Charming us still in fulfilling the Richer and Loftier stages,

Lost, ere we end, in the Lady-Debased and the Lady-Flamboyant:

Whence why in satire and spite too merciless onward pursue her

Hither to hideous close, Modern-Florid, modern-fine-lady?

No, I will leave it to you, my Philip, my Pugin of women.

Leave it to Arthur, said Adam, to think of, and not to play with.

You are young, you know, he said, resuming, to Philip,

You are young, he proceeded, with something of fervour to Hewson.

You are a boy; when you grow to a man you’ll find things alter.

You will then seek only the good, will scorn the attractive,

Scorn all mere cosmetics, as now of rank and fashion,

Delicate hands, and wealth, so then of poverty also,

Poverty truly attractive, more truly, I bear you witness.

Good, wherever it’s found, you will choose, be it humble or stately,

Happy if only you find, and finding do not lose it.

Yes, we must seek what is good, it always and it only;

Not indeed absolute good, good for us, as is said in the Ethics,

That which is good for ourselves, our proper selves, our best selves.

Ah, you have much to learn, we can’t know all things at twenty.

Partly you rest on truth, old truth, the duty of Duty,

Partly on error, you long for equality.

Ay, cried the Piper,

That’s what it is, that confounded _égalité_, French manufacture,

He is the same as the Chartist who spoke at a meeting in Ireland,

_What, and is not one man, fellow-men, as good as another?_

_Faith_, replied Pat, _and a deal better too_!

So rattled the Piper:

But undisturbed in his tenor, the Tutor.

Partly in error

Seeking equality, _is not one woman as good as another_?

I with the Irishman answer, _Yes, better too_; the poorer

Better full oft than richer, than loftier better the lower,

Irrespective of wealth and of poverty, pain and enjoyment,

Women all have their duties, the one as well as the other;

Are all duties alike? Do all alike fulfil them?

However noble the dream of equality, mark you, Philip,

Nowhere equality reigns in all the world of creation,

Star is not equal to star, nor blossom the same as blossom;

Herb is not equal to herb, any more than planet to planet.

There is a glory of daisies, a glory again of carnations;

Were the carnation wise, in gay parterre by greenhouse,

Should it decline to accept the nurture the gardener gives it,

Should it refuse to expand to sun and genial summer,

Simply because the field-daisy that grows in the grass-plat beside it,

Cannot, for some cause or other, develop and be a carnation?

Would not the daisy itself petition its scrupulous neighbour?

Up, grow, bloom, and forget me; be beautiful even to proudness,

E’en for the sake of myself and other poor daisies like me.

Education and manners, accomplishments and refinements,

Waltz, peradventure, and polka, the knowledge of music and drawing

All these things are Nature’s, to Nature dear and precious,

We have all something to do, man, woman alike, I own it;

We all have something to do, and in my judgment should do it

In our station; not thinking about it, but not disregarding;

Holding it, not for enjoyment, but simply because we are in it.

Ah! replied Philip, Alas! the noted phrase of the Prayer-book,

_Doing our duty in that state of life to which God has called us_,

Seems to me always to mean, when the little rich boys say it,

Standing in velvet frock by mamma’s brocaded flounces,

Eyeing her gold-fastened book and the watch and chain at her bosom,

Seems to me always to mean, Eat, drink, and never mind others.

Nay, replied Adam, smiling, so far your economy leads me,

Velvet and gold and brocade are nowise to my fancy.

Nay, he added, believe me, I like luxurious living

Even as little as you, and grieve in my soul not seldom,

More for the rich indeed than the poor, who are not so guilty.

So the discussion closed; and, said Arthur, Now it is my turn,

How will my argument please you? To-morrow we start on our travel.

And took up Hope the chorus,

To-morrow we start on our travel.

Lo, the weather is golden, the weather-glass, say they, rising;

Four weeks here have we read; four weeks will we read hereafter;

Three weeks hence will return and think of classes and classics.

Fare ye well, meantime, forgotten, unnamed, undreamt of,

History, Science, and Poets! lo, deep in dustiest cupboard,

Thookydid, Oloros’ son, Halimoosian, here lieth buried!

Slumber in Liddell-and-Scott, O musical chaff of old Athens,

Dishes, and fishes, bird, beast, and sesquipedalian blackguard!

Sleep, weary ghosts, be at peace and abide in your lexicon-limbo!

Sleep, as in lava for ages your Herculanean kindred,

Sleep, for aught that I care, ‘the sleep that knows no waking,’

Æschylus, Sophocles, Homer, Herodotus, Pindar, and Plato.

Three weeks hence be it time to exhume our dreary classics.

And in the chorus joined Lindsay, the Piper, the Dialectician,

Three weeks hence we return to the _shop_ and the _wash-hand-stand basin_

(These are the Piper’s names for the bathing-place and the cottage).

Three weeks hence unbury _Thicksides_ and _hairy_ Aldrich.

But the Tutor inquired, the grave man, nick-named Adam,

Who are they that go, and when do they promise returning?

And a silence ensued, and the Tutor himself continued,

Airlie remains, I presume, he continued, and Hobbes and Hewson.

Answer was made him by Philip, the poet, the eloquent speaker:

Airlie remains, I presume, was the answer, and Hobbes, peradventure;

Tarry let Airlie May-fairly, and Hobbes, brief-kilted hero,

Tarry let Hobbes in kilt, and Airlie ‘abide in his breeches;’

Tarry let these, and read, four Pindars apiece an’ it like them!

Weary of reading am I, and weary of walks prescribed us;

Weary of Ethic and Logic, of Rhetoric yet more weary,

Eager to range over heather unfettered of gillie and marquis,

I will away with the rest, and bury my dismal classics.

And to the Tutor rejoining, Be mindful; you go up at Easter,

This was the answer returned by Philip, the Pugin of women.

Good are the Ethics I wis; good absolute, not for me, though;

Good, too, Logic, of course; in itself, but not in fine weather.

Three weeks hence, with the rain, to Prudence, Temperance, Justice,

Virtues Moral and Mental, with Latin prose included;

Three weeks hence we return to cares of classes and classics.

I will away with the rest, and bury my dismal classics.

But the Tutor inquired, the grave man, nick-named Adam,

Where do you mean to go, and whom do you mean to visit?

And he was answered by Hope, the Viscount, His Honour, of Ilay.

Kitcat, a Trinity _coach_, has a party at Drumnadrochet,

Up on the side of Loch Ness, in the beautiful valley of Urquhart;

Mainwaring says they will lodge us, and feed us, and give us a lift too

Only they talk ere long to remove to Glenmorison. Then at

Castleton, high in Braemar, strange home, with his earliest party,

Harrison, fresh from the schools, has James and Jones and Lauder.

Thirdly, a Cambridge man I know, Smith, a senior wrangler,

With a mathematical score hangs-out at Inverary.

Finally, too, from the kilt and the sofa said Hobbes in conclusion,

Finally, Philip must hunt for that home of the probable poacher,

Hid in the braes of Lochaber, the Bothie of _What-did-he-call-it_.

Hopeless of you and of us, of gillies and marquises hopeless,

Weary of Ethic and Logic, of Rhetoric yet more weary,

There shall he, smit by the charm of a lovely potato-uprooter,

Study the question of sex in the Bothie of _What-did-he-call-it_.

III

_Namque canebat uti——_