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+Transcribed from the 1909 Arthur L. Humphreys edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+
+
+
+THE
+SOUL OF MAN
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                  LONDON
+                            ARTHUR L. HUMPREYS
+                                   1900
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                           _Second Impression_
+
+
+
+
+THE SOUL OF MAN
+
+
+THE chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism
+is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that
+sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of
+things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody.  In fact, scarcely
+anyone at all escapes.
+
+Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like
+Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan;
+a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to
+keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to stand
+‘under the shelter of the wall,’ as Plato puts it, and so to realise the
+perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the
+incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world.  These, however, are
+exceptions.  The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and
+exaggerated altruism—are forced, indeed, so to spoil them.  They find
+themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous
+starvation.  It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all
+this.  The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s
+intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the
+function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with
+suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.  Accordingly, with
+admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very
+sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they
+see.  But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it.
+Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.
+
+They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the
+poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the
+poor.
+
+But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty.  The
+proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty
+will be impossible.  And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the
+carrying out of this aim.  Just as the worst slave-owners were those who
+were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system
+being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who
+contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the
+people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at
+last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem
+and know the life—educated men who live in the East End—coming forward
+and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of
+charity, benevolence, and the like.  They do so on the ground that such
+charity degrades and demoralises.  They are perfectly right.  Charity
+creates a multitude of sins.
+
+There is also this to be said.  It is immoral to use private property in
+order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of
+private property.  It is both immoral and unfair.
+
+Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered.  There will be no
+people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy,
+hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely
+repulsive surroundings.  The security of society will not depend, as it
+does now, on the state of the weather.  If a frost comes we shall not
+have a hundred thousand men out of work, tramping about the streets in a
+state of disgusting misery, or whining to their neighbours for alms, or
+crowding round the doors of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch
+of bread and a night’s unclean lodging.  Each member of the society will
+share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society, and if a
+frost comes no one will practically be anything the worse.
+
+Upon the other hand, Socialism itself will be of value simply because it
+will lead to Individualism.
+
+Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting
+private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for
+competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly
+healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of
+the community.  It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its
+proper environment.  But for the full development of Life to its highest
+mode of perfection, something more is needed.  What is needed is
+Individualism.  If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are
+Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political
+power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last
+state of man will be worse than the first.  At present, in consequence of
+the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to
+develop a certain very limited amount of Individualism.  They are either
+under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose the
+sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and gives them
+pleasure.  These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the
+men of culture—in a word, the real men, the men who have realised
+themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation.  Upon
+the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private
+property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation,
+are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is
+quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the
+peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want.  These are the poor,
+and amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or
+civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life.
+From their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity.
+But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor
+is in himself absolutely of no importance.  He is merely the
+infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes
+him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more
+obedient.
+
+Of course, it might be said that the Individualism generated under
+conditions of private property is not always, or even as a rule, of a
+fine or wonderful type, and that the poor, if they have not culture and
+charm, have still many virtues.  Both these statements would be quite
+true.  The possession of private property is very often extremely
+demoralising, and that is, of course, one of the reasons why Socialism
+wants to get rid of the institution.  In fact, property is really a
+nuisance.  Some years ago people went about the country saying that
+property has duties.  They said it so often and so tediously that, at
+last, the Church has begun to say it.  One hears it now from every
+pulpit.  It is perfectly true.  Property not merely has duties, but has
+so many duties that its possession to any large extent is a bore.  It
+involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless
+bother.  If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its
+duties make it unbearable.  In the interest of the rich we must get rid
+of it.  The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to
+be regretted.  We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity.
+Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never
+grateful.  They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and
+rebellious.  They are quite right to be so.  Charity they feel to be a
+ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental
+dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the
+sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives.  Why should they be
+grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table?  They should
+be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it.  As for being
+discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings
+and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute.  Disobedience, in
+the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue.  It is
+through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience
+and through rebellion.  Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty.
+But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting.  It
+is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.  For a town or
+country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral.  Man
+should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal.  He
+should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the
+rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing.  As for
+begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to
+beg.  No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and
+rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him.  He is
+at any rate a healthy protest.  As for the virtuous poor, one can pity
+them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.  They have made
+private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad
+pottage.  They must also be extraordinarily stupid.  I can quite
+understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit
+of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions
+to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life.  But it is
+almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous
+by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.
+
+However, the explanation is not really difficult to find.  It is simply
+this.  Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such
+a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really
+conscious of its own suffering.  They have to be told of it by other
+people, and they often entirely disbelieve them.  What is said by great
+employers of labour against agitators is unquestionably true.  Agitators
+are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some
+perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of
+discontent amongst them.  That is the reason why agitators are so
+absolutely necessary.  Without them, in our incomplete state, there would
+be no advance towards civilisation.  Slavery was put down in America, not
+in consequence of any action on the part of the slaves, or even any
+express desire on their part that they should be free.  It was put down
+entirely through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in
+Boston and elsewhere, who were not slaves themselves, nor owners of
+slaves, nor had anything to do with the question really.  It was,
+undoubtedly, the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began the
+whole thing.  And it is curious to note that from the slaves themselves
+they received, not merely very little assistance, but hardly any sympathy
+even; and when at the close of the war the slaves found themselves free,
+found themselves indeed so absolutely free that they were free to starve,
+many of them bitterly regretted the new state of things.  To the thinker,
+the most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that
+Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen, but that the starved
+peasant of the Vendée voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause
+of feudalism.
+
+It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do.  For while
+under the present system a very large number of people can lead lives of
+a certain amount of freedom and expression and happiness, under an
+industrial-barrack system, or a system of economic tyranny, nobody would
+be able to have any such freedom at all.  It is to be regretted that a
+portion of our community should be practically in slavery, but to propose
+to solve the problem by enslaving the entire community is childish.
+Every man must be left quite free to choose his own work.  No form of
+compulsion must be exercised over him.  If there is, his work will not be
+good for him, will not be good in itself, and will not be good for
+others.  And by work I simply mean activity of any kind.
+
+I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose that
+an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that each
+citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours.  Humanity has got
+beyond that stage, and reserves such a form of life for the people whom,
+in a very arbitrary manner, it chooses to call criminals.  But I confess
+that many of the socialistic views that I have come across seem to me to
+be tainted with ideas of authority, if not of actual compulsion.  Of
+course, authority and compulsion are out of the question.  All
+association must be quite voluntary.  It is only in voluntary
+associations that man is fine.
+
+But it may be asked how Individualism, which is now more or less
+dependent on the existence of private property for its development, will
+benefit by the abolition of such private property.  The answer is very
+simple.  It is true that, under existing conditions, a few men who have
+had private means of their own, such as Byron, Shelley, Browning, Victor
+Hugo, Baudelaire, and others, have been able to realise their personality
+more or less completely.  Not one of these men ever did a single day’s
+work for hire.  They were relieved from poverty.  They had an immense
+advantage.  The question is whether it would be for the good of
+Individualism that such an advantage should be taken away.  Let us
+suppose that it is taken away.  What happens then to Individualism?  How
+will it benefit?
+
+It will benefit in this way.  Under the new conditions Individualism will
+be far freer, far finer, and far more intensified than it is now.  I am
+not talking of the great imaginatively-realised Individualism of such
+poets as I have mentioned, but of the great actual Individualism latent
+and potential in mankind generally.  For the recognition of private
+property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a
+man with what he possesses.  It has led Individualism entirely astray.
+It has made gain not growth its aim.  So that man thought that the
+important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is
+to be.  The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what
+man is.  Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an
+Individualism that is false.  It has debarred one part of the community
+from being individual by starving them.  It has debarred the other part
+of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road,
+and encumbering them.  Indeed, so completely has man’s personality been
+absorbed by his possessions that the English law has always treated
+offences against a man’s property with far more severity than offences
+against his person, and property is still the test of complete
+citizenship.  The industry necessary for the making money is also very
+demoralising.  In a community like ours, where property confers immense
+distinction, social position, honour, respect, titles, and other pleasant
+things of the kind, man, being naturally ambitious, makes it his aim to
+accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and tediously accumulating
+it long after he has got far more than he wants, or can use, or enjoy, or
+perhaps even know of.  Man will kill himself by overwork in order to
+secure property, and really, considering the enormous advantages that
+property brings, one is hardly surprised.  One’s regret is that society
+should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a
+groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and
+fascinating, and delightful in him—in which, in fact, he misses the true
+pleasure and joy of living.  He is also, under existing conditions, very
+insecure.  An enormously wealthy merchant may be—often is—at every moment
+of his life at the mercy of things that are not under his control.  If
+the wind blows an extra point or so, or the weather suddenly changes, or
+some trivial thing happens, his ship may go down, his speculations may go
+wrong, and he finds himself a poor man, with his social position quite
+gone.  Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself.  Nothing
+should be able to rob a man at all.  What a man really has, is what is in
+him.  What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.
+
+With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true,
+beautiful, healthy Individualism.  Nobody will waste his life in
+accumulating things, and the symbols for things.  One will live.  To live
+is the rarest thing in the world.  Most people exist, that is all.
+
+It is a question whether we have ever seen the full expression of a
+personality, except on the imaginative plane of art.  In action, we never
+have.  Cæsar, says Mommsen, was the complete and perfect man.  But how
+tragically insecure was Cæsar!  Wherever there is a man who exercises
+authority, there is a man who resists authority.  Cæsar was very perfect,
+but his perfection travelled by too dangerous a road.  Marcus Aurelius
+was the perfect man, says Renan.  Yes; the great emperor was a perfect
+man.  But how intolerable were the endless claims upon him!  He staggered
+under the burden of the empire.  He was conscious how inadequate one man
+was to bear the weight of that Titan and too vast orb.  What I mean by a
+perfect man is one who develops under perfect conditions; one who is not
+wounded, or worried or maimed, or in danger.  Most personalities have
+been obliged to be rebels.  Half their strength has been wasted in
+friction.  Byron’s personality, for instance, was terribly wasted in its
+battle with the stupidity, and hypocrisy, and Philistinism of the
+English.  Such battles do not always intensify strength: they often
+exaggerate weakness.  Byron was never able to give us what he might have
+given us.  Shelley escaped better.  Like Byron, he got out of England as
+soon as possible.  But he was not so well known.  If the English had had
+any idea of what a great poet he really was, they would have fallen on
+him with tooth and nail, and made his life as unbearable to him as they
+possibly could.  But he was not a remarkable figure in society, and
+consequently he escaped, to a certain degree.  Still, even in Shelley the
+note of rebellion is sometimes too strong.  The note of the perfect
+personality is not rebellion, but peace.
+
+It will be a marvellous thing—the true personality of man—when we see it.
+It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows.  It
+will not be at discord.  It will never argue or dispute.  It will not
+prove things.  It will know everything.  And yet it will not busy itself
+about knowledge.  It will have wisdom.  Its value will not be measured by
+material things.  It will have nothing.  And yet it will have everything,
+and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be.
+It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like
+itself.  It will love them because they will be different.  And yet while
+it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing
+helps us, by being what it is.  The personality of man will be very
+wonderful.  It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.
+
+In its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if men desire
+that; but if men do not desire that, it will develop none the less
+surely.  For it will not worry itself about the past, nor care whether
+things happened or did not happen.  Nor will it admit any laws but its
+own laws; nor any authority but its own authority.  Yet it will love
+those who sought to intensify it, and speak often of them.  And of these
+Christ was one.
+
+‘Know thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world.  Over
+the portal of the new world, ‘Be thyself’ shall be written.  And the
+message of Christ to man was simply ‘Be thyself.’  That is the secret of
+Christ.
+
+When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as
+when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not
+developed their personalities.  Jesus moved in a community that allowed
+the accumulation of private property just as ours does, and the gospel
+that he preached was not that in such a community it is an advantage for
+a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear ragged, unwholesome
+clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwellings, and a disadvantage
+for a man to live under healthy, pleasant, and decent conditions.  Such a
+view would have been wrong there and then, and would, of course, be still
+more wrong now and in England; for as man moves northward the material
+necessities of life become of more vital importance, and our society is
+infinitely more complex, and displays far greater extremes of luxury and
+pauperism than any society of the antique world.  What Jesus meant, was
+this.  He said to man, ‘You have a wonderful personality.  Develop it.
+Be yourself.  Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or
+possessing external things.  Your affection is inside of you.  If only
+you could realise that, you would not want to be rich.  Ordinary riches
+can be stolen from a man.  Real riches cannot.  In the treasury-house of
+your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken
+from you.  And so, try to so shape your life that external things will
+not harm you.  And try also to get rid of personal property.  It involves
+sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong.  Personal
+property hinders Individualism at every step.’  It is to be noted that
+Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily good, or
+wealthy people necessarily bad.  That would not have been true.  Wealthy
+people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more moral, more
+intellectual, more well-behaved.  There is only one class in the
+community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the
+poor.  The poor can think of nothing else.  That is the misery of being
+poor.  What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not
+through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through
+what he is.  And so the wealthy young man who comes to Jesus is
+represented as a thoroughly good citizen, who has broken none of the laws
+of his state, none of the commandments of his religion.  He is quite
+respectable, in the ordinary sense of that extraordinary word.  Jesus
+says to him, ‘You should give up private property.  It hinders you from
+realising your perfection.  It is a drag upon you.  It is a burden.  Your
+personality does not need it.  It is within you, and not outside of you,
+that you will find what you really are, and what you really want.’  To
+his own friends he says the same thing.  He tells them to be themselves,
+and not to be always worrying about other things.  What do other things
+matter?  Man is complete in himself.  When they go into the world, the
+world will disagree with them.  That is inevitable.  The world hates
+Individualism.  But that is not to trouble them.  They are to be calm and
+self-centred.  If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their
+coat, just to show that material things are of no importance.  If people
+abuse them, they are not to answer back.  What does it signify?  The
+things people say of a man do not alter a man.  He is what he is.  Public
+opinion is of no value whatsoever.  Even if people employ actual
+violence, they are not to be violent in turn.  That would be to fall to
+the same low level.  After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free.
+His soul can be free.  His personality can be untroubled.  He can be at
+peace.  And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other
+people or judge them in any way.  Personality is a very mysterious thing.
+A man cannot always be estimated by what he does.  He may keep the law,
+and yet be worthless.  He may break the law, and yet be fine.  He may be
+bad, without ever doing anything bad.  He may commit a sin against
+society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.
+
+There was a woman who was taken in adultery.  We are not told the history
+of her love, but that love must have been very great; for Jesus said that
+her sins were forgiven her, not because she repented, but because her
+love was so intense and wonderful.  Later on, a short time before his
+death, as he sat at a feast, the woman came in and poured costly perfumes
+on his hair.  His friends tried to interfere with her, and said that it
+was an extravagance, and that the money that the perfume cost should have
+been expended on charitable relief of people in want, or something of
+that kind.  Jesus did not accept that view.  He pointed out that the
+material needs of Man were great and very permanent, but that the
+spiritual needs of Man were greater still, and that in one divine moment,
+and by selecting its own mode of expression, a personality might make
+itself perfect.  The world worships the woman, even now, as a saint.
+
+Yes; there are suggestive things in Individualism.  Socialism annihilates
+family life, for instance.  With the abolition of private property,
+marriage in its present form must disappear.  This is part of the
+programme.  Individualism accepts this and makes it fine.  It converts
+the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help
+the full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman
+more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling.  Jesus knew this.  He
+rejected the claims of family life, although they existed in his day and
+community in a very marked form.  ‘Who is my mother?  Who are my
+brothers?’ he said, when he was told that they wished to speak to him.
+When one of his followers asked leave to go and bury his father, ‘Let the
+dead bury the dead,’ was his terrible answer.  He would allow no claim
+whatsoever to be made on personality.
+
+And so he who would lead a Christlike life is he who is perfectly and
+absolutely himself.  He may be a great poet, or a great man of science;
+or a young student at a University, or one who watches sheep upon a moor;
+or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about God, like
+Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman who throws his
+net into the sea.  It does not matter what he is, as long as he realises
+the perfection of the soul that is within him.  All imitation in morals
+and in life is wrong.  Through the streets of Jerusalem at the present
+day crawls one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his shoulders.
+He is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation.  Father Damien
+was Christlike when he went out to live with the lepers, because in such
+service he realised fully what was best in him.  But he was not more
+Christlike than Wagner when he realised his soul in music; or than
+Shelley, when he realised his soul in song.  There is no one type for
+man.  There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men.  And
+while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the
+claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.
+
+Individualism, then, is what through Socialism we are to attain to.  As a
+natural result the State must give up all idea of government.  It must
+give it up because, as a wise man once said many centuries before Christ,
+there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone; there is no such thing as
+governing mankind.  All modes of government are failures.  Despotism is
+unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for
+better things.  Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are
+unjust to the few.  High hopes were once formed of democracy; but
+democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for
+the people.  It has been found out.  I must say that it was high time,
+for all authority is quite degrading.  It degrades those who exercise it,
+and degrades those over whom it is exercised.  When it is violently,
+grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect, by creating, or at
+any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and Individualism that is to
+kill it.  When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and
+accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising.
+People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is
+being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse
+comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are
+probably thinking other people’s thoughts, living by other people’s
+standards, wearing practically what one may call other people’s
+second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment.  ‘He
+who would be free,’ says a fine thinker, ‘must not conform.’  And
+authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of
+over-fed barbarism amongst us.
+
+With authority, punishment will pass away.  This will be a great gain—a
+gain, in fact, of incalculable value.  As one reads history, not in the
+expurgated editions written for school-boys and passmen, but in the
+original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the
+crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the
+good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the
+habitual employment of punishment, than it is by the occurrence of crime.
+It obviously follows that the more punishment is inflicted the more crime
+is produced, and most modern legislation has clearly recognised this, and
+has made it its task to diminish punishment as far as it thinks it can.
+Wherever it has really diminished it, the results have always been
+extremely good.  The less punishment, the less crime.  When there is no
+punishment at all, crime will either cease to exist, or, if it occurs,
+will be treated by physicians as a very distressing form of dementia, to
+be cured by care and kindness.  For what are called criminals nowadays
+are not criminals at all.  Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of
+modern crime.  That indeed is the reason why our criminals are, as a
+class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view.
+They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins.  They are merely
+what ordinary, respectable, commonplace people would be if they had not
+got enough to eat.  When private property is abolished there will be no
+necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist.  Of
+course, all crimes are not crimes against property, though such are the
+crimes that the English law, valuing what a man has more than what a man
+is, punishes with the harshest and most horrible severity, if we except
+the crime of murder, and regard death as worse than penal servitude, a
+point on which our criminals, I believe, disagree.  But though a crime
+may not be against property, it may spring from the misery and rage and
+depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding, and so, when
+that system is abolished, will disappear.  When each member of the
+community has sufficient for his wants, and is not interfered with by his
+neighbour, it will not be an object of any interest to him to interfere
+with anyone else.  Jealousy, which is an extraordinary source of crime in
+modern life, is an emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of
+property, and under Socialism and Individualism will die out.  It is
+remarkable that in communistic tribes jealousy is entirely unknown.
+
+Now as the State is not to govern, it may be asked what the State is to
+do.  The State is to be a voluntary association that will organise
+labour, and be the manufacturer and distributor of necessary commodities.
+The State is to make what is useful.  The individual is to make what is
+beautiful.  And as I have mentioned the word labour, I cannot help saying
+that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about
+the dignity of manual labour.  There is nothing necessarily dignified
+about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading.  It
+is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does
+not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless
+activities, and should be regarded as such.  To sweep a slushy crossing
+for eight hours, on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting
+occupation.  To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to
+me to be impossible.  To sweep it with joy would be appalling.  Man is
+made for something better than disturbing dirt.  All work of that kind
+should be done by a machine.
+
+And I have no doubt that it will be so.  Up to the present, man has been,
+to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something
+tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his
+work he began to starve.  This, however, is, of course, the result of our
+property system and our system of competition.  One man owns a machine
+which does the work of five hundred men.  Five hundred men are, in
+consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become
+hungry and take to thieving.  The one man secures the produce of the
+machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should
+have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more
+than he really wants.  Were that machine the property of all, every one
+would benefit by it.  It would be an immense advantage to the community.
+All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that
+deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be
+done by machinery.  Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all
+sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets,
+and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or
+distressing.  At present machinery competes against man.  Under proper
+conditions machinery will serve man.  There is no doubt at all that this
+is the future of machinery, and just as trees grow while the country
+gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or
+enjoying cultivated leisure—which, and not labour, is the aim of man—or
+making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply
+contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be
+doing all the necessary and unpleasant work.  The fact is, that
+civilisation requires slaves.  The Greeks were quite right there.  Unless
+there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture
+and contemplation become almost impossible.  Human slavery is wrong,
+insecure, and demoralising.  On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the
+machine, the future of the world depends.  And when scientific men are no
+longer called upon to go down to a depressing East End and distribute bad
+cocoa and worse blankets to starving people, they will have delightful
+leisure in which to devise wonderful and marvellous things for their own
+joy and the joy of everyone else.  There will be great storages of force
+for every city, and for every house if required, and this force man will
+convert into heat, light, or motion, according to his needs.  Is this
+Utopian?  A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth
+even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is
+always landing.  And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing
+a better country, sets sail.  Progress is the realisation of Utopias.
+
+Now, I have said that the community by means of organisation of machinery
+will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things will be made
+by the individual.  This is not merely necessary, but it is the only
+possible way by which we can get either the one or the other.  An
+individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with
+reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest,
+and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him.  Upon the
+other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or
+a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to
+do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates
+into a low and ignoble form of craft.  A work of art is the unique result
+of a unique temperament.  Its beauty comes from the fact that the author
+is what he is.  It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want
+what they want.  Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what
+other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an
+artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a
+dishonest tradesman.  He has no further claim to be considered as an
+artist.  Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has
+known.  I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of
+Individualism that the world has known.  Crime, which, under certain
+conditions, may seem to have created Individualism, must take cognisance
+of other people and interfere with them.  It belongs to the sphere of
+action.  But alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any
+interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does
+not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.
+
+And it is to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this intense form
+of Individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it in an
+authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as it
+is contemptible.  It is not quite their fault.  The public has always,
+and in every age, been badly brought up.  They are continually asking Art
+to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd
+vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what
+they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy
+after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are
+wearied of their own stupidity.  Now Art should never try to be popular.
+The public should try to make itself artistic.  There is a very wide
+difference.  If a man of science were told that the results of his
+experiments, and the conclusions that he arrived at, should be of such a
+character that they would not upset the received popular notions on the
+subject, or disturb popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of
+people who knew nothing about science; if a philosopher were told that he
+had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought,
+provided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were held by those
+who had never thought in any sphere at all—well, nowadays the man of
+science and the philosopher would be considerably amused.  Yet it is
+really a very few years since both philosophy and science were subjected
+to brutal popular control, to authority in fact—the authority of either
+the general ignorance of the community, or the terror and greed for power
+of an ecclesiastical or governmental class.  Of course, we have to a very
+great extent got rid of any attempt on the part of the community, or the
+Church, or the Government, to interfere with the individualism of
+speculative thought, but the attempt to interfere with the individualism
+of imaginative art still lingers.  In fact, it does more than linger; it
+is aggressive, offensive, and brutalising.
+
+In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the
+public take no interest.  Poetry is an instance of what I mean.  We have
+been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read
+it, and consequently do not influence it.  The public like to insult
+poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them, they
+leave them alone.  In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in which
+the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of popular
+authority has been absolutely ridiculous.  No country produces such
+badly-written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form, such
+silly, vulgar plays as England.  It must necessarily be so.  The popular
+standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it.  It is at
+once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist.  It is too
+easy, because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style,
+psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned
+are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most
+uncultivated mind.  It is too difficult, because to meet such
+requirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament,
+would have to write not for the artistic joy of writing, but for the
+amusement of half-educated people, and so would have to suppress his
+individualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, and surrender
+everything that is valuable in him.  In the case of the drama, things are
+a little better: the theatre-going public like the obvious, it is true,
+but they do not like the tedious; and burlesque and farcical comedy, the
+two most popular forms, are distinct forms of art.  Delightful work may
+be produced under burlesque and farcical conditions, and in work of this
+kind the artist in England is allowed very great freedom.  It is when one
+comes to the higher forms of the drama that the result of popular control
+is seen.  The one thing that the public dislike is novelty.  Any attempt
+to extend the subject-matter of art is extremely distasteful to the
+public; and yet the vitality and progress of art depend in a large
+measure on the continual extension of subject-matter.  The public dislike
+novelty because they are afraid of it.  It represents to them a mode of
+Individualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects his
+own subject, and treats it as he chooses.  The public are quite right in
+their attitude.  Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing
+and disintegrating force.  Therein lies its immense value.  For what it
+seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of
+habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.  In Art, the
+public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because
+they appreciate it.  They swallow their classics whole, and never taste
+them.  They endure them as the inevitable, and as they cannot mar them,
+they mouth about them.  Strangely enough, or not strangely, according to
+one’s own views, this acceptance of the classics does a great deal of
+harm.  The uncritical admiration of the Bible and Shakespeare in England
+is an instance of what I mean.  With regard to the Bible, considerations
+of ecclesiastical authority enter into the matter, so that I need not
+dwell upon the point.
+
+But in the case of Shakespeare it is quite obvious that the public really
+see neither the beauties nor the defects of his plays.  If they saw the
+beauties, they would not object to the development of the drama; and if
+they saw the defects, they would not object to the development of the
+drama either.  The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a
+country as a means of checking the progress of Art.  They degrade the
+classics into authorities.  They use them as bludgeons for preventing the
+free expression of Beauty in new forms.  They are always asking a writer
+why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not
+paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of
+them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.  A fresh
+mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears
+they get so angry, and bewildered that they always use two stupid
+expressions—one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the
+other, that the work of art is grossly immoral.  What they mean by these
+words seems to me to be this.  When they say a work is grossly
+unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful
+thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they
+mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.
+The former expression has reference to style; the latter to
+subject-matter.  But they probably use the words very vaguely, as an
+ordinary mob will use ready-made paving-stones.  There is not a single
+real poet or prose-writer of this century, for instance, on whom the
+British public have not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality, and
+these diplomas practically take the place, with us, of what in France, is
+the formal recognition of an Academy of Letters, and fortunately make the
+establishment of such an institution quite unnecessary in England.  Of
+course, the public are very reckless in their use of the word.  That they
+should have called Wordsworth an immoral poet, was only to be expected.
+Wordsworth was a poet.  But that they should have called Charles Kingsley
+an immoral novelist is extraordinary.  Kingsley’s prose was not of a very
+fine quality.  Still, there is the word, and they use it as best they
+can.  An artist is, of course, not disturbed by it.  The true artist is a
+man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself.
+But I can fancy that if an artist produced a work of art in England that
+immediately on its appearance was recognised by the public, through their
+medium, which is the public press, as a work that was quite intelligible
+and highly moral, he would begin to seriously question whether in its
+creation he had really been himself at all, and consequently whether the
+work was not quite unworthy of him, and either of a thoroughly
+second-rate order, or of no artistic value whatsoever.
+
+Perhaps, however, I have wronged the public in limiting them to such
+words as ‘immoral,’ ‘unintelligible,’ ‘exotic,’ and ‘unhealthy.’  There
+is one other word that they use.  That word is ‘morbid.’  They do not use
+it often.  The meaning of the word is so simple that they are afraid of
+using it.  Still, they use it sometimes, and, now and then, one comes
+across it in popular newspapers.  It is, of course, a ridiculous word to
+apply to a work of art.  For what is morbidity but a mood of emotion or a
+mode of thought that one cannot express?  The public are all morbid,
+because the public can never find expression for anything.  The artist is
+never morbid.  He expresses everything.  He stands outside his subject,
+and through its medium produces incomparable and artistic effects.  To
+call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his
+subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he
+wrote ‘King Lear.’
+
+On the whole, an artist in England gains something by being attacked.
+His individuality is intensified.  He becomes more completely himself.
+Of course, the attacks are very gross, very impertinent, and very
+contemptible.  But then no artist expects grace from the vulgar mind, or
+style from the suburban intellect.  Vulgarity and stupidity are two very
+vivid facts in modern life.  One regrets them, naturally.  But there they
+are.  They are subjects for study, like everything else.  And it is only
+fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always
+apologise to one in private for what they have written against one in
+public.
+
+Within the last few years two other adjectives, it may be mentioned, have
+been added to the very limited vocabulary of art-abuse that is at the
+disposal of the public.  One is the word ‘unhealthy,’ the other is the
+word ‘exotic.’  The latter merely expresses the rage of the momentary
+mushroom against the immortal, entrancing, and exquisitely lovely orchid.
+It is a tribute, but a tribute of no importance.  The word ‘unhealthy,’
+however, admits of analysis.  It is a rather interesting word.  In fact,
+it is so interesting that the people who use it do not know what it
+means.
+
+What does it mean?  What is a healthy, or an unhealthy work of art?  All
+terms that one applies to a work of art, provided that one applies them
+rationally, have reference to either its style or its subject, or to both
+together.  From the point of view of style, a healthy work of art is one
+whose style recognises the beauty of the material it employs, be that
+material one of words or of bronze, of colour or of ivory, and uses that
+beauty as a factor in producing the æsthetic effect.  From the point of
+view of subject, a healthy work of art is one the choice of whose subject
+is conditioned by the temperament of the artist, and comes directly out
+of it.  In fine, a healthy work of art is one that has both perfection
+and personality.  Of course, form and substance cannot be separated in a
+work of art; they are always one.  But for purposes of analysis, and
+setting the wholeness of æsthetic impression aside for a moment, we can
+intellectually so separate them.  An unhealthy work of art, on the other
+hand, is a work whose style is obvious, old-fashioned, and common, and
+whose subject is deliberately chosen, not because the artist has any
+pleasure in it, but because he thinks that the public will pay him for
+it.  In fact, the popular novel that the public calls healthy is always a
+thoroughly unhealthy production; and what the public call an unhealthy
+novel is always a beautiful and healthy work of art.
+
+I need hardly say that I am not, for a single moment, complaining that
+the public and the public press misuse these words.  I do not see how,
+with their lack of comprehension of what Art is, they could possibly use
+them in the proper sense.  I am merely pointing out the misuse; and as
+for the origin of the misuse and the meaning that lies behind it all, the
+explanation is very simple.  It comes from the barbarous conception of
+authority.  It comes from the natural inability of a community corrupted
+by authority to understand or appreciate Individualism.  In a word, it
+comes from that monstrous and ignorant thing that is called Public
+Opinion, which, bad and well-meaning as it is when it tries to control
+action, is infamous and of evil meaning when it tries to control Thought
+or Art.
+
+Indeed, there is much more to be said in favour of the physical force of
+the public than there is in favour of the public’s opinion.  The former
+may be fine.  The latter must be foolish.  It is often said that force is
+no argument.  That, however, entirely depends on what one wants to prove.
+Many of the most important problems of the last few centuries, such as
+the continuance of personal government in England, or of feudalism in
+France, have been solved entirely by means of physical force.  The very
+violence of a revolution may make the public grand and splendid for a
+moment.  It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is
+mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the
+brickbat.  They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed
+him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant.  It is greatly
+to be regretted, for both their sakes.  Behind the barricade there may be
+much that is noble and heroic.  But what is there behind the
+leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle?  And when
+these four are joined together they make a terrible force, and constitute
+the new authority.
+
+In old days men had the rack.  Now they have the press.  That is an
+improvement certainly.  But still it is very bad, and wrong, and
+demoralising.  Somebody—was it Burke?—called journalism the fourth
+estate.  That was true at the time, no doubt.  But at the present moment
+it really is the only estate.  It has eaten up the other three.  The
+Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and
+the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it.  We are dominated by
+Journalism.  In America the President reigns for four years, and
+Journalism governs for ever and ever.  Fortunately in America Journalism
+has carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme.  As a
+natural consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt.  People
+are amused by it, or disgusted by it, according to their temperaments.
+But it is no longer the real force it was.  It is not seriously treated.
+In England, Journalism, not, except in a few well-known instances, having
+been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great factor, a
+really remarkable power.  The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over
+people’s private lives seems to me to be quite extraordinary.  The fact
+is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything,
+except what is worth knowing.  Journalism, conscious of this, and having
+tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.  In centuries before ours
+the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump.  That was quite
+hideous.  In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the
+keyhole.  That is much worse.  And what aggravates the mischief is that
+the journalists who are most to blame are not the amusing journalists who
+write for what are called Society papers.  The harm is done by the
+serious, thoughtful, earnest journalists, who solemnly, as they are doing
+at present, will drag before the eyes of the public some incident in the
+private life of a great statesman, of a man who is a leader of political
+thought as he is a creator of political force, and invite the public to
+discuss the incident, to exercise authority in the matter, to give their
+views, and not merely to give their views, but to carry them into action,
+to dictate to the man upon all other points, to dictate to his party, to
+dictate to his country; in fact, to make themselves ridiculous,
+offensive, and harmful.  The private lives of men and women should not be
+told to the public.  The public have nothing to do with them at all.  In
+France they manage these things better.  There they do not allow the
+details of the trials that take place in the divorce courts to be
+published for the amusement or criticism of the public.  All that the
+public are allowed to know is that the divorce has taken place and was
+granted on petition of one or other or both of the married parties
+concerned.  In France, in fact, they limit the journalist, and allow the
+artist almost perfect freedom.  Here we allow absolute freedom to the
+journalist, and entirely limit the artist.  English public opinion, that
+is to say, tries to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes
+things that are beautiful in effect, and compels the journalist to retail
+things that are ugly, or disgusting, or revolting in fact, so that we
+have the most serious journalists in the world, and the most indecent
+newspapers.  It is no exaggeration to talk of compulsion.  There are
+possibly some journalists who take a real pleasure in publishing horrible
+things, or who, being poor, look to scandals as forming a sort of
+permanent basis for an income.  But there are other journalists, I feel
+certain, men of education and cultivation, who really dislike publishing
+these things, who know that it is wrong to do so, and only do it because
+the unhealthy conditions under which their occupation is carried on
+oblige them to supply the public with what the public wants, and to
+compete with other journalists in making that supply as full and
+satisfying to the gross popular appetite as possible.  It is a very
+degrading position for any body of educated men to be placed in, and I
+have no doubt that most of them feel it acutely.
+
+However, let us leave what is really a very sordid side of the subject,
+and return to the question of popular control in the matter of Art, by
+which I mean Public Opinion dictating to the artist the form which he is
+to use, the mode in which he is to use it, and the materials with which
+he is to work.  I have pointed out that the arts which have escaped best
+in England are the arts in which the public have not been interested.
+They are, however, interested in the drama, and as a certain advance has
+been made in the drama within the last ten or fifteen years, it is
+important to point out that this advance is entirely due to a few
+individual artists refusing to accept the popular want of taste as their
+standard, and refusing to regard Art as a mere matter of demand and
+supply.  With his marvellous and vivid personality, with a style that has
+really a true colour-element in it, with his extraordinary power, not
+over mere mimicry but over imaginative and intellectual creation, Mr
+Irving, had his sole object been to give the public what they wanted,
+could have produced the commonest plays in the commonest manner, and made
+as much success and money as a man could possibly desire.  But his object
+was not that.  His object was to realise his own perfection as an artist,
+under certain conditions, and in certain forms of Art.  At first he
+appealed to the few: now he has educated the many.  He has created in the
+public both taste and temperament.  The public appreciate his artistic
+success immensely.  I often wonder, however, whether the public
+understand that that success is entirely due to the fact that he did not
+accept their standard, but realised his own.  With their standard the
+Lyceum would have been a sort of second-rate booth, as some of the
+popular theatres in London are at present.  Whether they understand it or
+not the fact however remains, that taste and temperament have, to a
+certain extent been created in the public, and that the public is capable
+of developing these qualities.  The problem then is, why do not the
+public become more civilised?  They have the capacity.  What stops them?
+
+The thing that stops them, it must be said again, is their desire to
+exercise authority over the artist and over works of art.  To certain
+theatres, such as the Lyceum and the Haymarket, the public seem to come
+in a proper mood.  In both of these theatres there have been individual
+artists, who have succeeded in creating in their audiences—and every
+theatre in London has its own audience—the temperament to which Art
+appeals.  And what is that temperament?  It is the temperament of
+receptivity.  That is all.
+
+If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority
+over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot
+receive any artistic impression from it at all.  The work of art is to
+dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.
+The spectator is to be receptive.  He is to be the violin on which the
+master is to play.  And the more completely he can suppress his own silly
+views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art
+should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and
+appreciate the work of art in question.  This is, of course, quite
+obvious in the case of the vulgar theatre-going public of English men and
+women.  But it is equally true of what are called educated people.  For
+an educated person’s ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art has
+been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has
+never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure
+it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends.
+A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and
+under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only
+temperament that can appreciate a work of art.  And true as this is in
+the case of the appreciation of sculpture and painting, it is still more
+true of the appreciation of such arts as the drama.  For a picture and a
+statue are not at war with Time.  They take no count of its succession.
+In one moment their unity may be apprehended.  In the case of literature
+it is different.  Time must be traversed before the unity of effect is
+realised.  And so, in the drama, there may occur in the first act of the
+play something whose real artistic value may not be evident to the
+spectator till the third or fourth act is reached.  Is the silly fellow
+to get angry and call out, and disturb the play, and annoy the artists?
+No.  The honest man is to sit quietly, and know the delightful emotions
+of wonder, curiosity, and suspense.  He is not to go to the play to lose
+a vulgar temper.  He is to go to the play to realise an artistic
+temperament.  He is to go to the play to gain an artistic temperament.
+He is not the arbiter of the work of art.  He is one who is admitted to
+contemplate the work of art, and, if the work be fine, to forget in its
+contemplation and the egotism that mars him—the egotism of his ignorance,
+or the egotism of his information.  This point about the drama is hardly,
+I think, sufficiently recognised.  I can quite understand that were
+‘Macbeth’ produced for the first time before a modern London audience,
+many of the people present would strongly and vigorously object to the
+introduction of the witches in the first act, with their grotesque
+phrases and their ridiculous words.  But when the play is over one
+realises that the laughter of the witches in ‘Macbeth’ is as terrible as
+the laughter of madness in ‘Lear,’ more terrible than the laughter of
+Iago in the tragedy of the Moor.  No spectator of art needs a more
+perfect mood of receptivity than the spectator of a play.  The moment he
+seeks to exercise authority he becomes the avowed enemy of Art and of
+himself.  Art does not mind.  It is he who suffers.
+
+With the novel it is the same thing.  Popular authority and the
+recognition of popular authority are fatal.  Thackeray’s ‘Esmond’ is a
+beautiful work of art because he wrote it to please himself.  In his
+other novels, in ‘Pendennis,’ in ‘Philip,’ in ‘Vanity Fair’ even, at
+times, he is too conscious of the public, and spoils his work by
+appealing directly to the sympathies of the public, or by directly
+mocking at them.  A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public.
+The public are to him non-existent.  He has no poppied or honeyed cakes
+through which to give the monster sleep or sustenance.  He leaves that to
+the popular novelist.  One incomparable novelist we have now in England,
+Mr George Meredith.  There are better artists in France, but France has
+no one whose view of life is so large, so varied, so imaginatively true.
+There are tellers of stories in Russia who have a more vivid sense of
+what pain in fiction may be.  But to him belongs philosophy in fiction.
+His people not merely live, but they live in thought.  One can see them
+from myriad points of view.  They are suggestive.  There is soul in them
+and around them.  They are interpretative and symbolic.  And he who made
+them, those wonderful quickly-moving figures, made them for his own
+pleasure, and has never asked the public what they wanted, has never
+cared to know what they wanted, has never allowed the public to dictate
+to him or influence him in any way but has gone on intensifying his own
+personality, and producing his own individual work.  At first none came
+to him.  That did not matter.  Then the few came to him.  That did not
+change him.  The many have come now.  He is still the same.  He is an
+incomparable novelist.
+
+With the decorative arts it is not different.  The public clung with
+really pathetic tenacity to what I believe were the direct traditions of
+the Great Exhibition of international vulgarity, traditions that were so
+appalling that the houses in which people lived were only fit for blind
+people to live in.  Beautiful things began to be made, beautiful colours
+came from the dyer’s hand, beautiful patterns from the artist’s brain,
+and the use of beautiful things and their value and importance were set
+forth.  The public were really very indignant.  They lost their temper.
+They said silly things.  No one minded.  No one was a whit the worse.  No
+one accepted the authority of public opinion.  And now it is almost
+impossible to enter any modern house without seeing some recognition of
+good taste, some recognition of the value of lovely surroundings, some
+sign of appreciation of beauty.  In fact, people’s houses are, as a rule,
+quite charming nowadays.  People have been to a very great extent
+civilised.  It is only fair to state, however, that the extraordinary
+success of the revolution in house-decoration and furniture and the like
+has not really been due to the majority of the public developing a very
+fine taste in such matters.  It has been chiefly due to the fact that the
+craftsmen of things so appreciated the pleasure of making what was
+beautiful, and woke to such a vivid consciousness of the hideousness and
+vulgarity of what the public had previously wanted, that they simply
+starved the public out.  It would be quite impossible at the present
+moment to furnish a room as rooms were furnished a few years ago, without
+going for everything to an auction of second-hand furniture from some
+third-rate lodging-house.  The things are no longer made.  However they
+may object to it, people must nowadays have something charming in their
+surroundings.  Fortunately for them, their assumption of authority in
+these art-matters came to entire grief.
+
+It is evident, then, that all authority in such things is bad.  People
+sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist
+to live under.  To this question there is only one answer.  The form of
+government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.
+Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.  It has been stated that
+under despotisms artists have produced lovely work.  This is not quite
+so.  Artists have visited despots, not as subjects to be tyrannised over,
+but as wandering wonder-makers, as fascinating vagrant personalities, to
+be entertained and charmed and suffered to be at peace, and allowed to
+create.  There is this to be said in favour of the despot, that he, being
+an individual, may have culture, while the mob, being a monster, has
+none.  One who is an Emperor and King may stoop down to pick up a brush
+for a painter, but when the democracy stoops down it is merely to throw
+mud.  And yet the democracy have not so far to stoop as the emperor.  In
+fact, when they want to throw mud they have not to stoop at all.  But
+there is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority
+is equally bad.
+
+There are three kinds of despots.  There is the despot who tyrannises
+over the body.  There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul.  There
+is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike.  The first is
+called the Prince.  The second is called the Pope.  The third is called
+the People.  The Prince may be cultivated.  Many Princes have been.  Yet
+in the Prince there is danger.  One thinks of Dante at the bitter feast
+in Verona, of Tasso in Ferrara’s madman’s cell.  It is better for the
+artist not to live with Princes.  The Pope may be cultivated.  Many Popes
+have been; the bad Popes have been.  The bad Popes loved Beauty, almost
+as passionately, nay, with as much passion as the good Popes hated
+Thought.  To the wickedness of the Papacy humanity owes much.  The
+goodness of the Papacy owes a terrible debt to humanity.  Yet, though the
+Vatican has kept the rhetoric of its thunders, and lost the rod of its
+lightning, it is better for the artist not to live with Popes.  It was a
+Pope who said of Cellini to a conclave of Cardinals that common laws and
+common authority were not made for men such as he; but it was a Pope who
+thrust Cellini into prison, and kept him there till he sickened with
+rage, and created unreal visions for himself, and saw the gilded sun
+enter his room, and grew so enamoured of it that he sought to escape, and
+crept out from tower to tower, and falling through dizzy air at dawn,
+maimed himself, and was by a vine-dresser covered with vine leaves, and
+carried in a cart to one who, loving beautiful things, had care of him.
+There is danger in Popes.  And as for the People, what of them and their
+authority?  Perhaps of them and their authority one has spoken enough.
+Their authority is a thing blind, deaf, hideous, grotesque, tragic,
+amusing, serious, and obscene.  It is impossible for the artist to live
+with the People.  All despots bribe.  The people bribe and brutalise.
+Who told them to exercise authority?  They were made to live, to listen,
+and to love.  Someone has done them a great wrong.  They have marred
+themselves by imitation of their inferiors.  They have taken the sceptre
+of the Prince.  How should they use it?  They have taken the triple tiara
+of the Pope.  How should they carry its burden?  They are as a clown
+whose heart is broken.  They are as a priest whose soul is not yet born.
+Let all who love Beauty pity them.  Though they themselves love not
+Beauty, yet let them pity themselves.  Who taught them the trick of
+tyranny?
+
+There are many other things that one might point out.  One might point
+out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social
+problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the
+individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had
+great and individual artists, and great and individual men.  One might
+point out how Louis XIV., by creating the modern state, destroyed the
+individualism of the artist, and made things monstrous in their monotony
+of repetition, and contemptible in their conformity to rule, and
+destroyed throughout all France all those fine freedoms of expression
+that had made tradition new in beauty, and new modes one with antique
+form.  But the past is of no importance.  The present is of no
+importance.  It is with the future that we have to deal.  For the past is
+what man should not have been.  The present is what man ought not to be.
+The future is what artists are.
+
+It will, of course, be said that such a scheme as is set forth here is
+quite unpractical, and goes against human nature.  This is perfectly
+true.  It is unpractical, and it goes against human nature.  This is why
+it is worth carrying out, and that is why one proposes it.  For what is a
+practical scheme?  A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already
+in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing
+conditions.  But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects
+to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and
+foolish.  The conditions will be done away with, and human nature will
+change.  The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that
+it changes.  Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.  The
+systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature,
+and not on its growth and development.  The error of Louis XIV. was that
+he thought human nature would always be the same.  The result of his
+error was the French Revolution.  It was an admirable result.  All the
+results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable.
+
+It is to be noted also that Individualism does not come to man with any
+sickly cant about duty, which merely means doing what other people want
+because they want it; or any hideous cant about self-sacrifice, which is
+merely a survival of savage mutilation.  In fact, it does not come to man
+with any claims upon him at all.  It comes naturally and inevitably out
+of man.  It is the point to which all development tends.  It is the
+differentiation to which all organisms grow.  It is the perfection that
+is inherent in every mode of life, and towards which every mode of life
+quickens.  And so Individualism exercises no compulsion over man.  On the
+contrary, it says to man that he should suffer no compulsion to be
+exercised over him.  It does not try to force people to be good.  It
+knows that people are good when they are let alone.  Man will develop
+Individualism out of himself.  Man is now so developing Individualism.
+To ask whether Individualism is practical is like asking whether
+Evolution is practical.  Evolution is the law of life, and there is no
+evolution except towards Individualism.  Where this tendency is not
+expressed, it is a case of artificially-arrested growth, or of disease,
+or of death.
+
+Individualism will also be unselfish and unaffected.  It has been pointed
+out that one of the results of the extraordinary tyranny of authority is
+that words are absolutely distorted from their proper and simple meaning,
+and are used to express the obverse of their right signification.  What
+is true about Art is true about Life.  A man is called affected,
+nowadays, if he dresses as he likes to dress.  But in doing that he is
+acting in a perfectly natural manner.  Affectation, in such matters,
+consists in dressing according to the views of one’s neighbour, whose
+views, as they are the views of the majority, will probably be extremely
+stupid.  Or a man is called selfish if he lives in the manner that seems
+to him most suitable for the full realisation of his own personality; if,
+in fact, the primary aim of his life is self-development.  But this is
+the way in which everyone should live.  Selfishness is not living as one
+wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.  And
+unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with
+them.  Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute
+uniformity of type.  Unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as
+a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it.  It is not
+selfish to think for oneself.  A man who does not think for himself does
+not think at all.  It is grossly selfish to require of ones neighbour
+that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions.  Why
+should he?  If he can think, he will probably think differently.  If he
+cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him.  A
+red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose.  It would be
+horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be
+both red and roses.  Under Individualism people will be quite natural and
+absolutely unselfish, and will know the meanings of the words, and
+realise them in their free, beautiful lives.  Nor will men be egotistic
+as they are now.  For the egotist is he who makes claims upon others, and
+the Individualist will not desire to do that.  It will not give him
+pleasure.  When man has realised Individualism, he will also realise
+sympathy and exercise it freely and spontaneously.  Up to the present man
+has hardly cultivated sympathy at all.  He has merely sympathy with pain,
+and sympathy with pain is not the highest form of sympathy.  All sympathy
+is fine, but sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode.  It is
+tainted with egotism.  It is apt to become morbid.  There is in it a
+certain element of terror for our own safety.  We become afraid that we
+ourselves might be as the leper or as the blind, and that no man would
+have care of us.  It is curiously limiting, too.  One should sympathise
+with the entirety of life, not with life’s sores and maladies merely, but
+with life’s joy and beauty and energy and health and freedom.  The wider
+sympathy is, of course, the more difficult.  It requires more
+unselfishness.  Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend,
+but it requires a very fine nature—it requires, in fact, the nature of a
+true Individualist—to sympathise with a friend’s success.
+
+In the modern stress of competition and struggle for place, such sympathy
+is naturally rare, and is also very much stifled by the immoral ideal of
+uniformity of type and conformity to rule which is so prevalent
+everywhere, and is perhaps most obnoxious in England.
+
+Sympathy with pain there will, of course, always be.  It is one of the
+first instincts of man.  The animals which are individual, the higher
+animals, that is to say, share it with us.  But it must be remembered
+that while sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of joy in the world,
+sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain.  It may
+make man better able to endure evil, but the evil remains.  Sympathy with
+consumption does not cure consumption; that is what Science does.  And
+when Socialism has solved the problem of poverty, and Science solved the
+problem of disease, the area of the sentimentalists will be lessened, and
+the sympathy of man will be large, healthy, and spontaneous.  Man will
+have joy in the contemplation of the joyous life of others.
+
+For it is through joy that the Individualism of the future will develop
+itself.  Christ made no attempt to reconstruct society, and consequently
+the Individualism that he preached to man could be realised only through
+pain or in solitude.  The ideals that we owe to Christ are the ideals of
+the man who abandons society entirely, or of the man who resists society
+absolutely.  But man is naturally social.  Even the Thebaid became
+peopled at last.  And though the cenobite realises his personality, it is
+often an impoverished personality that he so realises.  Upon the other
+hand, the terrible truth that pain is a mode through which man may
+realise himself exercises a wonderful fascination over the world.
+Shallow speakers and shallow thinkers in pulpits and on platforms often
+talk about the world’s worship of pleasure, and whine against it.  But it
+is rarely in the world’s history that its ideal has been one of joy and
+beauty.  The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world.
+Mediævalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its
+wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its
+whipping with rods—Mediævalism is real Christianity, and the mediæval
+Christ is the real Christ.  When the Renaissance dawned upon the world,
+and brought with it the new ideals of the beauty of life and the joy of
+living, men could not understand Christ.  Even Art shows us that.  The
+painters of the Renaissance drew Christ as a little boy playing with
+another boy in a palace or a garden, or lying back in his mother’s arms,
+smiling at her, or at a flower, or at a bright bird; or as a noble,
+stately figure moving nobly through the world; or as a wonderful figure
+rising in a sort of ecstasy from death to life.  Even when they drew him
+crucified they drew him as a beautiful God on whom evil men had inflicted
+suffering.  But he did not preoccupy them much.  What delighted them was
+to paint the men and women whom they admired, and to show the loveliness
+of this lovely earth.  They painted many religious pictures—in fact, they
+painted far too many, and the monotony of type and motive is wearisome,
+and was bad for art.  It was the result of the authority of the public in
+art-matters, and is to be deplored.  But their soul was not in the
+subject.  Raphael was a great artist when he painted his portrait of the
+Pope.  When he painted his Madonnas and infant Christs, he is not a great
+artist at all.  Christ had no message for the Renaissance, which was
+wonderful because it brought an ideal at variance with his, and to find
+the presentation of the real Christ we must go to mediæval art.  There he
+is one maimed and marred; one who is not comely to look on, because
+Beauty is a joy; one who is not in fair raiment, because that may be a
+joy also: he is a beggar who has a marvellous soul; he is a leper whose
+soul is divine; he needs neither property nor health; he is a God
+realising his perfection through pain.
+
+The evolution of man is slow.  The injustice of men is great.  It was
+necessary that pain should be put forward as a mode of self-realisation.
+Even now, in some places in the world, the message of Christ is
+necessary.  No one who lived in modern Russia could possibly realise his
+perfection except by pain.  A few Russian artists have realised
+themselves in Art; in a fiction that is mediæval in character, because
+its dominant note is the realisation of men through suffering.  But for
+those who are not artists, and to whom there is no mode of life but the
+actual life of fact, pain is the only door to perfection.  A Russian who
+lives happily under the present system of government in Russia must
+either believe that man has no soul, or that, if he has, it is not worth
+developing.  A Nihilist who rejects all authority, because he knows
+authority to be evil, and welcomes all pain, because through that he
+realises his personality, is a real Christian.  To him the Christian
+ideal is a true thing.
+
+And yet, Christ did not revolt against authority.  He accepted the
+imperial authority of the Roman Empire and paid tribute.  He endured the
+ecclesiastical authority of the Jewish Church, and would not repel its
+violence by any violence of his own.  He had, as I said before, no scheme
+for the reconstruction of society.  But the modern world has schemes.  It
+proposes to do away with poverty and the suffering that it entails.  It
+desires to get rid of pain, and the suffering that pain entails.  It
+trusts to Socialism and to Science as its methods.  What it aims at is an
+Individualism expressing itself through joy.  This Individualism will be
+larger, fuller, lovelier than any Individualism has ever been.  Pain is
+not the ultimate mode of perfection.  It is merely provisional and a
+protest.  It has reference to wrong, unhealthy, unjust surroundings.
+When the wrong, and the disease, and the injustice are removed, it will
+have no further place.  It will have done its work.  It was a great work,
+but it is almost over.  Its sphere lessens every day.
+
+Nor will man miss it.  For what man has sought for is, indeed, neither
+pain nor pleasure, but simply Life.  Man has sought to live intensely,
+fully, perfectly.  When he can do so without exercising restraint on
+others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to
+him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself.  Pleasure
+is Nature’s test, her sign of approval.  When man is happy, he is in
+harmony with himself and his environment.  The new Individualism, for
+whose service Socialism, whether it wills it or not, is working, will be
+perfect harmony.  It will be what the Greeks sought for, but could not,
+except in Thought, realise completely, because they had slaves, and fed
+them; it will be what the Renaissance sought for, but could not realise
+completely except in Art, because they had slaves, and starved them.  It
+will be complete, and through it each man will attain to his perfection.
+The new Individualism is the new Hellenism.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+               _Reprinted from the_ ‘_Fortnightly Review_,’
+               _by permission of Messrs Chapman and Hall_.
+
+
+

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+
+
+
+
+WALKING
+
+by Henry David Thoreau
+
+
+
+
+I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as
+contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as
+an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member
+of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make
+an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the
+minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of
+that.
+
+I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who
+understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a
+genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived
+“from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and
+asked charity, under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy
+Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a
+Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their
+walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they
+who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some,
+however, would derive the word from sans terre without land or a home,
+which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular
+home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of
+successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be
+the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is
+no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while
+sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the
+first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is
+a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth
+and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.
+
+It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers,
+nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our
+expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old
+hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our
+steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the
+spirit of undying adventure, never to return,—prepared to send back
+our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are
+ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife
+and child and friends, and never see them again,—if you have paid your
+debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free
+man; then you are ready for a walk.
+
+To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes
+have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new,
+or rather an old, order—not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or
+Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust.
+The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems
+now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker—not
+the Knight, but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of
+Church and State and People.
+
+We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art;
+though, to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be
+received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but
+they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and
+independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only
+by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven
+to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers.
+Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, can
+remember and have described to me some walks which they took ten years
+ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves for half
+an hour in the woods; but I know very well that they have confined
+themselves to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions they may make
+to belong to this select class. No doubt they were elevated for a moment
+as by the reminiscence of a previous state of existence, when even they
+were foresters and outlaws.
+
+         “When he came to grene wode,
+            In a mery mornynge,
+          There he herde the notes small
+            Of byrdes mery syngynge.
+
+         “It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn,
+            That I was last here;
+          Me lyste a lytell for to shote
+            At the donne dere.”
+
+I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend
+four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering
+through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from
+all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts,
+or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics
+and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all
+the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them—as if the
+legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon—I think that
+they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.
+
+I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some
+rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh
+hour, or four o’clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day,
+when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the
+daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for,—I
+confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing
+of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to
+shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years
+almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of—sitting
+there now at three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock
+in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of the three-o’clock-in-the-morning
+courage, but it is nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully
+at this hour in the afternoon over against one’s self whom you have
+known all the morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are bound
+by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say
+between four and five o’clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning
+papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a general
+explosion heard up and down the street, scattering a legion of
+antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to the four winds for an
+airing—and so the evil cure itself.
+
+How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand
+it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not
+stand it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking
+the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste
+past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such
+an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about
+these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I
+appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never
+turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping watch over the
+slumberers.
+
+No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with
+it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor
+occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the
+evening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before
+sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.
+
+But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking
+exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours—as
+the swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and
+adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the
+springs of life. Think of a man’s swinging dumb-bells for his health,
+when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!
+
+Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast
+which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth’s servant
+to show him her master’s study, she answered, “Here is his library, but
+his study is out of doors.”
+
+Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a
+certain roughness of character—will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over
+some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands,
+or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy
+of touch. So staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a
+softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an
+increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more
+susceptible to some influences important to our intellectual and moral
+growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and
+no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion rightly the thick and thin
+skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will fall off fast enough—that
+the natural remedy is to be found in the proportion which the night
+bears to the day, the winter to the summer, thought to experience. There
+will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous
+palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect
+and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of
+idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks
+itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.
+
+When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become
+of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects
+of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to
+themselves, since they did not go to the woods. “They planted groves and
+walks of Platanes,” where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos
+open to the air. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the
+woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens
+that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there
+in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning
+occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that
+I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run
+in my head and I am not where my body is—I am out of my senses. In my
+walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the
+woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself,
+and cannot help a shudder when I find myself so implicated even in what
+are called good works—for this may sometimes happen.
+
+My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have
+walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have
+not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness,
+and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours’ walking
+will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single
+farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the
+dominions of the king of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony
+discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle
+of ten miles’ radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the
+threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite
+familiar to you.
+
+Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of
+houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply
+deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. A people
+who would begin by burning the fences and let the forest stand! I saw
+the fences half consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the prairie,
+and some worldly miser with a surveyor looking after his bounds, while
+heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see the angels
+going to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in the midst of
+paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing in the middle of a boggy
+Stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds without
+a doubt, three little stones, where a stake had been driven, and looking
+nearer, I saw that the Prince of Darkness was his surveyor.
+
+I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing
+at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road
+except where the fox and the mink do: first along by the river, and then
+the brook, and then the meadow and the wood-side. There are square miles
+in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can see
+civilization and the abodes of man afar. The farmers and their works
+are scarcely more obvious than woodchucks and their burrows. Man and
+his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and
+manufactures and agriculture even politics, the most alarming of them
+all,—I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape.
+Politics is but a narrow field, and that still narrower highway yonder
+leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveler thither. If you would go to
+the political world, follow the great road,—follow that market-man, keep
+his dust in your eyes, and it will lead you straight to it; for it, too,
+has its place merely, and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as
+from a bean field into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half hour
+I can walk off to some portion of the earth’s surface where a man does
+not stand from one year’s end to another, and there, consequently,
+politics are not, for they are but as the cigar smoke of a man.
+
+The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of
+the highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body of which roads are
+the arms and legs—a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and
+ordinary of travelers. The word is from the Latin villa which together
+with via, a way, or more anciently ved and vella, Varro derives from
+veho, to carry, because the villa is the place to and from which things
+are carried. They who got their living by teaming were said vellaturam
+facere. Hence, too, the Latin word _vilis_ and our _vile_; also _villain_.
+This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They
+are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over them, without traveling
+themselves.
+
+Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across
+lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel
+in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any
+tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead. I am
+a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The
+landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not
+make that use of my figure. I walk out into a nature such as the old
+prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may
+name it America, but it is not America: neither Americus Vespucius,
+nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer
+amount of it in mythology than in any history of America, so called,
+that I have seen.
+
+However, there are a few old roads that may be trodden with profit, as
+if they led somewhere now that they are nearly discontinued. There
+is the Old Marlborough Road, which does not go to Marlborough now,
+methinks, unless that is Marlborough where it carries me. I am the
+bolder to speak of it here, because I presume that there are one or two
+such roads in every town.
+
+       THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD.
+
+        Where they once dug for money,
+        But never found any;
+        Where sometimes Martial Miles
+        Singly files,
+        And Elijah Wood,
+        I fear for no good:
+        No other man,
+        Save Elisha Dugan—
+        O man of wild habits,
+        Partridges and rabbits,
+        Who hast no cares
+        Only to set snares,
+        Who liv’st all alone,
+        Close to the bone;
+        And where life is sweetest
+        Constantly eatest.
+     When the spring stirs my blood
+      With the instinct to travel,
+      I can get enough gravel
+     On the Old Marlborough Road.
+        Nobody repairs it,
+        For nobody wears it;
+        It is a living way,
+        As the Christians say.
+     Not many there be
+      Who enter therein,
+     Only the guests of the
+      Irishman Quin.
+     What is it, what is it
+      But a direction out there,
+     And the bare possibility
+        Of going somewhere?
+        Great guide boards of stone,
+        But travelers none;
+        Cenotaphs of the towns
+        Named on their crowns.
+        It is worth going to see
+        Where you might be.
+        What king
+        Did the thing,
+        I am still wondering;
+        Set up how or when,
+        By what selectmen,
+        Gourgas or Lee,
+        Clark or Darby?
+        They’re a great endeavor
+        To be something forever;
+        Blank tablets of stone,
+        Where a traveler might groan,
+        And in one sentence
+        Grave all that is known
+        Which another might read,
+        In his extreme need.
+        I know one or two
+        Lines that would do,
+        Literature that might stand
+        All over the land,
+        Which a man could remember
+        Till next December,
+        And read again in the spring,
+        After the thawing.
+     If with fancy unfurled
+      You leave your abode,
+     You may go round the world
+      By the Old Marlborough Road.
+
+At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private
+property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative
+freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off
+into so-called pleasure grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and
+exclusive pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and man
+traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road,
+and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean
+trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively
+is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us
+improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.
+
+What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will
+walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we
+unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent
+to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable
+from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain
+take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which
+is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the
+interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult
+to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our
+idea.
+
+When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will
+bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me,
+I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and
+inevitably settle southwest, toward some particular wood or meadow
+or deserted pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to
+settle—varies a few degrees, and does not always point due southwest,
+it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always
+settles between west and south-southwest. The future lies that way to
+me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side.
+The outline which would bound my walks would be, not a circle, but a
+parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits which have been
+thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening westward, in
+which my house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round
+irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide, for a
+thousandth time, that I will walk into the southwest or west. Eastward I
+go only by force; but westward I go free. Thither no business leads
+me. It is hard for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes or
+sufficient wildness and freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not
+excited by the prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the forest
+which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly toward
+the setting sun, and there are no towns nor cities in it of enough
+consequence to disturb me. Let me live where I will, on this side is the
+city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am leaving the city more and
+more, and withdrawing into the wilderness. I should not lay so much
+stress on this fact, if I did not believe that something like this is
+the prevailing tendency of my countrymen. I must walk toward Oregon, and
+not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that
+mankind progress from east to west. Within a few years we have witnessed
+the phenomenon of a southeastward migration, in the settlement of
+Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and, judging
+from the moral and physical character of the first generation of
+Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern
+Tartars think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet. “The world ends
+there,” say they; “beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea.” It is
+unmitigated East where they live.
+
+We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and
+literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the
+future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a
+Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity
+to forget the Old World and its institutions. If we do not succeed
+this time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before
+it arrives on the banks of the Styx; and that is in the Lethe of the
+Pacific, which is three times as wide.
+
+I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evidence of
+singularity, that an individual should thus consent in his pettiest walk
+with the general movement of the race; but I know that something akin
+to the migratory instinct in birds and quadrupeds,—which, in some
+instances, is known to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them
+to a general and mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say some,
+crossing the broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail
+raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams with their dead,—that
+something like the furor which affects the domestic cattle in the
+spring, and which is referred to a worm in their tails,—affects both
+nations and individuals, either perennially or from time to time. Not
+a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to some extent
+unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker, I
+should probably take that disturbance into account.
+
+   “Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
+   And palmeres for to seken strange strondes.”
+
+Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West
+as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He appears
+to migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great
+Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those
+mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which
+were last gilded by his rays. The island of Atlantis, and the islands
+and gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear
+to have been the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery and
+poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when looking into the sunset
+sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those
+fables?
+
+Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He
+obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon. The herd of men
+in those days scented fresh pastures from afar.
+
+  “And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
+  And now was dropped into the western bay;
+  At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
+  To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”
+
+Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal extent with that
+occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so rich and varied in
+its productions, and at the same time so habitable by the European, as
+this is? Michaux, who knew but part of them, says that “the species of
+large trees are much more numerous in North America than in Europe; in
+the United States there are more than one hundred and forty species that
+exceed thirty feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain
+this size.” Later botanists more than confirm his observations. Humboldt
+came to America to realize his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation,
+and he beheld it in its greatest perfection in the primitive forests of
+the Amazon, the most gigantic wilderness on the earth, which he has so
+eloquently described. The geographer Guyot, himself a European, goes
+further—further than I am ready to follow him; yet not when he says: “As
+the plant is made for the animal, as the vegetable world is made for the
+animal world, America is made for the man of the Old World.... The man
+of the Old World sets out upon his way. Leaving the highlands of Asia,
+he descends from station to station towards Europe. Each of his steps
+is marked by a new civilization superior to the preceding, by a greater
+power of development. Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of
+this unknown ocean, the bounds of which he knows not, and turns upon
+his footprints for an instant.” When he has exhausted the rich soil of
+Europe, and reinvigorated himself, “then recommences his adventurous
+career westward as in the earliest ages.” So far Guyot.
+
+From this western impulse coming in contact with the barrier of the
+Atlantic sprang the commerce and enterprise of modern times. The younger
+Michaux, in his Travels West of the Alleghanies in 1802, says that the
+common inquiry in the newly settled West was, “‘From what part of
+the world have you come?’ As if these vast and fertile regions would
+naturally be the place of meeting and common country of all the
+inhabitants of the globe.”
+
+To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say, Ex oriente lux; ex occidente
+FRUX. From the East light; from the West fruit.
+
+Sir Francis Head, an English traveler and a Governor-General of Canada,
+tells us that “in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New
+World, Nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has
+painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she
+used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World.... The heavens of
+America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher,
+the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter the
+thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger,
+the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the
+forests bigger, the plains broader.” This statement will do at least
+to set against Buffon’s account of this part of the world and its
+productions.
+
+Linnæus said long ago, “Nescio quæ facies læta, glabra plantis
+Americanis” (I know not what there is of joyous and smooth in the aspect
+of American plants); and I think that in this country there are no, or
+at most very few, Africanæ bestiæ, African beasts, as the Romans called
+them, and that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the
+habitation of man. We are told that within three miles of the center of
+the East Indian city of Singapore, some of the inhabitants are annually
+carried off by tigers; but the traveler can lie down in the woods at
+night almost anywhere in North America without fear of wild beasts.
+
+These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks larger here than
+in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America
+appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these
+facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry
+and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance,
+the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind,
+and the intimations that star it as much brighter. For I believe that
+climate does thus react on man—as there is something in the mountain
+air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater
+perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences?
+Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his life? I trust
+that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer,
+fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky—our understanding more
+comprehensive and broader, like our plains—our intellect generally on a
+grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains
+and forests,—and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth
+and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will appear to the
+traveler something, he knows not what, of læta and glabra, of joyous and
+serene, in our very faces. Else to what end does the world go on, and
+why was America discovered?
+
+To Americans I hardly need to say—
+
+      “Westward the star of empire takes its way.”
+As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise
+was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this
+country.
+
+Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England; though
+we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the West. There
+is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took to
+the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it
+is more important to understand even the slang of today.
+
+Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like
+a dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in
+something more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and
+repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were
+music to my ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend. There
+were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I knew only in
+history. They were ruins that interested me chiefly. There seemed to
+come up from its waters and its vine-clad hills and valleys a hushed
+music as of crusaders departing for the Holy Land. I floated along under
+the spell of enchantment, as if I had been transported to an heroic age,
+and breathed an atmosphere of chivalry.
+
+Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked
+my way up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats
+wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of
+Nauvoo, beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before
+I had looked up the Moselle, now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri and
+heard the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona’s Cliff—still thinking more
+of the future than of the past or present—I saw that this was a Rhine
+stream of a different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to
+be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the river;
+and I felt that this was the heroic age itself, though we know it not,
+for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
+
+The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I
+have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of
+the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The
+cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the
+forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our
+ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by
+a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has
+risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar
+wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled
+by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of
+the northern forests who were.
+
+I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which
+the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock spruce or arbor
+vitæ in our tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking
+for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the
+marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw, as a matter of course.
+Some of our northern Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer,
+as well as various other parts, including the summits of the antlers, as
+long as they are soft. And herein, perchance, they have stolen a march
+on the cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire. This
+is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughterhouse pork to make
+a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure,—as
+if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw.
+
+There are some intervals which border the strain of the wood-thrush,
+to which I would migrate—wild lands where no settler has squatted; to
+which, methinks, I am already acclimated.
+
+The African hunter Cumming tells us that the skin of the eland, as well
+as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious
+perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man so much like a wild
+antelope, so much a part and parcel of Nature, that his very person
+should thus sweetly advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us
+of those parts of nature which he most haunts. I feel no disposition to
+be satirical, when the trapper’s coat emits the odor of musquash even;
+it is a sweeter scent to me than that which commonly exhales from the
+merchant’s or the scholar’s garments. When I go into their wardrobes and
+handle their vestments, I am reminded of no grassy plains and flowery
+meads which they have frequented, but of dusty merchants’ exchanges and
+libraries rather.
+
+A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is
+a fitter color than white for a man—a denizen of the woods. “The pale
+white man!” I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the
+naturalist says, “A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like
+a plant bleached by the gardener’s art, compared with a fine, dark green
+one, growing vigorously in the open fields.”
+
+Ben Jonson exclaims,—
+
+ “How near to good is what is fair!”
+So I would say,—
+
+ “How near to good is what is wild!”
+
+Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet
+subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward
+incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made
+infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country
+or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be
+climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees.
+
+Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not
+in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When,
+formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had
+contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted
+solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog—a
+natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me.
+I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native
+town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no
+richer parterres to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda
+(Cassandra calyculata) which cover these tender places on the earth’s
+surface. Botany cannot go farther than tell me the names of the shrubs
+which grow there—the high-blueberry, panicled andromeda, lamb-kill,
+azalea, and rhodora—all standing in the quaking sphagnum. I often think
+that I should like to have my house front on this mass of dull red
+bushes, omitting other flower plots and borders, transplanted spruce
+and trim box, even graveled walks—to have this fertile spot under my
+windows, not a few imported barrow-fuls of soil only to cover the sand
+which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why not put my house, my
+parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that meager assemblage of
+curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and art, which I call my
+front yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance
+when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the
+passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was
+never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments,
+acorn tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills
+up to the very edge of the swamp, then (though it may not be the best
+place for a dry cellar,) so that there be no access on that side to
+citizens. Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through,
+and you could go in the back way.
+
+Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to
+dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human
+art contrived, or else of a dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for
+the swamp. How vain, then, have been all your labors, citizens, for me!
+
+My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give
+me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air
+and solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveler
+Burton says of it—“Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial,
+hospitable and single-minded.... In the desert, spirituous liquors
+excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal
+existence.” They who have been traveling long on the steppes of Tartary
+say, “On reentering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and
+turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to
+fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia.” When
+I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most
+interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as
+a sacred place,—a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow,
+of Nature. The wild wood covers the virgin mould,—and the same soil is
+good for men and for trees. A man’s health requires as many acres of
+meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck. There are
+the strong meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not more by the
+righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. A
+township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive
+forest rots below—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and
+potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a
+soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness
+comes the reformer eating locusts and wild honey.
+
+To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for
+them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago
+they sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very
+aspect of those primitive and rugged trees there was, methinks, a
+tanning principle which hardened and consolidated the fibers of men’s
+thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days
+of my native village, when you cannot collect a load of bark of good
+thickness, and we no longer produce tar and turpentine.
+
+The civilized nations—Greece, Rome, England—have been sustained by the
+primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive
+as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is
+to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and
+it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There
+the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the
+philosopher comes down on his marrow bones.
+
+It is said to be the task of the American “to work the virgin soil,” and
+that “agriculture here already assumes proportions unknown everywhere
+else.” I think that the farmer displaces the Indian even because he
+redeems the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respects
+more natural. I was surveying for a man the other day a single straight
+line one hundred and thirty-two rods long, through a swamp at whose
+entrance might have been written the words which Dante read over the
+entrance to the infernal regions,—“Leave all hope, ye that enter”—that
+is, of ever getting out again; where at one time I saw my employer
+actually up to his neck and swimming for his life in his property,
+though it was still winter. He had another similar swamp which I
+could not survey at all, because it was completely under water, and
+nevertheless, with regard to a third swamp, which I did survey from a
+distance, he remarked to me, true to his instincts, that he would not
+part with it for any consideration, on account of the mud which it
+contained. And that man intends to put a girdling ditch round the whole
+in the course of forty months, and so redeem it by the magic of his
+spade. I refer to him only as the type of a class.
+
+The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories,
+which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the
+sword and the lance, but the bushwhack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and
+the bog hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with
+the dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian’s
+cornfield into the meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not
+the skill to follow. He had no better implement with which to intrench
+himself in the land than a clam-shell. But the farmer is armed with plow
+and spade.
+
+In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but
+another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking
+in Hamlet and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not
+learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift
+and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild—the mallard—thought, which
+’mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is
+something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and
+perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the west or
+in the jungles of the east. Genius is a light which makes the darkness
+visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple
+of knowledge itself—and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the
+race, which pales before the light of common day.
+
+English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake
+Poets—Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare
+included—breathes no quite fresh and in this sense wild strain. It is an
+essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome.
+Her wilderness is a green wood, her wild man a Robin Hood. There is
+plenty of genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her
+chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not when the wild man in
+her, became extinct.
+
+The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The
+poet today, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the
+accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.
+
+Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a
+poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak
+for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive
+down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his
+words as often as he used them—transplanted them to his page with earth
+adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural
+that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of
+spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a
+library,—aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually,
+for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature.
+
+I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this
+yearning for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is
+tame. I do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern,
+any account which contents me of that Nature with which even I am
+acquainted. You will perceive that I demand something which no Augustan
+nor Elizabethan age, which no culture, in short, can give. Mythology
+comes nearer to it than anything. How much more fertile a Nature,
+at least, has Grecian mythology its root in than English literature!
+Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was
+exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight;
+and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. All
+other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses;
+but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as
+mankind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long; for the
+decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives.
+
+The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The
+valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine, having yielded their
+crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate,
+the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce.
+Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become
+a fiction of the past,—as it is to some extent a fiction of the
+present,—the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology.
+
+The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they
+may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among
+Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends
+itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis
+as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are
+reminiscent,—others merely sensible, as the phrase is,—others prophetic.
+Some forms of disease, even, may prophesy forms of health. The geologist
+has discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons,
+and other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in
+the forms of fossil species which were extinct before man was created,
+and hence “indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state
+of organic existence.” The Hindoos dreamed that the earth rested on an
+elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent;
+and though it may be an unimportant coincidence, it will not be out of
+place here to state, that a fossil tortoise has lately been discovered
+in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I confess that I am
+partial to these wild fancies, which transcend the order of time and
+development. They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect. The
+partridge loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot.
+
+In short, all good things are wild and free. There is something in
+a strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human
+voice—take the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for instance,—which
+by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries
+emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so much of their
+wildness as I can understand. Give me for my friends and neighbors wild
+men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of
+the awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet.
+
+I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights—any
+evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and
+vigor; as when my neighbor’s cow breaks out of her pasture early in the
+spring and boldly swims the river, a cold, gray tide, twenty-five or
+thirty rods wide, swollen by the melted snow. It is the buffalo crossing
+the Mississippi. This exploit confers some dignity on the herd in my
+eyes—already dignified. The seeds of instinct are preserved under the
+thick hides of cattle and horses, like seeds in the bowels of the earth,
+an indefinite period.
+
+Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw one day a herd of a
+dozen bullocks and cows running about and frisking in unwieldy sport,
+like huge rats, even like kittens. They shook their heads, raised their
+tails, and rushed up and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as
+well as by their activity, their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas!
+a sudden loud Whoa! would have damped their ardor at once, reduced them
+from venison to beef, and stiffened their sides and sinews like the
+locomotive. Who but the Evil One has cried “Whoa!” to mankind?
+Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of
+locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery,
+is meeting the horse and the ox half way. Whatever part the whip has
+touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever think of a side of any of
+the supple cat tribe, as we speak of a side of beef?
+
+I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be
+made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats
+still left to sow before they become submissive members of society.
+Undoubtedly, all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization;
+and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited
+disposition, this is no reason why the others should have their natures
+broken that they may be reduced to the same level. Men are in the main
+alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various.
+If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly or quite as well as
+another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded. Any man
+can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other man could serve so
+rare a use as the author of this illustration did. Confucius says,—“The
+skins of the tiger and the leopard, when they are tanned, are as the
+skins of the dog and the sheep tanned.” But it is not the part of a true
+culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious; and
+tanning their skins for shoes is not the best use to which they can be
+put.
+
+When looking over a list of men’s names in a foreign language, as
+of military officers, or of authors who have written on a particular
+subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The
+name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human
+than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles
+and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been
+named by the child’s rigmarole—Iery-wiery ichery van, tittle-tol-tan. I
+see in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to
+each the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his own dialect.
+The names of men are, of course, as cheap and meaningless as Bose and
+Tray, the names of dogs.
+
+Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named
+merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to
+know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual.
+We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman
+army had a name of his own—because we have not supposed that he had a
+character of his own. At present our only true names are nicknames. I
+knew a boy who, from his peculiar energy, was called “Buster” by
+his playmates, and this rightly supplanted his Christian name. Some
+travellers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but
+earned it, and his name was his fame; and among some tribes he acquired
+a new name with every new exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name
+for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.
+
+I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still
+see men in herds for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man less
+strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his
+own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and
+a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that my
+neighbor, who bears the familiar epithet William or Edwin, takes it off
+with his jacket. It does not adhere to him when asleep or in anger, or
+aroused by any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some
+of his kin at such a time his original wild name in some jaw-breaking or
+else melodious tongue.
+
+Here is this vast, savage, hovering mother of ours, Nature, lying all
+around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the
+leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to
+that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort
+of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility,
+a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.
+
+In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a
+certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are
+already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the
+meadows, and deepens the soil—not that which trusts to heating manures,
+and improved implements and modes of culture only!
+
+Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster,
+both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very
+late, he honestly slumbered a fool’s allowance.
+
+There may be an excess even of informing light. Niepce, a Frenchman,
+discovered “actinism,” that power in the sun’s rays which produces a
+chemical effect; that granite rocks, and stone structures, and statues
+of metal “are all alike destructively acted upon during the hours of
+sunshine, and, but for provisions of Nature no less wonderful, would
+soon perish under the delicate touch of the most subtle of the agencies
+of the universe.” But he observed that “those bodies which underwent
+this change during the daylight possessed the power of restoring
+themselves to their original conditions during the hours of night,
+when this excitement was no longer influencing them.” Hence it has been
+inferred that “the hours of darkness are as necessary to the inorganic
+creation as we know night and sleep are to the organic kingdom.” Not
+even does the moon shine every night, but gives place to darkness.
+
+I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more
+than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage,
+but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an
+immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the
+annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.
+
+There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus
+invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky
+knowledge—Gramatica parda—tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit derived
+from that same leopard to which I have referred.
+
+We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is
+said that knowledge is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need
+of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call
+Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what
+is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know
+something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance?
+What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our
+negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and reading of
+the newspapers—for what are the libraries of science but files of
+newspapers—a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his memory,
+and then when in some spring of his life he saunters abroad into the
+Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to grass like a horse and
+leaves all his harness behind in the stable. I would say to the Society
+for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes,—Go to grass. You have
+eaten hay long enough. The spring has come with its green crop. The very
+cows are driven to their country pastures before the end of May; though
+I have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the barn and
+fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently, the Society for the
+Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle.
+
+A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his
+knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being
+ugly. Which is the best man to deal with—he who knows nothing about a
+subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he
+who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?
+
+My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head
+in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest
+that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.
+I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more
+definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the
+insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before—a discovery that
+there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
+philosophy. It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot
+know in any higher sense than this, any more than he can look serenely
+and with impunity in the face of the sun: ?? t? ????, ?? ?e????
+???se??,—“You will not perceive that, as perceiving a particular thing,”
+say the Chaldean Oracles.
+
+There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we
+may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience,
+but a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery
+certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before
+that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist—and with respect to
+knowledge we are all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty
+to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the
+law-maker. “That is active duty,” says the Vishnu Purana, “which is
+not for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation: all
+other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the
+cleverness of an artist.”
+
+It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our histories,
+how little exercised we have been in our minds, how few experiences we
+have had. I would fain be assured that I am growing apace and rankly,
+though my very growth disturb this dull equanimity—though it be with
+struggle through long, dark, muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It would
+be well if all our lives were a divine tragedy even, instead of this
+trivial comedy or farce. Dante, Bunyan, and others appear to have been
+exercised in their minds more than we: they were subjected to a kind of
+culture such as our district schools and colleges do not contemplate.
+Even Mahomet, though many may scream at his name, had a good deal more
+to live for, aye, and to die for, than they have commonly.
+
+When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he is
+walking on a railroad, then, indeed, the cars go by without his hearing
+them. But soon, by some inexorable law, our life goes by and the cars
+return.
+
+   “Gentle breeze, that wanderest unseen,
+   And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms,
+   Traveler of the windy glens,
+   Why hast thou left my ear so soon?”
+
+While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are
+attracted strongly to Nature. In their relation to Nature men appear
+to me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the
+animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the
+animals. How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there
+is among us! We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Κόσμος
+Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we
+esteem it at best only a curious philological fact.
+
+For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border
+life, on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and
+transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state
+into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper.
+Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a
+will-o’-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor
+firefly has shown me the causeway to it. Nature is a personality so vast
+and universal that we have never seen one of her features. The walker in
+the familiar fields which stretch around my native town sometimes finds
+himself in another land than is described in their owners’ deeds, as it
+were in some faraway field on the confines of the actual Concord, where
+her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which the word Concord suggests
+ceases to be suggested. These farms which I have myself surveyed, these
+bounds which I have set up, appear dimly still as through a mist; but
+they have no chemistry to fix them; they fade from the surface of the
+glass, and the picture which the painter painted stands out dimly from
+beneath. The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves no
+trace, and it will have no anniversary.
+
+I took a walk on Spaulding’s Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting
+sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden
+rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I
+was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining
+family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord,
+unknown to me—to whom the sun was servant—who had not gone into society
+in the village—who had not been called on. I saw their park,
+their pleasure-ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding’s
+cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew.
+Their house was not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do
+not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not.
+They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters.
+They are quite well. The farmer’s cart-path, which leads directly
+through their hall, does not in the least put them out, as the muddy
+bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies.
+They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their
+neighbor,—notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team
+through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their
+coat-of-arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks.
+Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics.
+There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving
+or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done
+away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in
+May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle
+thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry
+was not as in knots and excrescences embayed.
+
+But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out
+of my mind even now while I speak and endeavor to recall them, and
+recollect myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to
+recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of their
+cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this, I think I should
+move out of Concord.
+
+We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit
+us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem,
+few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for
+the grove in our minds is laid waste,—sold to feed unnecessary fires of
+ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them
+to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial
+season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the
+mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal
+migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of
+the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They
+no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin China
+grandeur. Those gra-a-ate thoughts, those gra-a-ate men you hear of!
+
+We hug the earth—how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate
+ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree, at least. I found my
+account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top
+of a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for
+I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen
+before,—so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked
+about the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, and yet I
+certainly should never have seen them. But, above all, I discovered
+around me,—it was near the end of June,—on the ends of the topmost
+branches only, a few minute and delicate red conelike blossoms,
+the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried
+straightway to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to stranger
+jurymen who walked the streets,—for it was court week—and to farmers and
+lumber-dealers and wood-choppers and hunters, and not one had ever seen
+the like before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell
+of ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of columns as
+perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts! Nature has from
+the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the
+heavens, above men’s heads and unobserved by them. We see only the
+flowers that are under our feet in the meadows. The pines have developed
+their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood every summer
+for ages, as well over the heads of Nature’s red children as of her
+white ones; yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen
+them.
+
+Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed
+over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering
+the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard
+within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us
+that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of
+thoughts. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours.
+There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,—the gospel
+according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early
+and kept up early, and to be where he is, is to be in season, in the
+foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and soundness
+of Nature, a brag for all the world,—healthiness as of a spring burst
+forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate this last instant of
+time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who has not
+betrayed his master many times since last he heard that note?
+
+The merit of this bird’s strain is in its freedom from all
+plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter,
+but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in
+doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on
+a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a
+cockerel crow far or near, I think to myself, “There is one of us well,
+at any rate,”—and with a sudden gush return to my senses.
+
+We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a
+meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before
+setting, after a cold grey day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon,
+and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on
+the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the
+shrub-oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the
+meadow eastward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such
+a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also
+was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of
+that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon,
+never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever, an
+infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child
+that walked there, it was more glorious still.
+
+The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all
+the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance as it
+has never set before,—where there is but a solitary marsh hawk to have
+his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and
+there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just
+beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked
+in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves,
+so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a
+golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every
+wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun
+on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.
+
+So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine
+more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our
+minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening
+light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in Autumn.
+
+
+

PG1031_text.txt

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+
+
+Transcribed from 1913 Methuen and Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                                CHARMIDES
+                             AND OTHER POEMS
+
+
+                                    BY
+                               OSCAR WILDE
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                            METHUEN & CO. LTD.
+                           36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
+                                  LONDON
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                _This volume was first published in 1913_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_Wilde’s Poems_, _a selection of which is given in this volume_, _were
+first published in volume form in_ 1881, _and were reprinted four times
+before the end of_ 1882.  _A new Edition with additional poems_,
+_including Ravenna_, _The Sphinx_, _and The Ballad of Reading Goal_, _was
+first published_ (_limited issues on hand-made paper and Japanese
+vellum_) _by Methuen & Co. in March_ 1908.  _A further Edition_ (_making
+the seventh_) _with some omissions from the issue of_ 1908, _but
+including two new poems_, _was published in September_, 1909.  _Eighth
+Edition_, _November_ 1909.  _Ninth Edition_, _December_ 1909.  _Tenth
+Edition_, _December_ 1910.  _Eleventh Edition_, _December_, 1911.
+_Twelfth Edition_, _May_, 1913.
+
+_A further selection of the poems_, _including The Ballad of Reading
+Gaol_, _is published uniform with this volume_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                    PAGE
+CHARMIDES                                              9
+REQUIESCAT                                            67
+SAN MINIATO                                           69
+ROME UNVISITED                                        71
+HUMANITAD                                             77
+LOUIS NAPOLEON                                       114
+ENDYMION                                             116
+LE JARDIN                                            119
+LA MER                                               120
+LE PANNEAU                                           121
+LES BALLONS                                          124
+CANZONET                                             126
+LE JARDIN DES TUILERIES                              129
+PAN: DOUBLE VILLANELLE                               131
+IN THE FOREST                                        135
+SYMPHONY IN YELLOW                                   136
+                        SONNETS
+HÉLAS!                                               139
+TO MILTON                                            140
+ON THE MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS IN BULGARIA        141
+HOLY WEEK AT GENOA                                   142
+URBS SACRA ÆTERNA                                    143
+E TENEBRIS                                           144
+AT VERONA                                            145
+ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS’ LOVE LETTERS        146
+THE NEW REMORSE                                      147
+
+
+
+
+CHARMIDES
+
+
+                                    I.
+
+   HE was a Grecian lad, who coming home
+      With pulpy figs and wine from Sicily
+   Stood at his galley’s prow, and let the foam
+      Blow through his crisp brown curls unconsciously,
+   And holding wave and wind in boy’s despite
+   Peered from his dripping seat across the wet and stormy night.
+
+   Till with the dawn he saw a burnished spear
+      Like a thin thread of gold against the sky,
+   And hoisted sail, and strained the creaking gear,
+      And bade the pilot head her lustily
+   Against the nor’west gale, and all day long
+   Held on his way, and marked the rowers’ time with measured song.
+
+   And when the faint Corinthian hills were red
+      Dropped anchor in a little sandy bay,
+   And with fresh boughs of olive crowned his head,
+      And brushed from cheek and throat the hoary spray,
+   And washed his limbs with oil, and from the hold
+   Brought out his linen tunic and his sandals brazen-soled,
+
+   And a rich robe stained with the fishers’ juice
+      Which of some swarthy trader he had bought
+   Upon the sunny quay at Syracuse,
+      And was with Tyrian broideries inwrought,
+   And by the questioning merchants made his way
+   Up through the soft and silver woods, and when the labouring day
+
+   Had spun its tangled web of crimson cloud,
+      Clomb the high hill, and with swift silent feet
+   Crept to the fane unnoticed by the crowd
+      Of busy priests, and from some dark retreat
+   Watched the young swains his frolic playmates bring
+   The firstling of their little flock, and the shy shepherd fling
+
+   The crackling salt upon the flame, or hang
+      His studded crook against the temple wall
+   To Her who keeps away the ravenous fang
+      Of the base wolf from homestead and from stall;
+   And then the clear-voiced maidens ’gan to sing,
+   And to the altar each man brought some goodly offering,
+
+   A beechen cup brimming with milky foam,
+      A fair cloth wrought with cunning imagery
+   Of hounds in chase, a waxen honey-comb
+      Dripping with oozy gold which scarce the bee
+   Had ceased from building, a black skin of oil
+   Meet for the wrestlers, a great boar the fierce and white-tusked spoil
+
+   Stolen from Artemis that jealous maid
+      To please Athena, and the dappled hide
+   Of a tall stag who in some mountain glade
+      Had met the shaft; and then the herald cried,
+   And from the pillared precinct one by one
+   Went the glad Greeks well pleased that they their simple vows had
+   done.
+
+   And the old priest put out the waning fires
+      Save that one lamp whose restless ruby glowed
+   For ever in the cell, and the shrill lyres
+      Came fainter on the wind, as down the road
+   In joyous dance these country folk did pass,
+   And with stout hands the warder closed the gates of polished brass.
+
+   Long time he lay and hardly dared to breathe,
+      And heard the cadenced drip of spilt-out wine,
+   And the rose-petals falling from the wreath
+      As the night breezes wandered through the shrine,
+   And seemed to be in some entrancèd swoon
+   Till through the open roof above the full and brimming moon
+
+   Flooded with sheeny waves the marble floor,
+      When from his nook up leapt the venturous lad,
+   And flinging wide the cedar-carven door
+      Beheld an awful image saffron-clad
+   And armed for battle! the gaunt Griffin glared
+   From the huge helm, and the long lance of wreck and ruin flared
+
+   Like a red rod of flame, stony and steeled
+      The Gorgon’s head its leaden eyeballs rolled,
+   And writhed its snaky horrors through the shield,
+      And gaped aghast with bloodless lips and cold
+   In passion impotent, while with blind gaze
+   The blinking owl between the feet hooted in shrill amaze.
+
+   The lonely fisher as he trimmed his lamp
+      Far out at sea off Sunium, or cast
+   The net for tunnies, heard a brazen tramp
+      Of horses smite the waves, and a wild blast
+   Divide the folded curtains of the night,
+   And knelt upon the little poop, and prayed in holy fright.
+
+   And guilty lovers in their venery
+      Forgat a little while their stolen sweets,
+   Deeming they heard dread Dian’s bitter cry;
+      And the grim watchmen on their lofty seats
+   Ran to their shields in haste precipitate,
+   Or strained black-bearded throats across the dusky parapet.
+
+   For round the temple rolled the clang of arms,
+      And the twelve Gods leapt up in marble fear,
+   And the air quaked with dissonant alarums
+      Till huge Poseidon shook his mighty spear,
+   And on the frieze the prancing horses neighed,
+   And the low tread of hurrying feet rang from the cavalcade.
+
+   Ready for death with parted lips he stood,
+      And well content at such a price to see
+   That calm wide brow, that terrible maidenhood,
+      The marvel of that pitiless chastity,
+   Ah! well content indeed, for never wight
+   Since Troy’s young shepherd prince had seen so wonderful a sight.
+
+   Ready for death he stood, but lo! the air
+      Grew silent, and the horses ceased to neigh,
+   And off his brow he tossed the clustering hair,
+      And from his limbs he throw the cloak away;
+   For whom would not such love make desperate?
+   And nigher came, and touched her throat, and with hands violate
+
+   Undid the cuirass, and the crocus gown,
+      And bared the breasts of polished ivory,
+   Till from the waist the peplos falling down
+      Left visible the secret mystery
+   Which to no lover will Athena show,
+   The grand cool flanks, the crescent thighs, the bossy hills of snow.
+
+   Those who have never known a lover’s sin
+      Let them not read my ditty, it will be
+   To their dull ears so musicless and thin
+      That they will have no joy of it, but ye
+   To whose wan cheeks now creeps the lingering smile,
+   Ye who have learned who Eros is,—O listen yet awhile.
+
+   A little space he let his greedy eyes
+      Rest on the burnished image, till mere sight
+   Half swooned for surfeit of such luxuries,
+      And then his lips in hungering delight
+   Fed on her lips, and round the towered neck
+   He flung his arms, nor cared at all his passion’s will to check.
+
+   Never I ween did lover hold such tryst,
+      For all night long he murmured honeyed word,
+   And saw her sweet unravished limbs, and kissed
+      Her pale and argent body undisturbed,
+   And paddled with the polished throat, and pressed
+   His hot and beating heart upon her chill and icy breast.
+
+   It was as if Numidian javelins
+      Pierced through and through his wild and whirling brain,
+   And his nerves thrilled like throbbing violins
+      In exquisite pulsation, and the pain
+   Was such sweet anguish that he never drew
+   His lips from hers till overhead the lark of warning flew.
+
+   They who have never seen the daylight peer
+      Into a darkened room, and drawn the curtain,
+   And with dull eyes and wearied from some dear
+      And worshipped body risen, they for certain
+   Will never know of what I try to sing,
+   How long the last kiss was, how fond and late his lingering.
+
+   The moon was girdled with a crystal rim,
+      The sign which shipmen say is ominous
+   Of wrath in heaven, the wan stars were dim,
+      And the low lightening east was tremulous
+   With the faint fluttering wings of flying dawn,
+   Ere from the silent sombre shrine his lover had withdrawn.
+
+   Down the steep rock with hurried feet and fast
+      Clomb the brave lad, and reached the cave of Pan,
+   And heard the goat-foot snoring as he passed,
+      And leapt upon a grassy knoll and ran
+   Like a young fawn unto an olive wood
+   Which in a shady valley by the well-built city stood;
+
+   And sought a little stream, which well he knew,
+      For oftentimes with boyish careless shout
+   The green and crested grebe he would pursue,
+      Or snare in woven net the silver trout,
+   And down amid the startled reeds he lay
+   Panting in breathless sweet affright, and waited for the day.
+
+   On the green bank he lay, and let one hand
+      Dip in the cool dark eddies listlessly,
+   And soon the breath of morning came and fanned
+      His hot flushed cheeks, or lifted wantonly
+   The tangled curls from off his forehead, while
+   He on the running water gazed with strange and secret smile.
+
+   And soon the shepherd in rough woollen cloak
+      With his long crook undid the wattled cotes,
+   And from the stack a thin blue wreath of smoke
+      Curled through the air across the ripening oats,
+   And on the hill the yellow house-dog bayed
+   As through the crisp and rustling fern the heavy cattle strayed.
+
+   And when the light-foot mower went afield
+      Across the meadows laced with threaded dew,
+   And the sheep bleated on the misty weald,
+      And from its nest the waking corncrake flew,
+   Some woodmen saw him lying by the stream
+   And marvelled much that any lad so beautiful could seem,
+
+   Nor deemed him born of mortals, and one said,
+      ‘It is young Hylas, that false runaway
+   Who with a Naiad now would make his bed
+      Forgetting Herakles,’ but others, ‘Nay,
+   It is Narcissus, his own paramour,
+   Those are the fond and crimson lips no woman can allure.’
+
+   And when they nearer came a third one cried,
+      ‘It is young Dionysos who has hid
+   His spear and fawnskin by the river side
+      Weary of hunting with the Bassarid,
+   And wise indeed were we away to fly:
+   They live not long who on the gods immortal come to spy.’
+
+   So turned they back, and feared to look behind,
+      And told the timid swain how they had seen
+   Amid the reeds some woodland god reclined,
+      And no man dared to cross the open green,
+   And on that day no olive-tree was slain,
+   Nor rushes cut, but all deserted was the fair domain,
+
+   Save when the neat-herd’s lad, his empty pail
+      Well slung upon his back, with leap and bound
+   Raced on the other side, and stopped to hail,
+      Hoping that he some comrade new had found,
+   And gat no answer, and then half afraid
+   Passed on his simple way, or down the still and silent glade
+
+   A little girl ran laughing from the farm,
+      Not thinking of love’s secret mysteries,
+   And when she saw the white and gleaming arm
+      And all his manlihood, with longing eyes
+   Whose passion mocked her sweet virginity
+   Watched him awhile, and then stole back sadly and wearily.
+
+   Far off he heard the city’s hum and noise,
+      And now and then the shriller laughter where
+   The passionate purity of brown-limbed boys
+      Wrestled or raced in the clear healthful air,
+   And now and then a little tinkling bell
+   As the shorn wether led the sheep down to the mossy well.
+
+   Through the grey willows danced the fretful gnat,
+      The grasshopper chirped idly from the tree,
+   In sleek and oily coat the water-rat
+      Breasting the little ripples manfully
+   Made for the wild-duck’s nest, from bough to bough
+   Hopped the shy finch, and the huge tortoise crept across the slough.
+
+   On the faint wind floated the silky seeds
+      As the bright scythe swept through the waving grass,
+   The ouzel-cock splashed circles in the reeds
+      And flecked with silver whorls the forest’s glass,
+   Which scarce had caught again its imagery
+   Ere from its bed the dusky tench leapt at the dragon-fly.
+
+   But little care had he for any thing
+      Though up and down the beech the squirrel played,
+   And from the copse the linnet ’gan to sing
+      To its brown mate its sweetest serenade;
+   Ah! little care indeed, for he had seen
+   The breasts of Pallas and the naked wonder of the Queen.
+
+   But when the herdsman called his straggling goats
+      With whistling pipe across the rocky road,
+   And the shard-beetle with its trumpet-notes
+      Boomed through the darkening woods, and seemed to bode
+   Of coming storm, and the belated crane
+   Passed homeward like a shadow, and the dull big drops of rain
+
+   Fell on the pattering fig-leaves, up he rose,
+      And from the gloomy forest went his way
+   Past sombre homestead and wet orchard-close,
+      And came at last unto a little quay,
+   And called his mates aboard, and took his seat
+   On the high poop, and pushed from land, and loosed the dripping sheet,
+
+   And steered across the bay, and when nine suns
+      Passed down the long and laddered way of gold,
+   And nine pale moons had breathed their orisons
+      To the chaste stars their confessors, or told
+   Their dearest secret to the downy moth
+   That will not fly at noonday, through the foam and surging froth
+
+   Came a great owl with yellow sulphurous eyes
+      And lit upon the ship, whose timbers creaked
+   As though the lading of three argosies
+      Were in the hold, and flapped its wings and shrieked,
+   And darkness straightway stole across the deep,
+   Sheathed was Orion’s sword, dread Mars himself fled down the steep,
+
+   And the moon hid behind a tawny mask
+      Of drifting cloud, and from the ocean’s marge
+   Rose the red plume, the huge and hornèd casque,
+      The seven-cubit spear, the brazen targe!
+   And clad in bright and burnished panoply
+   Athena strode across the stretch of sick and shivering sea!
+
+   To the dull sailors’ sight her loosened looks
+      Seemed like the jagged storm-rack, and her feet
+   Only the spume that floats on hidden rocks,
+      And, marking how the rising waters beat
+   Against the rolling ship, the pilot cried
+   To the young helmsman at the stern to luff to windward side
+
+   But he, the overbold adulterer,
+      A dear profaner of great mysteries,
+   An ardent amorous idolater,
+      When he beheld those grand relentless eyes
+   Laughed loud for joy, and crying out ‘I come’
+   Leapt from the lofty poop into the chill and churning foam.
+
+   Then fell from the high heaven one bright star,
+      One dancer left the circling galaxy,
+   And back to Athens on her clattering car
+      In all the pride of venged divinity
+   Pale Pallas swept with shrill and steely clank,
+   And a few gurgling bubbles rose where her boy lover sank.
+
+   And the mast shuddered as the gaunt owl flew
+      With mocking hoots after the wrathful Queen,
+   And the old pilot bade the trembling crew
+      Hoist the big sail, and told how he had seen
+   Close to the stern a dim and giant form,
+   And like a dipping swallow the stout ship dashed through the storm.
+
+   And no man dared to speak of Charmides
+      Deeming that he some evil thing had wrought,
+   And when they reached the strait Symplegades
+      They beached their galley on the shore, and sought
+   The toll-gate of the city hastily,
+   And in the market showed their brown and pictured pottery.
+
+                                   II.
+
+   BUT some good Triton-god had ruth, and bare
+      The boy’s drowned body back to Grecian land,
+   And mermaids combed his dank and dripping hair
+      And smoothed his brow, and loosed his clenching hand;
+   Some brought sweet spices from far Araby,
+   And others bade the halcyon sing her softest lullaby.
+
+   And when he neared his old Athenian home,
+      A mighty billow rose up suddenly
+   Upon whose oily back the clotted foam
+      Lay diapered in some strange fantasy,
+   And clasping him unto its glassy breast
+   Swept landward, like a white-maned steed upon a venturous quest!
+
+   Now where Colonos leans unto the sea
+      There lies a long and level stretch of lawn;
+   The rabbit knows it, and the mountain bee
+      For it deserts Hymettus, and the Faun
+   Is not afraid, for never through the day
+   Comes a cry ruder than the shout of shepherd lads at play.
+
+   But often from the thorny labyrinth
+      And tangled branches of the circling wood
+   The stealthy hunter sees young Hyacinth
+      Hurling the polished disk, and draws his hood
+   Over his guilty gaze, and creeps away,
+   Nor dares to wind his horn, or—else at the first break of day
+
+   The Dryads come and throw the leathern ball
+      Along the reedy shore, and circumvent
+   Some goat-eared Pan to be their seneschal
+      For fear of bold Poseidon’s ravishment,
+   And loose their girdles, with shy timorous eyes,
+   Lest from the surf his azure arms and purple beard should rise.
+
+   On this side and on that a rocky cave,
+      Hung with the yellow-belled laburnum, stands
+   Smooth is the beach, save where some ebbing wave
+      Leaves its faint outline etched upon the sands,
+   As though it feared to be too soon forgot
+   By the green rush, its playfellow,—and yet, it is a spot
+
+   So small, that the inconstant butterfly
+      Could steal the hoarded money from each flower
+   Ere it was noon, and still not satisfy
+      Its over-greedy love,—within an hour
+   A sailor boy, were he but rude enow
+   To land and pluck a garland for his galley’s painted prow,
+
+   Would almost leave the little meadow bare,
+      For it knows nothing of great pageantry,
+   Only a few narcissi here and there
+      Stand separate in sweet austerity,
+   Dotting the unmown grass with silver stars,
+   And here and there a daffodil waves tiny scimitars.
+
+   Hither the billow brought him, and was glad
+      Of such dear servitude, and where the land
+   Was virgin of all waters laid the lad
+      Upon the golden margent of the strand,
+   And like a lingering lover oft returned
+   To kiss those pallid limbs which once with intense fire burned,
+
+   Ere the wet seas had quenched that holocaust,
+      That self-fed flame, that passionate lustihead,
+   Ere grisly death with chill and nipping frost
+      Had withered up those lilies white and red
+   Which, while the boy would through the forest range,
+   Answered each other in a sweet antiphonal counter-change.
+
+   And when at dawn the wood-nymphs, hand-in-hand,
+      Threaded the bosky dell, their satyr spied
+   The boy’s pale body stretched upon the sand,
+      And feared Poseidon’s treachery, and cried,
+   And like bright sunbeams flitting through a glade
+   Each startled Dryad sought some safe and leafy ambuscade.
+
+   Save one white girl, who deemed it would not be
+      So dread a thing to feel a sea-god’s arms
+   Crushing her breasts in amorous tyranny,
+      And longed to listen to those subtle charms
+   Insidious lovers weave when they would win
+   Some fencèd fortress, and stole back again, nor thought it sin
+
+   To yield her treasure unto one so fair,
+      And lay beside him, thirsty with love’s drouth,
+   Called him soft names, played with his tangled hair,
+      And with hot lips made havoc of his mouth
+   Afraid he might not wake, and then afraid
+   Lest he might wake too soon, fled back, and then, fond renegade,
+
+   Returned to fresh assault, and all day long
+      Sat at his side, and laughed at her new toy,
+   And held his hand, and sang her sweetest song,
+      Then frowned to see how froward was the boy
+   Who would not with her maidenhood entwine,
+   Nor knew that three days since his eyes had looked on Proserpine;
+
+   Nor knew what sacrilege his lips had done,
+      But said, ‘He will awake, I know him well,
+   He will awake at evening when the sun
+      Hangs his red shield on Corinth’s citadel;
+   This sleep is but a cruel treachery
+   To make me love him more, and in some cavern of the sea
+
+   Deeper than ever falls the fisher’s line
+      Already a huge Triton blows his horn,
+   And weaves a garland from the crystalline
+      And drifting ocean-tendrils to adorn
+   The emerald pillars of our bridal bed,
+   For sphered in foaming silver, and with coral crownèd head,
+
+   We two will sit upon a throne of pearl,
+      And a blue wave will be our canopy,
+   And at our feet the water-snakes will curl
+      In all their amethystine panoply
+   Of diamonded mail, and we will mark
+   The mullets swimming by the mast of some storm-foundered bark,
+
+   Vermilion-finned with eyes of bossy gold
+      Like flakes of crimson light, and the great deep
+   His glassy-portaled chamber will unfold,
+      And we will see the painted dolphins sleep
+   Cradled by murmuring halcyons on the rocks
+   Where Proteus in quaint suit of green pastures his monstrous flocks.
+
+   And tremulous opal-hued anemones
+      Will wave their purple fringes where we tread
+   Upon the mirrored floor, and argosies
+      Of fishes flecked with tawny scales will thread
+   The drifting cordage of the shattered wreck,
+   And honey-coloured amber beads our twining limbs will deck.’
+
+   But when that baffled Lord of War the Sun
+      With gaudy pennon flying passed away
+   Into his brazen House, and one by one
+      The little yellow stars began to stray
+   Across the field of heaven, ah! then indeed
+   She feared his lips upon her lips would never care to feed,
+
+   And cried, ‘Awake, already the pale moon
+      Washes the trees with silver, and the wave
+   Creeps grey and chilly up this sandy dune,
+      The croaking frogs are out, and from the cave
+   The nightjar shrieks, the fluttering bats repass,
+   And the brown stoat with hollow flanks creeps through the dusky grass.
+
+   Nay, though thou art a god, be not so coy,
+      For in yon stream there is a little reed
+   That often whispers how a lovely boy
+      Lay with her once upon a grassy mead,
+   Who when his cruel pleasure he had done
+   Spread wings of rustling gold and soared aloft into the sun.
+
+   Be not so coy, the laurel trembles still
+      With great Apollo’s kisses, and the fir
+   Whose clustering sisters fringe the seaward hill
+      Hath many a tale of that bold ravisher
+   Whom men call Boreas, and I have seen
+   The mocking eyes of Hermes through the poplar’s silvery sheen.
+
+   Even the jealous Naiads call me fair,
+      And every morn a young and ruddy swain
+   Woos me with apples and with locks of hair,
+      And seeks to soothe my virginal disdain
+   By all the gifts the gentle wood-nymphs love;
+   But yesterday he brought to me an iris-plumaged dove
+
+   With little crimson feet, which with its store
+      Of seven spotted eggs the cruel lad
+   Had stolen from the lofty sycamore
+      At daybreak, when her amorous comrade had
+   Flown off in search of berried juniper
+   Which most they love; the fretful wasp, that earliest vintager
+
+   Of the blue grapes, hath not persistency
+      So constant as this simple shepherd-boy
+   For my poor lips, his joyous purity
+      And laughing sunny eyes might well decoy
+   A Dryad from her oath to Artemis;
+   For very beautiful is he, his mouth was made to kiss;
+
+   His argent forehead, like a rising moon
+      Over the dusky hills of meeting brows,
+   Is crescent shaped, the hot and Tyrian noon
+      Leads from the myrtle-grove no goodlier spouse
+   For Cytheræa, the first silky down
+   Fringes his blushing cheeks, and his young limbs are strong and brown;
+
+   And he is rich, and fat and fleecy herds
+      Of bleating sheep upon his meadows lie,
+   And many an earthen bowl of yellow curds
+      Is in his homestead for the thievish fly
+   To swim and drown in, the pink clover mead
+   Keeps its sweet store for him, and he can pipe on oaten reed.
+
+   And yet I love him not; it was for thee
+      I kept my love; I knew that thou would’st come
+   To rid me of this pallid chastity,
+      Thou fairest flower of the flowerless foam
+   Of all the wide Ægean, brightest star
+   Of ocean’s azure heavens where the mirrored planets are!
+
+   I knew that thou would’st come, for when at first
+      The dry wood burgeoned, and the sap of spring
+   Swelled in my green and tender bark or burst
+      To myriad multitudinous blossoming
+   Which mocked the midnight with its mimic moons
+   That did not dread the dawn, and first the thrushes’ rapturous tunes
+
+   Startled the squirrel from its granary,
+      And cuckoo flowers fringed the narrow lane,
+   Through my young leaves a sensuous ecstasy
+      Crept like new wine, and every mossy vein
+   Throbbed with the fitful pulse of amorous blood,
+   And the wild winds of passion shook my slim stem’s maidenhood.
+
+   The trooping fawns at evening came and laid
+      Their cool black noses on my lowest boughs,
+   And on my topmost branch the blackbird made
+      A little nest of grasses for his spouse,
+   And now and then a twittering wren would light
+   On a thin twig which hardly bare the weight of such delight.
+
+   I was the Attic shepherd’s trysting place,
+      Beneath my shadow Amaryllis lay,
+   And round my trunk would laughing Daphnis chase
+      The timorous girl, till tired out with play
+   She felt his hot breath stir her tangled hair,
+   And turned, and looked, and fled no more from such delightful snare.
+
+   Then come away unto my ambuscade
+      Where clustering woodbine weaves a canopy
+   For amorous pleasaunce, and the rustling shade
+      Of Paphian myrtles seems to sanctify
+   The dearest rites of love; there in the cool
+   And green recesses of its farthest depth there is pool,
+
+   The ouzel’s haunt, the wild bee’s pasturage,
+      For round its rim great creamy lilies float
+   Through their flat leaves in verdant anchorage,
+      Each cup a white-sailed golden-laden boat
+   Steered by a dragon-fly,—be not afraid
+   To leave this wan and wave-kissed shore, surely the place was made
+
+   For lovers such as we; the Cyprian Queen,
+      One arm around her boyish paramour,
+   Strays often there at eve, and I have seen
+      The moon strip off her misty vestiture
+   For young Endymion’s eyes; be not afraid,
+   The panther feet of Dian never tread that secret glade.
+
+   Nay if thou will’st, back to the beating brine,
+      Back to the boisterous billow let us go,
+   And walk all day beneath the hyaline
+      Huge vault of Neptune’s watery portico,
+   And watch the purple monsters of the deep
+   Sport in ungainly play, and from his lair keen Xiphias leap.
+
+   For if my mistress find me lying here
+      She will not ruth or gentle pity show,
+   But lay her boar-spear down, and with austere
+      Relentless fingers string the cornel bow,
+   And draw the feathered notch against her breast,
+   And loose the archèd cord; aye, even now upon the quest
+
+   I hear her hurrying feet,—awake, awake,
+      Thou laggard in love’s battle! once at least
+   Let me drink deep of passion’s wine, and slake
+      My parchèd being with the nectarous feast
+   Which even gods affect!  O come, Love, come,
+   Still we have time to reach the cavern of thine azure home.’
+
+   Scarce had she spoken when the shuddering trees
+      Shook, and the leaves divided, and the air
+   Grew conscious of a god, and the grey seas
+      Crawled backward, and a long and dismal blare
+   Blew from some tasselled horn, a sleuth-hound bayed,
+   And like a flame a barbèd reed flew whizzing down the glade.
+
+   And where the little flowers of her breast
+      Just brake into their milky blossoming,
+   This murderous paramour, this unbidden guest,
+      Pierced and struck deep in horrid chambering,
+   And ploughed a bloody furrow with its dart,
+   And dug a long red road, and cleft with wingèd death her heart.
+
+   Sobbing her life out with a bitter cry
+      On the boy’s body fell the Dryad maid,
+   Sobbing for incomplete virginity,
+      And raptures unenjoyed, and pleasures dead,
+   And all the pain of things unsatisfied,
+   And the bright drops of crimson youth crept down her throbbing side.
+
+   Ah! pitiful it was to hear her moan,
+      And very pitiful to see her die
+   Ere she had yielded up her sweets, or known
+      The joy of passion, that dread mystery
+   Which not to know is not to live at all,
+   And yet to know is to be held in death’s most deadly thrall.
+
+   But as it hapt the Queen of Cythere,
+      Who with Adonis all night long had lain
+   Within some shepherd’s hut in Arcady,
+      On team of silver doves and gilded wain
+   Was journeying Paphos-ward, high up afar
+   From mortal ken between the mountains and the morning star,
+
+   And when low down she spied the hapless pair,
+      And heard the Oread’s faint despairing cry,
+   Whose cadence seemed to play upon the air
+      As though it were a viol, hastily
+   She bade her pigeons fold each straining plume,
+   And dropt to earth, and reached the strand, and saw their dolorous
+   doom.
+
+   For as a gardener turning back his head
+      To catch the last notes of the linnet, mows
+   With careless scythe too near some flower bed,
+      And cuts the thorny pillar of the rose,
+   And with the flower’s loosened loneliness
+   Strews the brown mould; or as some shepherd lad in wantonness
+
+   Driving his little flock along the mead
+      Treads down two daffodils, which side by aide
+   Have lured the lady-bird with yellow brede
+      And made the gaudy moth forget its pride,
+   Treads down their brimming golden chalices
+   Under light feet which were not made for such rude ravages;
+
+   Or as a schoolboy tired of his book
+      Flings himself down upon the reedy grass
+   And plucks two water-lilies from the brook,
+      And for a time forgets the hour glass,
+   Then wearies of their sweets, and goes his way,
+   And lets the hot sun kill them, even go these lovers lay.
+
+   And Venus cried, ‘It is dread Artemis
+      Whose bitter hand hath wrought this cruelty,
+   Or else that mightier maid whose care it is
+      To guard her strong and stainless majesty
+   Upon the hill Athenian,—alas!
+   That they who loved so well unloved into Death’s house should pass.’
+
+   So with soft hands she laid the boy and girl
+      In the great golden waggon tenderly
+   (Her white throat whiter than a moony pearl
+      Just threaded with a blue vein’s tapestry
+   Had not yet ceased to throb, and still her breast
+   Swayed like a wind-stirred lily in ambiguous unrest)
+
+   And then each pigeon spread its milky van,
+      The bright car soared into the dawning sky,
+   And like a cloud the aerial caravan
+      Passed over the Ægean silently,
+   Till the faint air was troubled with the song
+   From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all night long.
+
+   But when the doves had reached their wonted goal
+      Where the wide stair of orbèd marble dips
+   Its snows into the sea, her fluttering soul
+      Just shook the trembling petals of her lips
+   And passed into the void, and Venus knew
+   That one fair maid the less would walk amid her retinue,
+
+   And bade her servants carve a cedar chest
+      With all the wonder of this history,
+   Within whose scented womb their limbs should rest
+      Where olive-trees make tender the blue sky
+   On the low hills of Paphos, and the Faun
+   Pipes in the noonday, and the nightingale sings on till dawn.
+
+   Nor failed they to obey her hest, and ere
+      The morning bee had stung the daffodil
+   With tiny fretful spear, or from its lair
+      The waking stag had leapt across the rill
+   And roused the ouzel, or the lizard crept
+   Athwart the sunny rock, beneath the grass their bodies slept.
+
+   And when day brake, within that silver shrine
+      Fed by the flames of cressets tremulous,
+   Queen Venus knelt and prayed to Proserpine
+      That she whose beauty made Death amorous
+   Should beg a guerdon from her pallid Lord,
+   And let Desire pass across dread Charon’s icy ford.
+
+                                   III
+
+   IN melancholy moonless Acheron,
+      Farm for the goodly earth and joyous day
+   Where no spring ever buds, nor ripening sun
+      Weighs down the apple trees, nor flowery May
+   Chequers with chestnut blooms the grassy floor,
+   Where thrushes never sing, and piping linnets mate no more,
+
+   There by a dim and dark Lethæan well
+      Young Charmides was lying; wearily
+   He plucked the blossoms from the asphodel,
+      And with its little rifled treasury
+   Strewed the dull waters of the dusky stream,
+   And watched the white stars founder, and the land was like a dream,
+
+   When as he gazed into the watery glass
+      And through his brown hair’s curly tangles scanned
+   His own wan face, a shadow seemed to pass
+      Across the mirror, and a little hand
+   Stole into his, and warm lips timidly
+   Brushed his pale cheeks, and breathed their secret forth into a sigh.
+
+   Then turned he round his weary eyes and saw,
+      And ever nigher still their faces came,
+   And nigher ever did their young mouths draw
+      Until they seemed one perfect rose of flame,
+   And longing arms around her neck he cast,
+   And felt her throbbing bosom, and his breath came hot and fast,
+
+   And all his hoarded sweets were hers to kiss,
+      And all her maidenhood was his to slay,
+   And limb to limb in long and rapturous bliss
+      Their passion waxed and waned,—O why essay
+   To pipe again of love, too venturous reed!
+   Enough, enough that Eros laughed upon that flowerless mead.
+
+   Too venturous poesy, O why essay
+      To pipe again of passion! fold thy wings
+   O’er daring Icarus and bid thy lay
+      Sleep hidden in the lyre’s silent strings
+   Till thou hast found the old Castalian rill,
+   Or from the Lesbian waters plucked drowned Sappho’s golden quid!
+
+   Enough, enough that he whose life had been
+      A fiery pulse of sin, a splendid shame,
+   Could in the loveless land of Hades glean
+      One scorching harvest from those fields of flame
+   Where passion walks with naked unshod feet
+   And is not wounded,—ah! enough that once their lips could meet
+
+   In that wild throb when all existences
+      Seemed narrowed to one single ecstasy
+   Which dies through its own sweetness and the stress
+      Of too much pleasure, ere Persephone
+   Had bade them serve her by the ebon throne
+   Of the pale God who in the fields of Enna loosed her zone.
+
+
+
+
+POEMS
+
+
+REQUIESCAT
+
+
+   TREAD lightly, she is near
+      Under the snow,
+   Speak gently, she can hear
+      The daisies grow.
+
+   All her bright golden hair
+      Tarnished with rust,
+   She that was young and fair
+      Fallen to dust.
+
+   Lily-like, white as snow,
+      She hardly knew
+   She was a woman, so
+      Sweetly she grew.
+
+   Coffin-board, heavy stone,
+      Lie on her breast,
+   I vex my heart alone,
+      She is at rest.
+
+   Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
+      Lyre or sonnet,
+   All my life’s buried here,
+      Heap earth upon it.
+
+   AVIGNON
+
+
+
+SAN MINIATO
+
+
+   SEE, I have climbed the mountain side
+      Up to this holy house of God,
+      Where once that Angel-Painter trod
+   Who saw the heavens opened wide,
+
+   And throned upon the crescent moon
+      The Virginal white Queen of Grace,—
+      Mary! could I but see thy face
+   Death could not come at all too soon.
+
+   O crowned by God with thorns and pain!
+      Mother of Christ!  O mystic wife!
+      My heart is weary of this life
+   And over-sad to sing again.
+
+   O crowned by God with love and flame!
+      O crowned by Christ the Holy One!
+      O listen ere the searching sun
+   Show to the world my sin and shame.
+
+
+
+ROME UNVISITED
+
+
+                                    I.
+
+   THE corn has turned from grey to red,
+      Since first my spirit wandered forth
+      From the drear cities of the north,
+   And to Italia’s mountains fled.
+
+   And here I set my face towards home,
+      For all my pilgrimage is done,
+      Although, methinks, yon blood-red sun
+   Marshals the way to Holy Rome.
+
+   O Blessed Lady, who dost hold
+      Upon the seven hills thy reign!
+      O Mother without blot or stain,
+   Crowned with bright crowns of triple gold!
+
+   O Roma, Roma, at thy feet
+      I lay this barren gift of song!
+      For, ah! the way is steep and long
+   That leads unto thy sacred street.
+
+                                   II.
+
+   AND yet what joy it were for me
+      To turn my feet unto the south,
+      And journeying towards the Tiber mouth
+   To kneel again at Fiesole!
+
+   And wandering through the tangled pines
+      That break the gold of Arno’s stream,
+      To see the purple mist and gleam
+   Of morning on the Apennines
+
+   By many a vineyard-hidden home,
+      Orchard and olive-garden grey,
+      Till from the drear Campagna’s way
+   The seven hills bear up the dome!
+
+                                   III.
+
+   A PILGRIM from the northern seas—
+      What joy for me to seek alone
+      The wondrous temple and the throne
+   Of him who holds the awful keys!
+
+   When, bright with purple and with gold
+      Come priest and holy cardinal,
+      And borne above the heads of all
+   The gentle Shepherd of the Fold.
+
+   O joy to see before I die
+      The only God-anointed king,
+      And hear the silver trumpets ring
+   A triumph as he passes by!
+
+   Or at the brazen-pillared shrine
+      Holds high the mystic sacrifice,
+      And shows his God to human eyes
+   Beneath the veil of bread and wine.
+
+                                   IV.
+
+   FOR lo, what changes time can bring!
+      The cycles of revolving years
+      May free my heart from all its fears,
+   And teach my lips a song to sing.
+
+   Before yon field of trembling gold
+      Is garnered into dusty sheaves,
+      Or ere the autumn’s scarlet leaves
+   Flutter as birds adown the wold,
+
+   I may have run the glorious race,
+      And caught the torch while yet aflame,
+      And called upon the holy name
+   Of Him who now doth hide His face.
+
+   ARONA
+
+
+
+HUMANITAD
+
+
+   IT is full winter now: the trees are bare,
+      Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
+   Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
+      The autumn’s gaudy livery whose gold
+   Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true
+   To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew
+
+   From Saturn’s cave; a few thin wisps of hay
+      Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
+   Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer’s day
+      From the low meadows up the narrow lane;
+   Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
+   Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep
+
+   From the shut stable to the frozen stream
+      And back again disconsolate, and miss
+   The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
+      And overhead in circling listlessness
+   The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,
+   Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack
+
+   Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
+      And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,
+   And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
+      Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
+   And a stray seamew with its fretful cry
+   Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.
+
+   Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings
+      His load of faggots from the chilly byre,
+   And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings
+      The sappy billets on the waning fire,
+   And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare
+   His children at their play, and yet,—the spring is in the air;
+
+   Already the slim crocus stirs the snow,
+      And soon yon blanchèd fields will bloom again
+   With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow,
+      For with the first warm kisses of the rain
+   The winter’s icy sorrow breaks to tears,
+   And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers
+
+   From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie,
+      And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runs
+   Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly
+      Across our path at evening, and the suns
+   Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see
+   Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery
+
+   Dance through the hedges till the early rose,
+      (That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!)
+   Burst from its sheathèd emerald and disclose
+      The little quivering disk of golden fire
+   Which the bees know so well, for with it come
+   Pale boy’s-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom.
+
+   Then up and down the field the sower goes,
+      While close behind the laughing younker scares
+   With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows,
+      And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears,
+   And on the grass the creamy blossom falls
+   In odorous excess, and faint half-whispered madrigals
+
+   Steal from the bluebells’ nodding carillons
+      Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine,
+   That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons
+      With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine
+   In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed
+   And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed
+
+   Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply,
+      And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes,
+   Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy
+      Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise,
+   And violets getting overbold withdraw
+   From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw.
+
+   O happy field! and O thrice happy tree!
+      Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock
+   And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea,
+      Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock
+   Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon
+   Through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at noon.
+
+   Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour,
+      The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns
+   Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture
+      Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations
+   With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind,
+   And straggling traveller’s-joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind.
+
+   Dear bride of Nature and most bounteous spring,
+      That canst give increase to the sweet-breath’d kine,
+   And to the kid its little horns, and bring
+      The soft and silky blossoms to the vine,
+   Where is that old nepenthe which of yore
+   Man got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore!
+
+   There was a time when any common bird
+      Could make me sing in unison, a time
+   When all the strings of boyish life were stirred
+      To quick response or more melodious rhyme
+   By every forest idyll;—do I change?
+   Or rather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range?
+
+   Nay, nay, thou art the same: ’tis I who seek
+      To vex with sighs thy simple solitude,
+   And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek
+      Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood;
+   Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare
+   To taint such wine with the salt poison of own despair!
+
+   Thou art the same: ’tis I whose wretched soul
+      Takes discontent to be its paramour,
+   And gives its kingdom to the rude control
+      Of what should be its servitor,—for sure
+   Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea
+   Contain it not, and the huge deep answer ‘’Tis not in me.’
+
+   To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect
+      In natural honour, not to bend the knee
+   In profitless prostrations whose effect
+      Is by itself condemned, what alchemy
+   Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed
+   Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?
+
+   The minor chord which ends the harmony,
+      And for its answering brother waits in vain
+   Sobbing for incompleted melody,
+      Dies a swan’s death; but I the heir of pain,
+   A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes,
+   Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise.
+
+   The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,
+      The little dust stored in the narrow urn,
+   The gentle ΧΑΙΡΕ of the Attic tomb,—
+      Were not these better far than to return
+   To my old fitful restless malady,
+   Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery?
+
+   Nay! for perchance that poppy-crownèd god
+      Is like the watcher by a sick man’s bed
+   Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod
+      Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said,
+   Death is too rude, too obvious a key
+   To solve one single secret in a life’s philosophy.
+
+   And Love! that noble madness, whose august
+      And inextinguishable might can slay
+   The soul with honeyed drugs,—alas! I must
+      From such sweet ruin play the runaway,
+   Although too constant memory never can
+   Forget the archèd splendour of those brows Olympian
+
+   Which for a little season made my youth
+      So soft a swoon of exquisite indolence
+   That all the chiding of more prudent Truth
+      Seemed the thin voice of jealousy,—O hence
+   Thou huntress deadlier than Artemis!
+   Go seek some other quarry! for of thy too perilous bliss.
+
+   My lips have drunk enough,—no more, no more,—
+      Though Love himself should turn his gilded prow
+   Back to the troubled waters of this shore
+      Where I am wrecked and stranded, even now
+   The chariot wheels of passion sweep too near,
+   Hence!  Hence!  I pass unto a life more barren, more austere.
+
+   More barren—ay, those arms will never lean
+      Down through the trellised vines and draw my soul
+   In sweet reluctance through the tangled green;
+      Some other head must wear that aureole,
+   For I am hers who loves not any man
+   Whose white and stainless bosom bears the sign Gorgonian.
+
+   Let Venus go and chuck her dainty page,
+      And kiss his mouth, and toss his curly hair,
+   With net and spear and hunting equipage
+      Let young Adonis to his tryst repair,
+   But me her fond and subtle-fashioned spell
+   Delights no more, though I could win her dearest citadel.
+
+   Ay, though I were that laughing shepherd boy
+      Who from Mount Ida saw the little cloud
+   Pass over Tenedos and lofty Troy
+      And knew the coming of the Queen, and bowed
+   In wonder at her feet, not for the sake
+   Of a new Helen would I bid her hand the apple take.
+
+   Then rise supreme Athena argent-limbed!
+      And, if my lips be musicless, inspire
+   At least my life: was not thy glory hymned
+      By One who gave to thee his sword and lyre
+   Like Æschylos at well-fought Marathon,
+   And died to show that Milton’s England still could bear a son!
+
+   And yet I cannot tread the Portico
+      And live without desire, fear and pain,
+   Or nurture that wise calm which long ago
+      The grave Athenian master taught to men,
+   Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted,
+   To watch the world’s vain phantasies go by with unbowed head.
+
+   Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips,
+      Those eyes that mirrored all eternity,
+   Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse
+      Hath come on Wisdom, and Mnemosyne
+   Is childless; in the night which she had made
+   For lofty secure flight Athena’s owl itself hath strayed.
+
+   Nor much with Science do I care to climb,
+      Although by strange and subtle witchery
+   She drew the moon from heaven: the Muse Time
+      Unrolls her gorgeous-coloured tapestry
+   To no less eager eyes; often indeed
+   In the great epic of Polymnia’s scroll I love to read
+
+   How Asia sent her myriad hosts to war
+      Against a little town, and panoplied
+   In gilded mail with jewelled scimitar,
+      White-shielded, purple-crested, rode the Mede
+   Between the waving poplars and the sea
+   Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylæ
+
+   Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall,
+      And on the nearer side a little brood
+   Of careless lions holding festival!
+      And stood amazèd at such hardihood,
+   And pitched his tent upon the reedy shore,
+   And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept at midnight o’er
+
+   Some unfrequented height, and coming down
+      The autumn forests treacherously slew
+   What Sparta held most dear and was the crown
+      Of far Eurotas, and passed on, nor knew
+   How God had staked an evil net for him
+   In the small bay at Salamis,—and yet, the page grows dim,
+
+   Its cadenced Greek delights me not, I feel
+      With such a goodly time too out of tune
+   To love it much: for like the Dial’s wheel
+      That from its blinded darkness strikes the noon
+   Yet never sees the sun, so do my eyes
+   Restlessly follow that which from my cheated vision flies.
+
+   O for one grand unselfish simple life
+      To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hills
+   Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife
+      Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills,
+   Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly
+   Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century!
+
+   Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he
+      Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul
+   Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty
+      Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal
+   Where love and duty mingle!  Him at least
+   The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom’s feast;
+
+   But we are Learning’s changelings, know by rote
+      The clarion watchword of each Grecian school
+   And follow none, the flawless sword which smote
+      The pagan Hydra is an effete tool
+   Which we ourselves have blunted, what man now
+   Shall scale the august ancient heights and to old Reverence bow?
+
+   One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod!
+      Gone is that last dear son of Italy,
+   Who being man died for the sake of God,
+      And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully,
+   O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower,
+   Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lour
+
+   Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or
+      The Arno with its tawny troubled gold
+   O’er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror
+      Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old
+   When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty
+   Walked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale Mystery
+
+   Fled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell
+      With an old man who grabbled rusty keys,
+   Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell
+      With which oblivion buries dynasties
+   Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast,
+   As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed.
+
+   He knew the holiest heart and heights of Rome,
+      He drave the base wolf from the lion’s lair,
+   And now lies dead by that empyreal dome
+      Which overtops Valdarno hung in air
+   By Brunelleschi—O Melpomene
+   Breathe through thy melancholy pipe thy sweetest threnody!
+
+   Breathe through the tragic stops such melodies
+      That Joy’s self may grow jealous, and the Nine
+   Forget awhile their discreet emperies,
+      Mourning for him who on Rome’s lordliest shrine
+   Lit for men’s lives the light of Marathon,
+   And bare to sun-forgotten fields the fire of the sun!
+
+   O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto’s tower!
+      Let some young Florentine each eventide
+   Bring coronals of that enchanted flower
+      Which the dim woods of Vallombrosa hide,
+   And deck the marble tomb wherein he lies
+   Whose soul is as some mighty orb unseen of mortal eyes;
+
+   Some mighty orb whose cycled wanderings,
+      Being tempest-driven to the farthest rim
+   Where Chaos meets Creation and the wings
+      Of the eternal chanting Cherubim
+   Are pavilioned on Nothing, passed away
+   Into a moonless void,—and yet, though he is dust and clay,
+
+   He is not dead, the immemorial Fates
+      Forbid it, and the closing shears refrain.
+   Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates!
+      Ye argent clarions, sound a loftier strain
+   For the vile thing he hated lurks within
+   Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin.
+
+   Still what avails it that she sought her cave
+      That murderous mother of red harlotries?
+   At Munich on the marble architrave
+      The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas
+   Which wash Ægina fret in loneliness
+   Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless
+
+   For lack of our ideals, if one star
+      Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust
+   Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war
+      Can wake to passionate voice the silent dust
+   Which was Mazzini once! rich Niobe
+   For all her stony sorrows hath her sons; but Italy,
+
+   What Easter Day shall make her children rise,
+      Who were not Gods yet suffered? what sure feet
+   Shall find their grave-clothes folded? what clear eyes
+      Shall see them bodily?  O it were meet
+   To roll the stone from off the sepulchre
+   And kiss the bleeding roses of their wounds, in love of her,
+
+   Our Italy! our mother visible!
+      Most blessed among nations and most sad,
+   For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell
+      That day at Aspromonte and was glad
+   That in an age when God was bought and sold
+   One man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt out and cold,
+
+   See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves
+      Bind the sweet feet of Mercy: Poverty
+   Creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives
+      Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily,
+   And no word said:—O we are wretched men
+   Unworthy of our great inheritance! where is the pen
+
+   Of austere Milton? where the mighty sword
+      Which slew its master righteously? the years
+   Have lost their ancient leader, and no word
+      Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears:
+   While as a ruined mother in some spasm
+   Bears a base child and loathes it, so our best enthusiasm
+
+   Genders unlawful children, Anarchy
+      Freedom’s own Judas, the vile prodigal
+   Licence who steals the gold of Liberty
+      And yet has nothing, Ignorance the real
+   One Fraticide since Cain, Envy the asp
+   That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied grasp
+
+   Is in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed
+      For whose dull appetite men waste away
+   Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed
+      Of things which slay their sower, these each day
+   Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet
+   Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street.
+
+   What even Cromwell spared is desecrated
+      By weed and worm, left to the stormy play
+   Of wind and beating snow, or renovated
+      By more destructful hands: Time’s worst decay
+   Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness,
+   But these new Vandals can but make a rain-proof barrenness.
+
+   Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing
+      Through Lincoln’s lofty choir, till the air
+   Seems from such marble harmonies to ring
+      With sweeter song than common lips can dare
+   To draw from actual reed? ah! where is now
+   The cunning hand which made the flowering hawthorn branches bow
+
+   For Southwell’s arch, and carved the House of One
+      Who loved the lilies of the field with all
+   Our dearest English flowers? the same sun
+      Rises for us: the seasons natural
+   Weave the same tapestry of green and grey:
+   The unchanged hills are with us: but that Spirit hath passed away.
+
+   And yet perchance it may be better so,
+      For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen,
+   Murder her brother is her bedfellow,
+      And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene
+   And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set;
+   Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!
+
+   For gentle brotherhood, the harmony
+      Of living in the healthful air, the swift
+   Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free
+      And women chaste, these are the things which lift
+   Our souls up more than even Agnolo’s
+   Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o’er the scroll of human woes,
+
+   Or Titian’s little maiden on the stair
+      White as her own sweet lily and as tall,
+   Or Mona Lisa smiling through her hair,—
+      Ah! somehow life is bigger after all
+   Than any painted angel, could we see
+   The God that is within us!  The old Greek serenity
+
+   Which curbs the passion of that level line
+      Of marble youths, who with untroubled eyes
+   And chastened limbs ride round Athena’s shrine
+      And mirror her divine economies,
+   And balanced symmetry of what in man
+   Would else wage ceaseless warfare,—this at least within the span
+
+   Between our mother’s kisses and the grave
+      Might so inform our lives, that we could win
+   Such mighty empires that from her cave
+      Temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid Sin
+   Would walk ashamed of his adulteries,
+   And Passion creep from out the House of Lust with startled eyes.
+
+   To make the body and the spirit one
+      With all right things, till no thing live in vain
+   From morn to noon, but in sweet unison
+      With every pulse of flesh and throb of brain
+   The soul in flawless essence high enthroned,
+   Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned,
+
+   Mark with serene impartiality
+      The strife of things, and yet be comforted,
+   Knowing that by the chain causality
+      All separate existences are wed
+   Into one supreme whole, whose utterance
+   Is joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this were governance
+
+   Of Life in most august omnipresence,
+      Through which the rational intellect would find
+   In passion its expression, and mere sense,
+      Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind,
+   And being joined with it in harmony
+   More mystical than that which binds the stars planetary,
+
+   Strike from their several tones one octave chord
+      Whose cadence being measureless would fly
+   Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord
+      Return refreshed with its new empery
+   And more exultant power,—this indeed
+   Could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed.
+
+   Ah! it was easy when the world was young
+      To keep one’s life free and inviolate,
+   From our sad lips another song is rung,
+      By our own hands our heads are desecrate,
+   Wanderers in drear exile, and dispossessed
+   Of what should be our own, we can but feed on wild unrest.
+
+   Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown,
+      And of all men we are most wretched who
+   Must live each other’s lives and not our own
+      For very pity’s sake and then undo
+   All that we lived for—it was otherwise
+   When soul and body seemed to blend in mystic symphonies.
+
+   But we have left those gentle haunts to pass
+      With weary feet to the new Calvary,
+   Where we behold, as one who in a glass
+      Sees his own face, self-slain Humanity,
+   And in the dumb reproach of that sad gaze
+   Learn what an awful phantom the red hand of man can raise.
+
+   O smitten mouth!  O forehead crowned with thorn!
+      O chalice of all common miseries!
+   Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne
+      An agony of endless centuries,
+   And we were vain and ignorant nor knew
+   That when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew.
+
+   Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds,
+      The night that covers and the lights that fade,
+   The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds,
+      The lips betraying and the life betrayed;
+   The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we
+   Lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy.
+
+   Is this the end of all that primal force
+      Which, in its changes being still the same,
+   From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course,
+      Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame,
+   Till the suns met in heaven and began
+   Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the Word was Man!
+
+   Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though
+      The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain
+   Loosen the nails—we shall come down I know,
+      Staunch the red wounds—we shall be whole again,
+   No need have we of hyssop-laden rod,
+   That which is purely human, that is godlike, that is God.
+
+
+
+LOUIS NAPOLEON
+
+
+   EAGLE of Austerlitz! where were thy wings
+      When far away upon a barbarous strand,
+      In fight unequal, by an obscure hand,
+   Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings!
+
+   Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red,
+      Or ride in state through Paris in the van
+      Of thy returning legions, but instead
+   Thy mother France, free and republican,
+
+   Shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place
+      The better laurels of a soldier’s crown,
+      That not dishonoured should thy soul go down
+   To tell the mighty Sire of thy race
+
+   That France hath kissed the mouth of Liberty,
+      And found it sweeter than his honied bees,
+      And that the giant wave Democracy
+   Breaks on the shores where Kings lay couched at ease.
+
+
+
+ENDYMION
+(FOR MUSIC)
+
+
+   THE apple trees are hung with gold,
+      And birds are loud in Arcady,
+   The sheep lie bleating in the fold,
+   The wild goat runs across the wold,
+   But yesterday his love he told,
+      I know he will come back to me.
+   O rising moon!  O Lady moon!
+      Be you my lover’s sentinel,
+      You cannot choose but know him well,
+   For he is shod with purple shoon,
+   You cannot choose but know my love,
+      For he a shepherd’s crook doth bear,
+   And he is soft as any dove,
+      And brown and curly is his hair.
+
+   The turtle now has ceased to call
+      Upon her crimson-footed groom,
+   The grey wolf prowls about the stall,
+   The lily’s singing seneschal
+   Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all
+      The violet hills are lost in gloom.
+   O risen moon!  O holy moon!
+      Stand on the top of Helice,
+      And if my own true love you see,
+   Ah! if you see the purple shoon,
+   The hazel crook, the lad’s brown hair,
+      The goat-skin wrapped about his arm,
+   Tell him that I am waiting where
+      The rushlight glimmers in the Farm.
+
+   The falling dew is cold and chill,
+      And no bird sings in Arcady,
+   The little fauns have left the hill,
+   Even the tired daffodil
+   Has closed its gilded doors, and still
+      My lover comes not back to me.
+   False moon!  False moon!  O waning moon!
+      Where is my own true lover gone,
+      Where are the lips vermilion,
+   The shepherd’s crook, the purple shoon?
+   Why spread that silver pavilion,
+      Why wear that veil of drifting mist?
+   Ah! thou hast young Endymion
+      Thou hast the lips that should be kissed!
+
+
+
+LE JARDIN
+
+
+   THE lily’s withered chalice falls
+      Around its rod of dusty gold,
+      And from the beech-trees on the wold
+   The last wood-pigeon coos and calls.
+
+   The gaudy leonine sunflower
+      Hangs black and barren on its stalk,
+      And down the windy garden walk
+   The dead leaves scatter,—hour by hour.
+
+   Pale privet-petals white as milk
+      Are blown into a snowy mass:
+      The roses lie upon the grass
+   Like little shreds of crimson silk.
+
+
+
+LA MER
+
+
+   A WHITE mist drifts across the shrouds,
+      A wild moon in this wintry sky
+      Gleams like an angry lion’s eye
+   Out of a mane of tawny clouds.
+
+   The muffled steersman at the wheel
+      Is but a shadow in the gloom;—
+      And in the throbbing engine-room
+   Leap the long rods of polished steel.
+
+   The shattered storm has left its trace
+      Upon this huge and heaving dome,
+      For the thin threads of yellow foam
+   Float on the waves like ravelled lace.
+
+
+
+LE PANNEAU
+
+
+   UNDER the rose-tree’s dancing shade
+      There stands a little ivory girl,
+      Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl
+   With pale green nails of polished jade.
+
+   The red leaves fall upon the mould,
+      The white leaves flutter, one by one,
+      Down to a blue bowl where the sun,
+   Like a great dragon, writhes in gold.
+
+   The white leaves float upon the air,
+      The red leaves flutter idly down,
+      Some fall upon her yellow gown,
+   And some upon her raven hair.
+
+   She takes an amber lute and sings,
+      And as she sings a silver crane
+      Begins his scarlet neck to strain,
+   And flap his burnished metal wings.
+
+   She takes a lute of amber bright,
+      And from the thicket where he lies
+      Her lover, with his almond eyes,
+   Watches her movements in delight.
+
+   And now she gives a cry of fear,
+      And tiny tears begin to start:
+      A thorn has wounded with its dart
+   The pink-veined sea-shell of her ear.
+
+   And now she laughs a merry note:
+      There has fallen a petal of the rose
+      Just where the yellow satin shows
+   The blue-veined flower of her throat.
+
+   With pale green nails of polished jade,
+      Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl,
+      There stands a little ivory girl
+   Under the rose-tree’s dancing shade.
+
+
+
+LES BALLONS
+
+
+   AGAINST these turbid turquoise skies
+      The light and luminous balloons
+      Dip and drift like satin moons
+   Drift like silken butterflies;
+
+   Reel with every windy gust,
+      Rise and reel like dancing girls,
+      Float like strange transparent pearls,
+   Fall and float like silver dust.
+
+   Now to the low leaves they cling,
+      Each with coy fantastic pose,
+      Each a petal of a rose
+   Straining at a gossamer string.
+
+   Then to the tall trees they climb,
+      Like thin globes of amethyst,
+      Wandering opals keeping tryst
+   With the rubies of the lime.
+
+
+
+CANZONET
+
+
+      I HAVE no store
+   Of gryphon-guarded gold;
+      Now, as before,
+   Bare is the shepherd’s fold.
+      Rubies nor pearls
+   Have I to gem thy throat;
+      Yet woodland girls
+   Have loved the shepherd’s note.
+
+      Then pluck a reed
+   And bid me sing to thee,
+      For I would feed
+   Thine ears with melody,
+      Who art more fair
+   Than fairest fleur-de-lys,
+      More sweet and rare
+   Than sweetest ambergris.
+
+      What dost thou fear?
+   Young Hyacinth is slain,
+      Pan is not here,
+   And will not come again.
+      No horned Faun
+   Treads down the yellow leas,
+      No God at dawn
+   Steals through the olive trees.
+
+      Hylas is dead,
+   Nor will he e’er divine
+      Those little red
+   Rose-petalled lips of thine.
+      On the high hill
+   No ivory dryads play,
+      Silver and still
+   Sinks the sad autumn day.
+
+
+
+LE JARDIN DES TUILERIES
+
+
+   THIS winter air is keen and cold,
+      And keen and cold this winter sun,
+      But round my chair the children run
+   Like little things of dancing gold.
+
+   Sometimes about the painted kiosk
+      The mimic soldiers strut and stride,
+      Sometimes the blue-eyed brigands hide
+   In the bleak tangles of the bosk.
+
+   And sometimes, while the old nurse cons
+      Her book, they steal across the square,
+      And launch their paper navies where
+   Huge Triton writhes in greenish bronze.
+
+   And now in mimic flight they flee,
+      And now they rush, a boisterous band—
+      And, tiny hand on tiny hand,
+   Climb up the black and leafless tree.
+
+   Ah! cruel tree! if I were you,
+      And children climbed me, for their sake
+      Though it be winter I would break
+   Into spring blossoms white and blue!
+
+
+
+PAN
+DOUBLE VILLANELLE
+
+
+                                    I.
+
+   O GOAT-FOOT God of Arcady!
+   This modern world is grey and old,
+   And what remains to us of thee?
+
+   No more the shepherd lads in glee
+   Throw apples at thy wattled fold,
+   O goat-foot God of Arcady!
+
+   Nor through the laurels can one see
+   Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold
+   And what remains to us of thee?
+
+   And dull and dead our Thames would be,
+   For here the winds are chill and cold,
+   O goat-loot God of Arcady!
+
+   Then keep the tomb of Helice,
+   Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold,
+   And what remains to us of thee?
+
+   Though many an unsung elegy
+   Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold,
+   O goat-foot God of Arcady!
+   Ah, what remains to us of thee?
+
+                                   II.
+
+   AH, leave the hills of Arcady,
+   Thy satyrs and their wanton play,
+   This modern world hath need of thee.
+
+   No nymph or Faun indeed have we,
+   For Faun and nymph are old and grey,
+   Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
+
+   This is the land where liberty
+   Lit grave-browed Milton on his way,
+   This modern world hath need of thee!
+
+   A land of ancient chivalry
+   Where gentle Sidney saw the day,
+   Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
+
+   This fierce sea-lion of the sea,
+   This England lacks some stronger lay,
+   This modern world hath need of thee!
+
+   Then blow some trumpet loud and free,
+   And give thine oaten pipe away,
+   Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
+   This modern world hath need of thee!
+
+
+
+IN THE FOREST
+
+
+   OUT of the mid-wood’s twilight
+      Into the meadow’s dawn,
+   Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,
+      Flashes my Faun!
+
+   He skips through the copses singing,
+      And his shadow dances along,
+   And I know not which I should follow,
+      Shadow or song!
+
+   O Hunter, snare me his shadow!
+      O Nightingale, catch me his strain!
+   Else moonstruck with music and madness
+      I track him in vain!
+
+
+
+SYMPHONY IN YELLOW
+
+
+   AN omnibus across the bridge
+      Crawls like a yellow butterfly
+      And, here and there, a passer-by
+   Shows like a little restless midge.
+
+   Big barges full of yellow hay
+      Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
+      And, like a yellow silken scarf,
+   The thick fog hangs along the quay.
+
+   The yellow leaves begin to fade
+      And flutter from the Temple elms,
+      And at my feet the pale green Thames
+   Lies like a rod of rippled jade.
+
+
+
+
+SONNETS
+
+
+HÉLAS!
+
+
+   TO drift with every passion till my soul
+   Is a stringed lute on which can winds can play,
+   Is it for this that I have given away
+   Mine ancient wisdom and austere control?
+   Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
+   Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
+   With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
+   Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
+   Surely there was a time I might have trod
+   The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance
+   Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:
+   Is that time dead? lo! with a little rod
+   I did but touch the honey of romance—
+   And must I lose a soul’s inheritance?
+
+
+
+TO MILTON
+
+
+   MILTON! I think thy spirit hath passed away
+   From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;
+   This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
+   Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,
+   And the age changed unto a mimic play
+   Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
+   For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
+   We are but fit to delve the common clay,
+   Seeing this little isle on which we stand,
+   This England, this sea-lion of the sea,
+   By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
+   Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land
+   Which bare a triple empire in her hand
+   When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!
+
+
+
+ON THE MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS IN BULGARIA
+
+
+   CHRIST, dost Thou live indeed? or are Thy bones
+   Still straitened in their rock-hewn sepulchre?
+   And was Thy Rising only dreamed by her
+   Whose love of Thee for all her sin atones?
+   For here the air is horrid with men’s groans,
+   The priests who call upon Thy name are slain,
+   Dost Thou not hear the bitter wail of pain
+   From those whose children lie upon the stones?
+   Come down, O Son of God! incestuous gloom
+   Curtains the land, and through the starless night
+   Over Thy Cross a Crescent moon I see!
+   If Thou in very truth didst burst the tomb
+   Come down, O Son of Man! and show Thy might
+   Lest Mahomet be crowned instead of Thee!
+
+
+
+HOLY WEEK AT GENOA
+
+
+   I WANDERED through Scoglietto’s far retreat,
+      The oranges on each o’erhanging spray
+      Burned as bright lamps of gold to shame the day;
+   Some startled bird with fluttering wings and fleet
+   Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet
+      Like silver moons the pale narcissi lay:
+      And the curved waves that streaked the great green bay
+   Laughed i’ the sun, and life seemed very sweet.
+   Outside the young boy-priest passed singing clear,
+      ‘Jesus the son of Mary has been slain,
+      O come and fill His sepulchre with flowers.’
+   Ah, God!  Ah, God! those dear Hellenic hours
+      Had drowned all memory of Thy bitter pain,
+      The Cross, the Crown, the Soldiers and the Spear.
+
+
+
+URBS SACRA ÆTERNA
+
+
+   ROME! what a scroll of History thine has been;
+      In the first days thy sword republican
+      Ruled the whole world for many an age’s span:
+   Then of the peoples wert thou royal Queen,
+   Till in thy streets the bearded Goth was seen;
+      And now upon thy walls the breezes fan
+      (Ah, city crowned by God, discrowned by man!)
+   The hated flag of red and white and green.
+   When was thy glory! when in search for power
+      Thine eagles flew to greet the double sun,
+      And the wild nations shuddered at thy rod?
+   Nay, but thy glory tarried for this hour,
+      When pilgrims kneel before the Holy One,
+      The prisoned shepherd of the Church of God.
+      MONTRE MARIO
+
+
+
+E TENEBRIS
+
+
+   COME down, O Christ, and help me! reach Thy hand,
+      For I am drowning in a stormier sea
+      Than Simon on Thy lake of Galilee:
+   The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,
+   My heart is as some famine-murdered land
+      Whence all good things have perished utterly,
+      And well I know my soul in Hell must lie
+   If I this night before God’s throne should stand.
+   ‘He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase,
+      Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name
+      From morn to noon on Carmel’s smitten height.’
+   Nay, peace, I shall behold, before the night,
+      The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame,
+      The wounded hands, the weary human face.
+
+
+
+AT VERONA
+
+
+   HOW steep the stairs within King’s houses are
+      For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread,
+      And O how salt and bitter is the bread
+   Which falls from this Hound’s table,—better far
+   That I had died in the red ways of war,
+      Or that the gate of Florence bare my head,
+      Than to live thus, by all things comraded
+   Which seek the essence of my soul to mar.
+
+   ‘Curse God and die: what better hope than this?
+      He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss
+      Of his gold city, and eternal day’—
+   Nay peace: behind my prison’s blinded bars
+      I do possess what none can take away,
+      My love and all the glory of the stars.
+
+
+
+ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS’ LOVE LETTERS
+
+
+   THESE are the letters which Endymion wrote
+      To one he loved in secret, and apart.
+      And now the brawlers of the auction mart
+   Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note,
+   Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote
+      The merchant’s price.  I think they love not art
+      Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart
+   That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.
+
+   Is it not said that many years ago,
+      In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran
+      With torches through the midnight, and began
+   To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw
+      Dice for the garments of a wretched man,
+   Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe?
+
+
+
+THE NEW REMORSE
+
+
+   THE sin was mine; I did not understand.
+      So now is music prisoned in her cave,
+      Save where some ebbing desultory wave
+   Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand.
+   And in the withered hollow of this land
+      Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave,
+      That hardly can the leaden willow crave
+   One silver blossom from keen Winter’s hand.
+
+   But who is this who cometh by the shore?
+   (Nay, love, look up and wonder!)  Who is this
+      Who cometh in dyed garments from the South?
+   It is thy new-found Lord, and he shall kiss
+      The yet unravished roses of thy mouth,
+   And I shall weep and worship, as before.
+
+
+

PG1034_text.txt

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+
+
+
+
+
+POEMS
+
+
+by Wilfred Owen
+
+
+With an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon
+
+
+
+
+[Note on text:  Italicized words or phrases are capitalized.
+Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation
+is indented two spaces.]
+
+
+
+
+Introduction
+
+
+In writing an Introduction such as this it is good to be brief. The
+poems printed in this book need no preliminary commendations from me or
+anyone else.  The author has left us his own fragmentary but impressive
+Foreword; this, and his Poems, can speak for him, backed by the
+authority of his experience as an infantry soldier, and sustained by
+nobility and originality of style.  All that was strongest in Wilfred
+Owen survives in his poems; any superficial impressions of his
+personality, any records of his conversation, behaviour, or appearance,
+would be irrelevant and unseemly.  The curiosity which demands such
+morsels would be incapable of appreciating the richness of his work.
+
+The discussion of his experiments in assonance and dissonance (of which
+'Strange Meeting' is the finest example) may be left to the professional
+critics of verse, the majority of whom will be more preoccupied with
+such technical details than with the profound humanity of the self-
+revelation manifested in such magnificent lines as those at the end of
+his 'Apologia pro Poemate Meo', and in that other poem which he named
+'Greater Love'.
+
+The importance of his contribution to the literature of the War cannot
+be decided by those who, like myself, both admired him as a poet and
+valued him as a friend.  His conclusions about War are so entirely in
+accordance with my own that I cannot attempt to judge his work with any
+critical detachment.  I can only affirm that he was a man of absolute
+integrity of mind.  He never wrote his poems (as so many war-poets did)
+to make the effect of a personal gesture. He pitied others; he did not
+pity himself.  In the last year of his life he attained a clear vision
+of what he needed to say, and these poems survive him as his true and
+splendid testament.
+
+Wilfred Owen was born at Oswestry on 18th March 1893.  He was educated
+at the Birkenhead Institute, and matriculated at London University in
+1910. In 1913 he obtained a private tutorship near Bordeaux, where he
+remained until 1915.  During this period he became acquainted with the
+eminent French poet, Laurent Tailhade, to whom he showed his early
+verses, and from whom he received considerable encouragement. In 1915,
+in spite of delicate health, he joined the Artists' Rifles O.T.C., was
+gazetted to the Manchester Regiment, and served with their 2nd Battalion
+in France from December 1916 to June 1917, when he was invalided home.
+Fourteen months later he returned to the Western Front and served with
+the same Battalion, ultimately commanding a Company.
+
+He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry while taking part in
+some heavy fighting on 1st October.  He was killed on 4th November 1918,
+while endeavouring to get his men across the Sambre Canal.
+
+A month before his death he wrote to his mother:  "My nerves are in
+perfect order.  I came out again in order to help these boys; directly,
+by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their
+sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can."  Let his
+own words be his epitaph:--
+
+              "Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
+               Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery."
+
+                                             Siegfried Sassoon.
+
+
+
+
+POEMS
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+
+This book is not about heroes.  English Poetry is not yet fit to speak
+of them.  Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory,
+honour, dominion or power,
+
+                                     except War.
+       Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
+       The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.
+       The Poetry is in the pity.
+       Yet these elegies are not to this generation,
+               This is in no sense consolatory.
+
+       They may be to the next.
+       All the poet can do to-day is to warn.
+       That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
+       If I thought the letter of this book would last,
+    I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives
+    Prussia,--my ambition and those names will be content; for they will
+    have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders.
+
+
+          Note.--This Preface was found, in an unfinished condition,
+                    among Wilfred Owen's papers.
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+          Preface
+          Strange Meeting
+          Greater Love
+          Apologia pro Poemate Meo
+          The Show
+          Mental Cases
+          Parable of the Old Men and the Young
+          Arms and the Boy
+          Anthem for Doomed Youth
+          The Send-off
+          Insensibility
+          Dulce et Decorum est
+          The Sentry
+          The Dead-Beat
+          Exposure
+          Spring Offensive
+          The Chances
+          S. I. W.
+          Futility
+          Smile, Smile, Smile
+          Conscious
+          A Terre
+          Wild with all Regrets
+          Disabled
+          The End
+
+
+
+
+
+Strange Meeting
+
+
+
+     It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
+     Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
+     Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
+     Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
+     Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
+     Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
+     With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
+     Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
+     And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
+     With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
+     Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
+     And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
+     "Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
+     "None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
+     The hopelessness.  Whatever hope is yours,
+     Was my life also; I went hunting wild
+     After the wildest beauty in the world,
+     Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
+     But mocks the steady running of the hour,
+     And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
+     For by my glee might many men have laughed,
+     And of my weeping something has been left,
+     Which must die now.  I mean the truth untold,
+     The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
+     Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
+     Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
+     They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
+     None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
+     Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
+     Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
+     To miss the march of this retreating world
+     Into vain citadels that are not walled.
+     Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
+     I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
+     Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
+     I would have poured my spirit without stint
+     But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
+     Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
+     I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
+     I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
+     Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
+     I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
+     Let us sleep now . . ."
+
+
+         (This poem was found among the author's papers.
+         It ends on this strange note.)
+
+
+       *Another Version*
+
+     Earth's wheels run oiled with blood.  Forget we that.
+     Let us lie down and dig ourselves in thought.
+     Beauty is yours and you have mastery,
+     Wisdom is mine, and I have mystery.
+     We two will stay behind and keep our troth.
+     Let us forego men's minds that are brute's natures,
+     Let us not sup the blood which some say nurtures,
+     Be we not swift with swiftness of the tigress.
+     Let us break ranks from those who trek from progress.
+     Miss we the march of this retreating world
+     Into old citadels that are not walled.
+     Let us lie out and hold the open truth.
+     Then when their blood hath clogged the chariot wheels
+     We will go up and wash them from deep wells.
+     What though we sink from men as pitchers falling
+     Many shall raise us up to be their filling
+     Even from wells we sunk too deep for war
+     And filled by brows that bled where no wounds were.
+
+
+         *Alternative line--*
+
+     Even as One who bled where no wounds were.
+
+
+
+
+Greater Love
+
+
+
+     Red lips are not so red
+        As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
+     Kindness of wooed and wooer
+     Seems shame to their love pure.
+     O Love, your eyes lose lure
+        When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
+
+     Your slender attitude
+        Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
+     Rolling and rolling there
+     Where God seems not to care;
+     Till the fierce Love they bear
+        Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.
+
+     Your voice sings not so soft,--
+        Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,--
+     Your dear voice is not dear,
+     Gentle, and evening clear,
+     As theirs whom none now hear
+        Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.
+
+     Heart, you were never hot,
+        Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
+     And though your hand be pale,
+     Paler are all which trail
+     Your cross through flame and hail:
+        Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.
+
+
+
+
+Apologia pro Poemate Meo
+
+
+
+     I, too, saw God through mud--
+         The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
+         War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
+         And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.
+
+     Merry it was to laugh there--
+         Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
+         For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
+         Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.
+
+     I, too, have dropped off fear--
+         Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
+         And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear
+         Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;
+
+     And witnessed exultation--
+         Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
+         Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
+         Seraphic for an hour; though they were foul.
+
+     I have made fellowships--
+         Untold of happy lovers in old song.
+         For love is not the binding of fair lips
+         With the soft silk of eyes that look and long,
+
+     By Joy, whose ribbon slips,--
+         But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;
+         Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
+         Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong.
+
+     I have perceived much beauty
+         In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
+         Heard music in the silentness of duty;
+         Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.
+
+     Nevertheless, except you share
+         With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
+         Whose world is but the trembling of a flare,
+         And heaven but as the highway for a shell,
+
+     You shall not hear their mirth:
+         You shall not come to think them well content
+         By any jest of mine.  These men are worth
+         Your tears:  You are not worth their merriment.
+
+
+     November 1917.
+
+
+
+
+The Show
+
+
+
+     My soul looked down from a vague height with Death,
+     As unremembering how I rose or why,
+     And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,
+     Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,
+     And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques.
+
+     Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire,
+     There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled.
+     It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs
+     Of ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed.
+
+     By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped
+     Round myriad warts that might be little hills.
+
+     From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures crept,
+     And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes.
+
+     (And smell came up from those foul openings
+     As out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.)
+
+     On dithering feet upgathered, more and more,
+     Brown strings towards strings of gray, with bristling spines,
+     All migrants from green fields, intent on mire.
+
+     Those that were gray, of more abundant spawns,
+     Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten.
+
+     I saw their bitten backs curve, loop, and straighten,
+     I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten.
+
+     Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean,
+     I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather.
+
+     And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.
+     And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid
+     Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further,
+     Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,
+     And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.
+
+
+
+
+Mental Cases
+
+
+
+     Who are these?  Why sit they here in twilight?
+     Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
+     Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
+     Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
+     Stroke on stroke of pain,--but what slow panic,
+     Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
+     Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
+     Misery swelters.  Surely we have perished
+     Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
+
+    --These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
+     Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
+     Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
+     Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
+     Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
+     Always they must see these things and hear them,
+     Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
+     Carnage incomparable and human squander
+     Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.
+
+     Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
+     Back into their brains, because on their sense
+     Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;
+     Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh
+    --Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
+     Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
+    --Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
+     Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
+     Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
+     Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.
+
+
+
+
+Parable of the Old Men and the Young
+
+
+
+     So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
+     And took the fire with him, and a knife.
+     And as they sojourned both of them together,
+     Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
+     Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
+     But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
+     Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
+     And builded parapets and trenches there,
+     And stretch\ed forth the knife to slay his son.
+     When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
+     Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
+     Neither do anything to him.  Behold,
+     A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
+     Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
+     But the old man would not so, but slew his son. . . .
+
+
+
+
+Arms and the Boy
+
+
+
+     Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
+     How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
+     Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
+     And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.
+
+     Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads
+     Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.
+     Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
+     Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.
+
+     For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
+     There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
+     And God will grow no talons at his heels,
+     Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.
+
+
+
+
+Anthem for Doomed Youth
+
+
+
+     What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
+        Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
+        Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
+     Can patter out their hasty orisons.
+     No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
+     Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--
+     The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
+     And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
+
+     What candles may be held to speed them all?
+        Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
+     Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
+        The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
+     Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
+     And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
+
+
+
+
+The Send-off
+
+
+
+     Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
+     To the siding-shed,
+     And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
+
+     Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
+     As men's are, dead.
+
+     Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
+     Stood staring hard,
+     Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
+     Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
+     Winked to the guard.
+
+     So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
+     They were not ours:
+     We never heard to which front these were sent.
+
+     Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
+     Who gave them flowers.
+
+     Shall they return to beatings of great bells
+     In wild trainloads?
+     A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
+     May creep back, silent, to still village wells
+     Up half-known roads.
+
+
+
+
+Insensibility
+
+
+
+         I
+
+     Happy are men who yet before they are killed
+     Can let their veins run cold.
+     Whom no compassion fleers
+     Or makes their feet
+     Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
+     The front line withers,
+     But they are troops who fade, not flowers
+     For poets' tearful fooling:
+     Men, gaps for filling
+     Losses who might have fought
+     Longer; but no one bothers.
+
+
+         II
+
+     And some cease feeling
+     Even themselves or for themselves.
+     Dullness best solves
+     The tease and doubt of shelling,
+     And Chance's strange arithmetic
+     Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
+     They keep no check on Armies' decimation.
+
+
+         III
+
+     Happy are these who lose imagination:
+     They have enough to carry with ammunition.
+     Their spirit drags no pack.
+     Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache.
+     Having seen all things red,
+     Their eyes are rid
+     Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.
+     And terror's first constriction over,
+     Their hearts remain small drawn.
+     Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle
+     Now long since ironed,
+     Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.
+
+
+         IV
+
+     Happy the soldier home, with not a notion
+     How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
+     And many sighs are drained.
+     Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:
+     His days are worth forgetting more than not.
+     He sings along the march
+     Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,
+     The long, forlorn, relentless trend
+     From larger day to huger night.
+
+
+         V
+
+     We wise, who with a thought besmirch
+     Blood over all our soul,
+     How should we see our task
+     But through his blunt and lashless eyes?
+     Alive, he is not vital overmuch;
+     Dying, not mortal overmuch;
+     Nor sad, nor proud,
+     Nor curious at all.
+     He cannot tell
+     Old men's placidity from his.
+
+
+         VI
+
+     But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
+     That they should be as stones.
+     Wretched are they, and mean
+     With paucity that never was simplicity.
+     By choice they made themselves immune
+     To pity and whatever mourns in man
+     Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
+     Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
+     Whatever shares
+     The eternal reciprocity of tears.
+
+
+
+
+Dulce et Decorum est
+
+
+
+     Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
+     Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
+     Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
+     And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
+     Men marched asleep.  Many had lost their boots,
+     But limped on, blood-shod.  All went lame, all blind;
+     Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
+     Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
+
+     Gas!  GAS!  Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
+     Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
+     But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
+     And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
+     Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
+     As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
+
+     In all my dreams before my helpless sight
+     He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
+
+     If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
+     Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
+     And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
+     His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
+     If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
+     Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
+     Bitter as the cud
+     Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
+     My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
+     To children ardent for some desperate glory,
+     The old Lie:  Dulce et decorum est
+     Pro patria mori.
+
+
+
+
+The Sentry
+
+
+
+     We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,
+     And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell
+     Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.
+     Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime
+     Kept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour,
+     Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb.
+     What murk of air remained stank old, and sour
+     With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men
+     Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den,
+     If not their corpses. . . .
+                                  There we herded from the blast
+     Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last.
+     Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles.
+     And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping
+     And splashing in the flood, deluging muck--
+     The sentry's body; then his rifle, handles
+     Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck.
+     We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined
+     "O sir, my eyes--I'm blind--I'm blind, I'm blind!"
+     Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids
+     And said if he could see the least blurred light
+     He was not blind; in time he'd get all right.
+     "I can't," he sobbed.  Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids
+     Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there
+     In posting next for duty, and sending a scout
+     To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering about
+     To other posts under the shrieking air.
+
+     Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,
+     And one who would have drowned himself for good,--
+     I try not to remember these things now.
+     Let dread hark back for one word only:  how
+     Half-listening to that sentry's moans and jumps,
+     And the wild chattering of his broken teeth,
+     Renewed most horribly whenever crumps
+     Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath--
+     Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout
+     "I see your lights!"  But ours had long died out.
+
+
+
+
+The Dead-Beat
+
+
+
+     He dropped,--more sullenly than wearily,
+     Lay stupid like a cod, heavy like meat,
+     And none of us could kick him to his feet;
+     Just blinked at my revolver, blearily;
+    --Didn't appear to know a war was on,
+     Or see the blasted trench at which he stared.
+     "I'll do 'em in," he whined, "If this hand's spared,
+     I'll murder them, I will."
+
+                                 A low voice said,
+     "It's Blighty, p'raps, he sees; his pluck's all gone,
+     Dreaming of all the valiant, that AREN'T dead:
+     Bold uncles, smiling ministerially;
+     Maybe his brave young wife, getting her fun
+     In some new home, improved materially.
+     It's not these stiffs have crazed him; nor the Hun."
+
+     We sent him down at last, out of the way.
+     Unwounded;--stout lad, too, before that strafe.
+     Malingering?  Stretcher-bearers winked, "Not half!"
+
+     Next day I heard the Doc.'s well-whiskied laugh:
+     "That scum you sent last night soon died.  Hooray!"
+
+
+
+
+Exposure
+
+
+
+         I
+
+     Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us . . .
+     Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .
+     Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . .
+     Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
+             But nothing happens.
+
+     Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
+     Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
+     Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
+     Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
+             What are we doing here?
+
+     The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . .
+     We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
+     Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
+     Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,
+             But nothing happens.
+
+     Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.
+     Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,
+     With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew,
+     We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,
+             But nothing happens.
+
+
+         II
+
+     Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces--
+     We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,
+     Deep into grassier ditches.  So we drowse, sun-dozed,
+     Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.
+             Is it that we are dying?
+
+     Slowly our ghosts drag home:  glimpsing the sunk fires glozed
+     With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
+     For hours the innocent mice rejoice:  the house is theirs;
+     Shutters and doors all closed:  on us the doors are closed--
+             We turn back to our dying.
+
+     Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;
+     Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.
+     For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;
+     Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
+             For love of God seems dying.
+
+     To-night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,
+     Shrivelling many hands and puckering foreheads crisp.
+     The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,
+     Pause over half-known faces.  All their eyes are ice,
+             But nothing happens.
+
+
+
+
+Spring Offensive
+
+
+
+     Halted against the shade of a last hill,
+     They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
+     And, finding comfortable chests and knees
+     Carelessly slept.  But many there stood still
+     To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
+     Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
+
+     Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
+     By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
+     For though the summer oozed into their veins
+     Like the injected drug for their bones' pains,
+     Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
+     Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.
+
+     Hour after hour they ponder the warm field--
+     And the far valley behind, where the buttercups
+     Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
+     Where even the little brambles would not yield,
+     But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
+     They breathe like trees unstirred.
+
+     Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word
+     At which each body and its soul begird
+     And tighten them for battle.  No alarms
+     Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste--
+     Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
+     The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
+     O larger shone that smile against the sun,--
+     Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.
+
+     So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
+     Over an open stretch of herb and heather
+     Exposed.  And instantly the whole sky burned
+     With fury against them; and soft sudden cups
+     Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes
+     Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.
+
+     Of them who running on that last high place
+     Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
+     On the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge,
+     Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge,
+     Some say God caught them even before they fell.
+
+     But what say such as from existence' brink
+     Ventured but drave too swift to sink.
+     The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,
+     And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames
+     With superhuman inhumanities,
+     Long-famous glories, immemorial shames--
+     And crawling slowly back, have by degrees
+     Regained cool peaceful air in wonder--
+     Why speak they not of comrades that went under?
+
+
+
+
+The Chances
+
+
+
+     I mind as 'ow the night afore that show
+     Us five got talking,--we was in the know,
+     "Over the top to-morrer; boys, we're for it,
+     First wave we are, first ruddy wave; that's tore it."
+     "Ah well," says Jimmy,--an' 'e's seen some scrappin'--
+     "There ain't more nor five things as can 'appen;
+     Ye get knocked out; else wounded--bad or cushy;
+     Scuppered; or nowt except yer feeling mushy."
+
+     One of us got the knock-out, blown to chops.
+     T'other was hurt, like, losin' both 'is props.
+     An' one, to use the word of 'ypocrites,
+     'Ad the misfortoon to be took by Fritz.
+     Now me, I wasn't scratched, praise God Almighty
+     (Though next time please I'll thank 'im for a blighty),
+     But poor young Jim, 'e's livin' an' 'e's not;
+     'E reckoned 'e'd five chances, an' 'e's 'ad;
+     'E's wounded, killed, and pris'ner, all the lot--
+     The ruddy lot all rolled in one.  Jim's mad.
+
+
+
+
+S. I. W.
+
+         "I will to the King,
+         And offer him consolation in his trouble,
+         For that man there has set his teeth to die,
+         And being one that hates obedience,
+         Discipline, and orderliness of life,
+         I cannot mourn him."
+                                  W. B. Yeats.
+
+
+
+     Patting goodbye, doubtless they told the lad
+     He'd always show the Hun a brave man's face;
+     Father would sooner him dead than in disgrace,--
+     Was proud to see him going, aye, and glad.
+     Perhaps his Mother whimpered how she'd fret
+     Until he got a nice, safe wound to nurse.
+     Sisters would wish girls too could shoot, charge, curse, . . .
+     Brothers--would send his favourite cigarette,
+     Each week, month after month, they wrote the same,
+     Thinking him sheltered in some Y.M. Hut,
+     Where once an hour a bullet missed its aim
+     And misses teased the hunger of his brain.
+     His eyes grew old with wincing, and his hand
+     Reckless with ague.  Courage leaked, as sand
+     From the best sandbags after years of rain.
+     But never leave, wound, fever, trench-foot, shock,
+     Untrapped the wretch.  And death seemed still withheld
+     For torture of lying machinally shelled,
+     At the pleasure of this world's Powers who'd run amok.
+
+     He'd seen men shoot their hands, on night patrol,
+     Their people never knew.  Yet they were vile.
+     "Death sooner than dishonour, that's the style!"
+     So Father said.
+
+                      One dawn, our wire patrol
+     Carried him.  This time, Death had not missed.
+     We could do nothing, but wipe his bleeding cough.
+     Could it be accident?--Rifles go off . . .
+     Not sniped?  No.  (Later they found the English ball.)
+
+     It was the reasoned crisis of his soul.
+     Against the fires that would not burn him whole
+     But kept him for death's perjury and scoff
+     And life's half-promising, and both their riling.
+
+     With him they buried the muzzle his teeth had kissed,
+     And truthfully wrote the Mother "Tim died smiling."
+
+
+
+
+Futility
+
+
+
+     Move him into the sun--
+     Gently its touch awoke him once,
+     At home, whispering of fields unsown.
+     Always it woke him, even in France,
+     Until this morning and this snow.
+     If anything might rouse him now
+     The kind old sun will know.
+
+     Think how it wakes the seeds--
+     Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
+     Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
+     Full-nerved,--still warm,--too hard to stir?
+     Was it for this the clay grew tall?
+    --O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
+     To break earth's sleep at all?
+
+
+
+
+Smile, Smile, Smile
+
+
+
+     Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
+     Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)
+     And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
+     Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;
+     For, said the paper, "When this war is done
+     The men's first instinct will be making homes.
+     Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,
+     It being certain war has just begun.
+     Peace would do wrong to our undying dead,--
+     The sons we offered might regret they died
+     If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
+     We must be solidly indemnified.
+     Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,
+     We rulers sitting in this ancient spot
+     Would wrong our very selves if we forgot
+     The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,
+     Who kept this nation in integrity."
+     Nation?--The half-limbed readers did not chafe
+     But smiled at one another curiously
+     Like secret men who know their secret safe.
+     This is the thing they know and never speak,
+     That England one by one had fled to France
+     (Not many elsewhere now save under France).
+     Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,
+     And people in whose voice real feeling rings
+     Say:  How they smile!  They're happy now, poor things.
+
+
+     23rd September 1918.
+
+
+
+
+Conscious
+
+
+
+     His fingers wake, and flutter up the bed.
+     His eyes come open with a pull of will,
+     Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head.
+     A blind-cord drawls across the window-sill . . .
+     How smooth the floor of the ward is! what a rug!
+     And who's that talking, somewhere out of sight?
+     Why are they laughing?  What's inside that jug?
+     "Nurse!  Doctor!"  "Yes; all right, all right."
+
+     But sudden dusk bewilders all the air--
+     There seems no time to want a drink of water.
+     Nurse looks so far away.  And everywhere
+     Music and roses burnt through crimson slaughter.
+     Cold; cold; he's cold; and yet so hot:
+     And there's no light to see the voices by--
+     No time to dream, and ask--he knows not what.
+
+
+
+
+A Terre
+
+         (Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.)
+
+
+
+     Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell,
+     Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.
+     Both arms have mutinied against me--brutes.
+     My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.
+
+     I tried to peg out soldierly--no use!
+     One dies of war like any old disease.
+     This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
+     I have my medals?--Discs to make eyes close.
+     My glorious ribbons?--Ripped from my own back
+     In scarlet shreds.  (That's for your poetry book.)
+
+     A short life and a merry one, my brick!
+     We used to say we'd hate to live dead old,--
+     Yet now . . . I'd willingly be puffy, bald,
+     And patriotic.  Buffers catch from boys
+     At least the jokes hurled at them.  I suppose
+     Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting,
+     Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting.
+     Well, that's what I learnt,--that, and making money.
+     Your fifty years ahead seem none too many?
+     Tell me how long I've got?  God!  For one year
+     To help myself to nothing more than air!
+     One Spring!  Is one too good to spare, too long?
+     Spring wind would work its own way to my lung,
+     And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.
+     My servant's lamed, but listen how he shouts!
+     When I'm lugged out, he'll still be good for that.
+     Here in this mummy-case, you know, I've thought
+     How well I might have swept his floors for ever,
+     I'd ask no night off when the bustle's over,
+     Enjoying so the dirt.  Who's prejudiced
+     Against a grimed hand when his own's quite dust,
+     Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn,
+     Less warm than dust that mixes with arms' tan?
+     I'd love to be a sweep, now, black as Town,
+     Yes, or a muckman.  Must I be his load?
+
+     O Life, Life, let me breathe,--a dug-out rat!
+     Not worse than ours the existences rats lead--
+     Nosing along at night down some safe vat,
+     They find a shell-proof home before they rot.
+     Dead men may envy living mites in cheese,
+     Or good germs even.  Microbes have their joys,
+     And subdivide, and never come to death,
+     Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth.
+     "I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone."
+     Shelley would tell me.  Shelley would be stunned;
+     The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now.
+     "Pushing up daisies," is their creed, you know.
+     To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap,
+     For all the usefulness there is in soap.
+     D'you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup?
+     Some day, no doubt, if . . .
+                                   Friend, be very sure
+     I shall be better off with plants that share
+     More peaceably the meadow and the shower.
+     Soft rains will touch me,--as they could touch once,
+     And nothing but the sun shall make me ware.
+     Your guns may crash around me.  I'll not hear;
+     Or, if I wince, I shall not know I wince.
+     Don't take my soul's poor comfort for your jest.
+     Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds,
+     But here the thing's best left at home with friends.
+
+     My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest,
+     To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased
+     On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds.
+
+     Carry my crying spirit till it's weaned
+     To do without what blood remained these wounds.
+
+
+
+
+Wild with all Regrets
+
+         (Another version of "A Terre".)
+
+           To Siegfried Sassoon
+
+
+
+     My arms have mutinied against me--brutes!
+     My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,
+     My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours.
+     Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.
+     I can't read.  There:  it's no use.  Take your book.
+     A short life and a merry one, my buck!
+     We said we'd hate to grow dead old.  But now,
+     Not to live old seems awful:  not to renew
+     My boyhood with my boys, and teach 'em hitting,
+     Shooting and hunting,--all the arts of hurting!
+    --Well, that's what I learnt.  That, and making money.
+     Your fifty years in store seem none too many;
+     But I've five minutes.  God!  For just two years
+     To help myself to this good air of yours!
+     One Spring!  Is one too hard to spare?  Too long?
+     Spring air would find its own way to my lung,
+     And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.
+
+     Yes, there's the orderly.  He'll change the sheets
+     When I'm lugged out, oh, couldn't I do that?
+     Here in this coffin of a bed, I've thought
+     I'd like to kneel and sweep his floors for ever,--
+     And ask no nights off when the bustle's over,
+     For I'd enjoy the dirt; who's prejudiced
+     Against a grimed hand when his own's quite dust,--
+     Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn?
+     Dear dust,--in rooms, on roads, on faces' tan!
+     I'd love to be a sweep's boy, black as Town;
+     Yes, or a muckman.  Must I be his load?
+     A flea would do.  If one chap wasn't bloody,
+     Or went stone-cold, I'd find another body.
+
+     Which I shan't manage now.  Unless it's yours.
+     I shall stay in you, friend, for some few hours.
+     You'll feel my heavy spirit chill your chest,
+     And climb your throat on sobs, until it's chased
+     On sighs, and wiped from off your lips by wind.
+
+     I think on your rich breathing, brother, I'll be weaned
+     To do without what blood remained me from my wound.
+
+
+     5th December 1917.
+
+
+
+
+Disabled
+
+
+
+     He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
+     And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
+     Legless, sewn short at elbow.  Through the park
+     Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
+     Voices of play and pleasure after day,
+     Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.
+
+     About this time Town used to swing so gay
+     When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees
+     And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,
+    --In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
+     Now he will never feel again how slim
+     Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
+     All of them touch him like some queer disease.
+
+     There was an artist silly for his face,
+     For it was younger than his youth, last year.
+     Now he is old; his back will never brace;
+     He's lost his colour very far from here,
+     Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,
+     And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,
+     And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.
+     One time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg,
+     After the matches carried shoulder-high.
+     It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,
+     He thought he'd better join.  He wonders why . . .
+     Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts.
+
+     That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,
+     Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,
+     He asked to join.  He didn't have to beg;
+     Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.
+     Germans he scarcely thought of; and no fears
+     Of Fear came yet.  He thought of jewelled hilts
+     For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
+     And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
+     Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
+     And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.
+
+     Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
+     Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
+     Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.
+     Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,
+     And do what things the rules consider wise,
+     And take whatever pity they may dole.
+     To-night he noticed how the women's eyes
+     Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
+     How cold and late it is!  Why don't they come
+     And put him into bed?  Why don't they come?
+
+
+
+
+The End
+
+
+
+     After the blast of lightning from the east,
+     The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot throne,
+     After the drums of time have rolled and ceased
+     And from the bronze west long retreat is blown,
+
+     Shall Life renew these bodies?  Of a truth
+     All death will he annul, all tears assuage?
+     Or fill these void veins full again with youth
+     And wash with an immortal water age?
+
+     When I do ask white Age, he saith not so,--
+     "My head hangs weighed with snow."
+     And when I hearken to the Earth she saith
+     My fiery heart sinks aching.  It is death.
+     Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified
+     Nor my titanic tears the seas be dried."
+
+
+
+
+
+[End of original text.]
+
+
+
+
+
+Appendix
+
+
+
+General Notes:--
+
+
+Due to the general circumstances surrounding Wilfred Owen, and his death
+one week before the war ended, it should be noted that these poems are
+not all in their final form. Owen had only had a few of his poems
+published during his lifetime, and his papers were in a state of
+disarray when Siegfried Sassoon, his friend and fellow poet, put
+together this volume. The 1920 edition was the first edition of Owen's
+poems, the 1921 reprint (of which this is a transcript) added one
+more--and nothing else happened until Edmund Blunden's 1931 edition.
+Even with that edition, there remained gaps, and several more editions
+added more and more poems and fragments, in various forms, as it was
+difficult to tell which of Owen's drafts were his final ones, until Jon
+Stallworthy's "Complete Poems and Fragments" (1983) included all that
+could be found, and tried to put them in chronological order, with the
+latest revisions, etc.
+
+Therefore, it should not be surprising if some or most of these poems
+differ from later editions.
+
+
+After Owen's death, his writings gradually gained pre-eminence, so that,
+although virtually unknown during the war, he came into high regard.
+Benjamin Britten, the British composer who set nine of Owen's works as
+the text of his "War Requiem" (shortly after the Second World War),
+called Owen "by far our greatest war poet, and one of the most original
+poets of this century."  (Owen is especially noted for his use of
+pararhyme.) Five of those nine texts are some form of poems included
+here, to wit: 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', 'Futility', 'Parable of the Old
+Men and the Young', 'The End', and 'Strange Meeting'.  The other four
+were '[Bugles Sang]', 'The Next War', 'Sonnet [Be slowly lifted up]' and
+'At a Calvary Near the Ancre'--all of which the reader may wish to
+pursue, being some of Owen's finest work.  Fortunately, the poem which I
+consider his best, and which is one of his most quoted--'Dulce et
+Decorum est', is included in this volume.
+
+
+Transcriber's Specific Notes:--
+
+Blighty:  England, or a wound that would take a soldier home (to England).
+
+S. I. W.:  Self Inflicted Wound.
+
+Parable of the Old Men and the Young:  A retold story from the Bible,
+but with a different ending.  The phrase "Abram bound the youth with
+belts and straps" refers to the youth who went to war, with all their
+equipment belted and strapped on.  Other versions of this poem have an
+additional line.
+
+Dulce et Decorum est:  The phrase "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"
+is a Latin phrase from Horace, and translates literally something like
+"Sweet and proper it is for your country (fatherland) to die." The poem
+was originally intended to be addressed to an author who had written war
+poems for children.  "Dim through the misty panes . . ." should be
+understood by anyone who has worn a gas mask.
+
+Alan R. Light.  Monroe, North Carolina, July, 1997.
+
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+

PG1042_text.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,2258 @@
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1901 Archibald Constable and Co. edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                            A READING OF LIFE
+                             WITH OTHER POEMS
+
+
+                            BY GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                               WESTMINSTER
+                       ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD
+                           2 WHITEHALL GARDENS
+                                   1901
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                             BUTLER & TANNER,
+                       THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS,
+                            FROME, AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                         PAGE
+A READING OF LIFE
+   THE VITAL CHOICE                                         1
+   WITH THE HUNTRESS                                        3
+   WITH THE PERSUADER                                       8
+   THE TEST OF MANHOOD                                     28
+THE CAGEING OF ARES                                        45
+THE NIGHT-WALK                                             55
+THE HUELESS LOVE                                           60
+SONG IN THE SONGLESS                                       63
+UNION IN DISSEVERANCE                                      64
+THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH                                     65
+THE MAIN REGRET                                            66
+ALTERNATION                                                68
+HAWARDEN                                                   69
+AT THE CLOSE                                               70
+FOREST HISTORY                                             71
+A GARDEN IDYL                                              81
+FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE                                     88
+FRAGMENTS OF THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS
+VERSE--
+   THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES                              109
+                    ,, ,, ,, ,,                           112
+   MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS                            114
+   AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT                                 117
+   PARIS AND DIOMEDES                                     119
+   HYPNOS ON IDA                                          121
+   CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS              122
+   THE HORSES OF ACHILLES                                 123
+THE MARES OF THE CAMARGUE--
+   FROM THE _MIREIO_                                      126
+
+
+
+
+
+A READING OF LIFE
+
+
+THE VITAL CHOICE
+
+
+I
+
+
+   OR shall we run with Artemis
+   Or yield the breast to Aphrodite?
+   Both are mighty;
+   Both give bliss;
+   Each can torture if divided;
+   Each claims worship undivided,
+   In her wake would have us wallow.
+
+
+II
+
+
+   Youth must offer on bent knees
+   Homage unto one or other;
+   Earth, the mother,
+   This decrees;
+   And unto the pallid Scyther
+   Either points us shun we either
+   Shun or too devoutly follow.
+
+
+
+WITH THE HUNTRESS
+
+
+   THROUGH the water-eye of night,
+   Midway between eve and dawn,
+   See the chase, the rout, the flight
+   In deep forest; oread, faun,
+   Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck;
+   Ravenous all the line for speed.
+   See yon wavy sparkle beck
+   Sign of the Virgin Lady's lead.
+   Down her course a serpent star
+   Coils and shatters at her heels;
+   Peals the horn exulting, peals
+   Plaintive, is it near or far.
+   Huntress, arrowy to pursue,
+   In and out of woody glen,
+   Under cliffs that tear the blue,
+   Over torrent, over fen,
+   She and forest, where she skims
+   Feathery, darken and relume:
+   Those are her white-lightning limbs
+   Cleaving loads of leafy gloom.
+   Mountains hear her and call back,
+   Shrewd with night: a frosty wail
+   Distant: her the emerald vale
+   Folds, and wonders in her track.
+   Now her retinue is lean,
+   Many rearward; streams the chase
+   Eager forth of covert; seen
+   One hot tide the rapturous race.
+   Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned,
+   Up on a flash the lighted mound
+   Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft
+   Strung to barb with archer's craft,
+   Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet
+   Songs to see, past pitch of sweet.
+   Fearful swiftness they outrun,
+   Shaggy wildness, grey or dun,
+   Challenge, charge of tusks elude:
+   Theirs the dance to tame the rude;
+   Beast, and beast in manhood tame,
+   Follow we their silver flame.
+   Pride of flesh from bondage free,
+   Reaping vigour of its waste,
+   Marks her servitors, and she
+   Sanctifies the unembraced.
+   Nought of perilous she reeks;
+   Valour clothes her open breast;
+   Sweet beyond the thrill of sex;
+   Hallowed by the sex confessed.
+   Huntress arrowy to pursue,
+   Colder she than sunless dew,
+   She, that breath of upper air;
+   Ay, but never lyrist sang,
+   Draught of Bacchus never sprang
+   Blood the bliss of Gods to share,
+   High o'er sweep of eagle wings,
+   Like the run with her, when rings
+   Clear her rally, and her dart,
+   In the forest's cavern heart,
+   Tells of her victorious aim.
+   Then is pause and chatter, cheer,
+   Laughter at some satyr lame,
+   Looks upon the fallen deer,
+   Measuring his noble crest;
+   Here a favourite in her train,
+   Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed;
+   All applauded.  Shall she reign
+   Worshipped?  O to be with her there!
+   She, that breath of nimble air,
+   Lifts the breast to giant power.
+   Maid and man, and man and maid,
+   Who each other would devour
+   Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed,
+   There are comrades, led by her,
+   Maid-preserver, man-maker.
+
+
+
+WITH THE PERSUADER
+
+
+   WHO murmurs, hither, hither: who
+   Where nought is audible so fills the ear?
+   Where nought is visible can make appear
+   A veil with eyes that waver through,
+   Like twilight's pledge of blessed night to come,
+   Or day most golden?  All unseen and dumb,
+   She breathes, she moves, inviting flees,
+   Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire
+   To clasp and strike a slackened lyre,
+   Till over smiles of hyacinth seas,
+   Flame in a crystal vessel sails
+   Beneath a dome of jewelled spray,
+   For land that drops the rosy day
+   On nights of throbbing nightingales.
+
+   Landward did the wonder flit,
+   Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it.
+   We saw the heavens fling down their rose;
+   On rapturous waves we saw her glide;
+   The pearly sea-shell half enclose;
+   The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide;
+   And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more
+   Behold than tracks along a startled shore,
+   With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign
+   An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.
+
+   More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she,
+   The very she called forth by ripened blood
+   For its next breath of being, murmurs; she,
+   Allurement; she, fulfilment; she,
+   The stream within us urged to flood;
+   Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she,
+   Maid, woman and divinity;
+   Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate
+   Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit
+   Untasted; she our written fate
+   Unread; Life's flowering, Life's root:
+   Unread, divined; unseen, beheld;
+   The evanescent, ever-present she,
+   Great Nature's stern necessity
+   In radiance clothed, to softness quelled;
+   With a sword's edge of sweetness keen to take
+   Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break.
+
+   The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent.
+   Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent,
+   Her form is given to pardoned sight,
+   And lets our mortal eyes receive
+   The sovereign loveliness of celestial white;
+   Adored by them who solitarily pace,
+   In dusk of the underworld's perpetual eve,
+   The paths among the meadow asphodel,
+   Remembering.  Never there her face
+   Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell
+   Around such whiteness the enamoured air
+   Of noon that clothes her, never there.
+   Daughter of light, the joyful light,
+   She stands unveiled to nuptial sight,
+   Sweet in her disregard of aid
+   Divine to conquer or persuade.
+   A fountain jets from moss; a flower
+   Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower.
+   By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen
+   With eyelids unabashed the passion's Queen.
+
+   Shorn of attendant Graces she can use
+   Her natural snares to make her will supreme.
+   A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse
+   Before the leader foot shall dip in stream:
+   One arm at curve along a rounded thigh;
+   Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way
+   A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy,
+   Where innocence, not nature, signals nay.
+   The bud of fresh virginity awaits
+   The wooer, and all roseate will she burst:
+   She touches on the hour of happy mates;
+   Still is she unaware she wakens thirst.
+
+   And while commanding blissful sight believe
+   It holds her as a body strained to breast,
+   Down on the underworld's perpetual eve
+   She plunges the possessor dispossessed;
+   And bids believe that image, heaving warm,
+   Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame;
+   The phantom any breeze blows out of form;
+   A thirst's delusion, a defeated aim.
+
+   The rapture shed the torture weaves;
+   The direst blow on human heart she deals:
+   The pain to know the seen deceives;
+   Nought true but what insufferably feels.
+   And stabs of her delicious note,
+   That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard
+   Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat,
+   We answer as the midnight's morning's bird.
+
+   She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;
+   In her delicious laughter part revealed;
+   Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,
+   For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.
+   Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless:
+   Yon folded couples, passing under shade,
+   Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress,
+   Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed.
+   We dolorous complainers had a dream,
+   Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire,
+   We saw stand bare of her celestial beam
+   The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.
+
+   Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips
+   Of upward curl to meanings half obscure;
+   And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips
+   She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.
+   Blush of our being between birth and death:
+   Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath:
+   Her wily semblance nought of her denies;
+   Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,
+   The generous Goddess yields.  And she can arm
+   Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;
+   Benevolent as Earth to feed her own.
+   Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.
+   But scorn she has for them that walk alone;
+   Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach.
+   The men as chief of criminals she disdains,
+   And holds the reason in perceptive thought.
+   More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains,
+   Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.
+   Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed,
+   Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed,
+   In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths:
+   Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes
+   For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew.
+   Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn
+   Across her garden from the insaner crew,
+   She darkens to malignity of scorn.
+   A shiver courses through her garden-grounds:
+   Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds,
+   The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring
+   Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring.
+   These, the irreverent of Life's design,
+   Division between natural and divine
+   Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best,
+   In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest;
+   And these because the roses flood their cheeks,
+   Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks.
+   With them is war; and well the Goddess knows
+   What undermines the race who mount the rose;
+   How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,
+   Enkindled by persuasion overpowers:
+   Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,
+   The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs,
+   And timely guile unguarded finds them lie.
+   They who her sway withstand a sea defy,
+   At every point of juncture must be proof;
+   Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge
+   Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge
+   For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.
+   She, tenderness, is pitiless to them
+   Resisting in her godhead nature's truth.
+   No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;
+   Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.
+   These miserably disinclined,
+   The lamentably unembraced,
+   Insult the Pleasures Earth designed
+   To people and beflower the waste.
+   Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by:
+   For death they live, in life they die.
+
+   Her head the Goddess from them turns,
+   As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns.
+   She views her quivering couples unconsoled,
+   And of her beauty mirror they become,
+   Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum,
+   Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.
+   Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew,
+   Her couples whirl, sun-satiated,
+   Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed,
+   They play the music made of two:
+   Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end:
+   Cunninger than the numbered strings,
+   For melodies, for harmonies,
+   For mastered discords, and the things
+   Not vocable, whose mysteries
+   Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend.
+
+   Is it an anguish overflowing shame
+   And the tongue's pudency confides to her,
+   With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh,
+   The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name,
+   Then is the Goddess tenderness
+   Maternal, and she has a sister's tones
+   Benign to soothe intemperate distress,
+   Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans.
+   Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease
+   To those of her milk-bearer votaries
+   As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source
+   Direct; erratic but in heart's excess;
+   Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force;
+   Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress.
+   And pray they under skies less overcast,
+   That swiftly may her star of eve descend,
+   Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast,
+   To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.
+
+   Unfailing her reply to woman's voice
+   In supplication instant.  Is it man's,
+   She hears, approves his words, her garden scans,
+   And him: the flowers are various, he has choice.
+   Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long;
+   Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song;
+   And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise
+   Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.
+
+   She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps
+   To her invoked: distraction is implored.
+   A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps
+   Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored.
+   His tales of her declare she condescends;
+   Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:
+   Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose
+   A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose.
+   She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs
+   Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse;
+   Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings.
+   'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse
+   Rarely the music made of two ascends,
+   And Beauty's Queen some other way is won.
+   Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends
+   Herself to all, and yields herself to none,
+   Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised
+   In hot assurance under shade of doubt:
+   And numerous are the images bepraised
+   As Beauty's Queen, should passion head the rout.
+
+   Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to woo
+   Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue.
+   That is her garden's precept, seen where shines
+   Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines.
+   Daughter of light, the joyful light,
+   She bids her couples face full East,
+   Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast
+   Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite,
+   The lion-haunted thickets hold apart.
+   In love the ruddy hue declares great heart;
+   High confidence in her whose aid is lent
+   To lovers lifting the tuned instrument,
+   Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.
+   And doth the man pursue a tightened zone,
+   Then be it as the Laurel God he runs,
+   Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's.
+
+   Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe
+   He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show.
+   For him requiring woman's arts to please
+   Infantile tastes with babe reluctances,
+   No race of giants!  In the woman's veins
+   Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains.
+   Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod,
+   Aspiring blends the Titan with the God;
+   Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss
+   In her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss;
+   And is it needed that Love's daintier brute
+   Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit.
+   She is great Nature's ever intimate
+   In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait,
+   Until perverted by her senseless male,
+   She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail,
+   The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame,
+   Elusive to allure, since he grew tame.
+
+   Hence has the Goddess, Nature's earliest Power,
+   And greatest and most present, with her dower
+   Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute
+   For meditated guile.  She laughs to hear
+   A charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute,
+   Her garden's histories tell of to all near.
+   Let it be said, But less upon her guile
+   Doth she rely for her immortal smile.
+   Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens
+   To push her conquests by the simplest means.
+   While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves
+   From earth's good labours, Beauty's Queen he serves.
+
+   Her spacious garden and her garden's grant
+   She offers in reward for handsome cheer:
+   Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant
+   The secret down a dewy leer
+   Of corner eyelids into haze:
+   Many a fair Aphrosyne
+   Like flower-bell to honey-bee:
+   And here they flicker round the maze
+   Bewildering him in heart and head:
+   And here they wear the close demure,
+   With subtle peeps to reassure:
+   Others parade where love has bled,
+   And of its crimson weave their mesh:
+   Others to snap of fingers leap,
+   As bearing breast with love asleep.
+   These are her laughters in the flesh.
+   Or would she fit a warrior mood,
+   She lights her seeming unsubdued,
+   And indicates the fortress-key.
+   Or is it heart for heart that craves,
+   She flecks along a run of waves
+   The one to promise deeper sea.
+
+   Bands of her limpid primitives,
+   Or patterned in the curious braid,
+   Are the blest man's; and whatsoever he gives,
+   For what he gives is he repaid.
+   Good is it if by him 'tis held
+   He wins the fairest ever welled
+   From Nature's founts: she whispers it: Even I
+   Not fairer! and forbids him to deny,
+   Else little is he lover.  Those he clasps,
+   Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer,--
+   And be they doves or be they asps,--
+   Must seem to him the sovereignty fair;
+   Else counts he soon among life's wholly tamed.
+   Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed,
+   Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned
+   The lover.  Else, past ripeness, deathward bound,
+   He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests,
+   Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he.
+   Doth man divide divine Necessity
+   From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty's breasts
+   A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain
+   Present her; armed to bless and to constrain.
+   Of this he perishes; not she, the throned
+   On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts.
+   A loftier Reason out of deeper founts
+   Earth's chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned
+   While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts,
+   And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky;
+   Earth's answer, heaven's consent unto man's cry,
+   Uplifted by the innumerable hosts.
+
+   Quickened of Nature's eye and ear,
+   When the wild sap at high tide smites
+   Within us; or benignly clear
+   To vision; or as the iris lights
+   On fluctuant waters; she is ours
+   Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen;
+   Flushing the world with odorous flowers:
+   A soft compulsion on terrene
+   By heavenly: and the world is hers
+   While hunger after Beauty spurs.
+
+   So is it sung in any space
+   She fills, with laugh at shallow laws
+   Forbidding love's devised embrace,
+   The music Beauty from it draws.
+
+
+
+THE TEST OF MANHOOD
+
+
+   LIKE a flood river whirled at rocky banks,
+   An army issues out of wilderness,
+   With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;
+   Obstruction in the van; insane excess
+   Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress
+   Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks,
+   And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone,
+   The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay.
+   They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;
+   A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they.
+   Then was the gracious birth of man's new day;
+   Divided from the haunted night it shone.
+
+   That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang
+   Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide.
+   Another sun had risen to clasp his bride:
+   It was another earth unto him sang.
+
+   Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights?
+   From the Persuader came it, in those vales
+   Whereunto she melodiously invites,
+   Her troops of eager servitors regales?
+   Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed
+   Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead;
+   Nor either points for us the way of flame.
+   From him predestined mightier it came;
+   His task to hold them both in breast, and yield
+   Their dues to each, and of their war be field.
+
+   The foes that in repulsion never ceased,
+   Must he, who once has been the goodly beast
+   Of one or other, at whose beck he ran,
+   Constrain to make him serviceable man;
+   Offending neither, nor the natural claim
+   Each pressed, denying, for his true man's name.
+
+   Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife
+   To hold them fast conjoined within him still;
+   Submissive to his will
+   Along the road of life!
+   And marvel not he wavered if at whiles
+   The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles.
+   For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain;
+   Repentance offered ecstasy in pain.
+   Delicious licence called it Nature's cry;
+   Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh;
+   A tread on shingle timed his lame advance
+   Flung as the die of Bacchanalian Chance,
+   He of the troubled marching army leaned
+   On godhead visible, on godhead screened;
+   The radiant roseate, the curtained white;
+   Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night.
+
+   He drank of fictions, till celestial aid
+   Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed;
+   Sagely the generous Giver circumspect,
+   To choose for grants the egregious, his elect;
+   And ever that imagined succour slew
+   The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew.
+
+   In fellowship religion has its founts:
+   The solitary his own God reveres:
+   Ascend no sacred Mounts
+   Our hungers or our fears.
+   As only for the numbers Nature's care
+   Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds,
+   So to Divinity the spring of prayer
+   From brotherhood the one way upward leads.
+   Like the sustaining air
+   Are both for flowers and weeds.
+   But he who claims in spirit to be flower,
+   Will find them both an air that doth devour.
+
+   Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored
+   External gifts bestowed but on the sword;
+   Beheld himself, with less and less disguise,
+   Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes,
+   His army's foe, condemned to strive and fail;
+   See a black adversary's ghost prevail;
+   Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win
+   While still the conflict tore his breast within.
+
+   Out of that agony, misread for those
+   Imprisoned Powers warring unappeased,
+   The ghost of his black adversary rose,
+   To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased.
+   And long with him was wrestling ere emerged
+   A mind to read in him the reflex shade
+   Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged;
+   By craven compromises hourly swayed.
+
+   Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried,
+   The man's mind opened under weight of cloud.
+   To penetrate the dark was it endowed;
+   Stood day before a vision shooting wide.
+   Whereat the spectral enemy lost form;
+   The traversed wilderness exposed its track.
+   He felt the far advance in looking back;
+   Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm.
+
+   Under the low-browed tempest's eye of ire,
+   That ere it lightened smote a coward heart,
+   Earth nerved her chastened son to hail athwart
+   All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire;
+   A stranger still, religiously divined;
+   Not yet with understanding read aright.
+   But when the mind, the cherishable mind,
+   The multitude's grave shepherd, took full flight,
+   Himself as mirror raised among his kind,
+   He saw, and first of brotherhood had sight:
+   Knew that his force to fly, his will to see,
+   His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain,
+   Had come of many a grip in mastery,
+   Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain,
+   And of his bosom made him lord, to keep
+   The starry roof of his unruffled frame
+   Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep
+   Below, above, aye with a wistful aim.
+
+   The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown,
+   By traitor inmates baited, upward burned;
+   Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned,
+   The Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown.
+   To whom unwittingly did he aspire
+   In wilderness, where bitter was his need:
+   To whom in blindness, as an earthy seed
+   For light and air, he struck through crimson mire.
+   But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp,
+   And viewed an army, once the seeming doomed,
+   All choral in its fruitful garden camp,
+   The spiritual the palpable illumed.
+
+   This gift of penetration and embrace,
+   His prize from tidal battles lost or won,
+   Reveals the scheme to animate his race:
+   How that it is a warfare but begun;
+   Unending; with no Power to interpose;
+   No prayer, save for strength to keep his ground,
+   Heard of the Highest; never battle's close,
+   The victory complete and victor crowned:
+   Nor solace in defeat, save from that sense
+   Of strength well spent, which is the strength renewed.
+   In manhood must he find his competence;
+   In his clear mind the spiritual food:
+   God being there while he his fight maintains;
+   Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there,
+   While he rejects the suicide despair;
+   Accepts the spur of explicable pains;
+   Obedient to Nature, not her slave:
+   Her lord, if to her rigid laws he bows;
+   Her dust, if with his conscience he plays knave,
+   And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse:--
+   Whence Evil in a world unread before;
+   That mystery to simple springs resolved.
+   His God the Known, diviner to adore,
+   Shows Nature's savage riddles kindly solved.
+   Inconscient, insensitive, she reigns
+   In iron laws, though rapturous fair her face.
+   Back to the primal brute shall he retrace
+   His path, doth he permit to force her chains
+   A soft Persuader coursing through his veins,
+   An icy Huntress stringing to the chase:
+   What one the flash disdains;
+   What one so gives it grace.
+
+   But is he rightly manful in her eyes,
+   A splendid bloodless knight to gain the skies,
+   A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs,
+   Desireing and desireable he shines;
+   As peaches, that have caught the sun's uprise
+   And kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines.
+   Earth fills him with her juices, without fear
+   That she will cast him drunken down the steeps.
+   All woman is she to this man most dear;
+   He sows for bread, and she in spirit reaps:
+   She conscient, she sensitive, in him;
+   With him enwound, his brave ambition hers:
+   By him humaner made; by his keen spurs
+   Pricked to race past the pride in giant limb,
+   Her crazy adoration of big thews,
+   Proud in her primal sons, when crags they hurled,
+   Were thunder spitting lightnings on the world
+   In daily deeds, and she their evening Muse.
+
+   This man, this hero, works not to destroy;
+   This godlike--as the rock in ocean stands;--
+   He of the myriad eyes, the myriad hands
+   Creative; in his edifice has joy.
+   How strength may serve for purity is shown
+   When he himself can scourge to make it clean.
+   Withal his pitch of pride would not disown
+   A sober world that walks the balanced mean
+   Between its tempters, rarely overthrown:
+   And such at times his army's march has been.
+
+   Near is he to great Nature in the thought
+   Each changing Season intimately saith,
+   That nought save apparition knows the death;
+   To the God-lighted mind of man 'tis nought.
+   She counts not loss a word of any weight;
+   It may befal his passions and his greeds
+   To lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds,
+   But life gone breathless will she reinstate.
+
+   Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats,
+   When he the mandate lodged in it obeys,
+   Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze,
+   Strike camp, and onward, like the wind's cloud-fleets.
+   Unresting she, unresting he, from change
+   To change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain;
+   She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain,
+   Yet skyward branched, with loftier mark and range.
+
+   No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod,
+   She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute;
+   But he, the flower at head and soil at root,
+   Is miracle, guides he the brute to God.
+   And that way seems he bound; that way the road,
+   With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone,
+   Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown,
+   He travels, urged by some internal goad.
+
+   Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing
+   He would become is in his mind its child;
+   Astir, demanding birth to light and wing;
+   For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled.
+   So moves he forth in faith, if he has made
+   His mind God's temple, dedicate to truth.
+   Earth's nourishing delights, no more gainsaid,
+   He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth.
+   Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls;
+   The star of sky upon his footway cast;
+   Then match in him who holds his tempters fast,
+   The body's love and mind's, whereof the soul's.
+   Then Earth her man for woman finds at last,
+   To speed the pair unto her goal of goals.
+
+   Or is't the widowed's dream of her new mate?
+   Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood;
+   The sly Persuader snaky in his blood;
+   With her the barren Huntress alternate;
+   His rough refractory off on kicking heels
+   To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed;
+   And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed,
+   His tumbled world.  What, then, the faith she feels?
+   May not his aspect, like her own so fair
+   Reflexively, the central force belie,
+   And he, the once wild ocean storming sky,
+   Be rebel at the core?  What hope is there?
+
+   'Tis that in each recovery he preserves,
+   Between his upper and his nether wit,
+   Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit;
+   He less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves;
+   With such a grasp upon his brute as tells
+   Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun.
+   A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun
+   Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAGEING OF ARES
+
+
+                             ILIAD, v. V. 385
+
+                [_Dedicated to the Council at The Hague_.]
+
+   HOW big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed
+   At sight of her boy Giants on the leap
+   Each over other as they neighboured home,
+   Fronting the day's descent across green slopes,
+   And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced.
+   Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess,
+   Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft,
+   It signalled some adventurous master-trick
+   To set Olympians buzzing in debate,
+   Lest it might be their godhead undermined,
+   The Tyranny menaced.  Ephialtes high
+   On shoulders of his brother Otos waved
+   For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news,
+   Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar
+   While Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees,
+   With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;
+   Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched,
+   And both upon her bosom shaken to speech,
+   Burst the hot story out of throats of both,
+   Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut
+   The hurried spout.  And as when drifting storm
+   Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon
+   A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam
+   Of grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils,
+   Signification marvellous she caught,
+   Through gurglings of triumphant jollity,
+   Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last
+   Subsided, and the serious naked deed,
+   With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around,
+   Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe
+   That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized,
+   These two made up of lion, bear and fox,
+   Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy,
+   Still by the reckoning infants among men,
+   Had done the deed to strike the Titan host
+   In envy dumb, in envious heart elate:
+   These two combining strength and craft had snared,
+   Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged
+   The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War;
+   Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes;
+   The barren furrower of anointed fields;
+   The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky,
+   Her hated enemy, too long her scourge:
+   Great Ares.  And they gagged his trumpet mouth
+   When they had seized on his implacable spear,
+   Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite
+   His godlike fury startled from amaze.
+   For he had eyed them nearing him in play,
+   The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled,
+   Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount
+   Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there
+   On Earth's original fisticuffs they called
+   For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God,
+   Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms,
+   Good servitors of Ares they would be,
+   And ply the pointed spear to dominate
+   Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood
+   Vowed to defy Immortals.  So it chanced
+   Amusedly he watched them, and as one
+   The lusty twain were on him and they had him.
+   Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud!
+   Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes!
+   Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!
+   Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him,
+   Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;
+   A desolating fire to blind the sight
+   With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes;
+   The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;
+   Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice,
+   Heard from the babe as from the broken crone.
+   Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased,
+   And tumbled down the cave.  But rather look--
+   Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought,
+   Of all the Gods to let her secret fly,
+   Hermes, after the thirteen songful months!
+   Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts,
+   And shatter earth's delirious holiday,
+   Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream,
+   Resolving to composure on its throbs.
+   But see her in the Seasons through that year;
+   That one glad year and the fair opening month.
+   Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!
+   War with her, gentle war with her, each day
+   Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung,
+   On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength
+   Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won,
+   From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids,
+   Her ready secret: the abounding life
+   Returned for valiant labour: she and they
+   Defeated and victorious turn by turn;
+   By loss enriched, by overthrow restored.
+   Exchange of powers of this conflict came;
+   Defacement none, nor ever squandered force.
+   Is battle nature's mandate, here it reigned,
+   As music unto the hand that smote the strings;
+   And she the rosier from their showery brows,
+   They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast.
+   Back to the primal rational of those
+   Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp
+   Stability in hatred of the insane,
+   Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce
+   The mortal mind's concept of earth's divorced
+   Above; those beautiful, those masterful,
+   Those lawless.  High they sit, and if descend,
+   Descend to reap, not sowing.  Is it just?
+   Earth in her happy children asked that word,
+   Whereto within their breast was her reply.
+   Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless,
+   Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years;
+   Yet they ('twas the Great Mother's voice inspired
+   The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust,
+   Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar,
+   To meet the certain fate of earth's divorced,
+   And clap lame wings across a wintry haze,
+   Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still,
+   Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled
+   The Tyranny.  This her voice within them told,
+   When softly the Great Mother chid her sons
+   Not of the giant brood, who did create
+   Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain
+   Set moving by an abject blood, that waked
+   To wanton under elements more benign,
+   And planted aliens on Olympian heights;--
+   Imagination's cradle poesy
+   Become a monstrous pressure upon men;--
+   Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed
+   By light from her, born of the love of her,
+   Their lordship the illumined brain rejects
+   For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law,
+   Her other name.  So spake she in their heart,
+   Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath
+   Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth,
+   Confidently to cling.  And when brown corn
+   Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song,
+   With gold necks bent for any zephyr's kiss;
+   When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil
+   Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape;
+   When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray,
+   Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth;
+   The very eye of passion drowsed by excess,
+   And yet a burning lion for the spring;
+   Then in that time of general cherishment,
+   Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side,
+   He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged,
+   Then did good Gaea's children gratefully
+   Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for peace,
+   Delightful Peace, that answers Reason's call
+   Harmoniously and images her Law;
+   Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives,
+   In memories made present on the brain
+   By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes;
+   The picture of an earth allied to heaven;
+   Between them the known smile behind black masks;
+   Rightly their various moods interpreted;
+   And frolic because toilful children borne
+   With larger comprehension of Earth's aim
+   At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid.
+
+
+
+
+THE NIGHT-WALK
+
+
+   AWAKES for me and leaps from shroud
+   All radiantly the moon's own night
+   Of folded showers in streamer cloud;
+   Our shadows down the highway white
+   Or deep in woodland woven-boughed,
+   With yon and yon a stem alight.
+
+   I see marauder runagates
+   Across us shoot their dusky wink;
+   I hear the parliament of chats
+   In haws beside the river's brink;
+   And drops the vole off alder-banks,
+   To push his arrow through the stream.
+   These busy people had our thanks
+   For tickling sight and sound, but theme
+   They were not more than breath we drew
+   Delighted with our world's embrace:
+   The moss-root smell where beeches grew,
+   And watered grass in breezy space;
+   The silken heights, of ghostly bloom
+   Among their folds, by distance draped.
+   'Twas Youth, rapacious to consume,
+   That cried to have its chaos shaped:
+   Absorbing, little noting, still
+   Enriched, and thinking it bestowed;
+   With wistful looks on each far hill
+   For something hidden, something owed.
+   Unto his mantled sister, Day
+   Had given the secret things we sought
+   And she was grave and saintly gay;
+   At times she fluttered, spoke her thought;
+   She flew on it, then folded wings,
+   In meditation passing lone,
+   To breathe around the secret things,
+   Which have no word, and yet are known;
+   Of thirst for them are known, as air
+   Is health in blood: we gained enough
+   By this to feel it honest fare;
+   Impalpable, not barren, stuff.
+
+   A pride of legs in motion kept
+   Our spirits to their task meanwhile,
+   And what was deepest dreaming slept:
+   The posts that named the swallowed mile;
+   Beside the straight canal the hut
+   Abandoned; near the river's source
+   Its infant chirp; the shortest cut;
+   The roadway missed; were our discourse;
+   At times dear poets, whom some view
+   Transcendent or subdued evoked
+   To speak the memorable, the true,
+   The luminous as a moon uncloaked;
+   For proof that there, among earth's dumb,
+   A soul had passed and said our best.
+   Or it might be we chimed on some
+   Historic favourite's astral crest,
+   With part to reverence in its gleam,
+   And part to rivalry the shout:
+   So royal, unuttered, is youth's dream
+   Of power within to strike without.
+   But most the silences were sweet,
+   Like mothers' breasts, to bid it feel
+   It lived in such divine conceit
+   As envies aught we stamp for real.
+
+   To either then an untold tale
+   Was Life, and author, hero, we.
+   The chapters holding peaks to scale,
+   Or depths to fathom, made our glee;
+   For we were armed of inner fires,
+   Unbled in us the ripe desires;
+   And passion rolled a quiet sea,
+   Whereon was Love the phantom sail.
+
+
+
+
+THE HUELESS LOVE
+
+
+   UNTO that love must we through fire attain,
+      Which those two held as breath of common air;
+      The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere;
+   Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.
+
+   Midway the road of our life's term they met,
+      And one another knew without surprise;
+      Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;
+   Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.
+
+   To them it was revealed how they had found
+      The kindred nature and the needed mind;
+      The mate by long conspiracy designed;
+   The flower to plant in sanctuary ground.
+
+   Avowed in vigilant solicitude
+      For either, what most lived within each breast
+      They let be seen: yet every human test
+   Demanding righteousness approved them good.
+
+   She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared
+      Abandonment to help if heaved or sank
+      Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank,
+   Life rosier were she but less revered.
+
+   An arm that never shook did not obscure
+      Her woman's intuition of the bliss--
+      Their tempter's moment o'er the black abyss,
+   Across the narrow plank--he could abjure.
+
+   Then came a day that clipped for him the thread,
+      And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold,
+      Was all of earthly in their love untold,
+   Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.
+
+   So has there come the gust at South-west flung
+      By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist,
+      When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed,
+   And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung.
+
+
+
+
+SONG IN THE SONGLESS
+
+
+   THEY have no song, the sedges dry,
+         And still they sing.
+   It is within my breast they sing,
+         As I pass by.
+   Within my breast they touch a string,
+         They wake a sigh.
+   There is but sound of sedges dry;
+   In me they sing.
+
+
+
+
+UNION IN DISSEVERANCE
+
+
+   SUNSET worn to its last vermilion he;
+   She that star overhead in slow descent:
+   That white star with the front of angel she;
+   He undone in his rays of glory spent
+
+   Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise,
+   He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest
+   Incomplete, were the light for which he dies,
+   Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest.
+
+   Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks;
+   Life's full throb over breathless and abased:
+   Yet stand they, though impalpable the links,
+   One, more one than the bridally embraced.
+
+
+
+
+THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH
+
+
+   IF that thou hast the gift of strength, then know
+   Thy part is to uplift the trodden low;
+   Else in a giant's grasp until the end
+   A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAIN REGRET
+
+
+                   WRITTEN FOR THE CHARING CROSS ALBUM
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+   SEEN, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission
+      Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare.
+   They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician;
+      Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to repair.
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+   Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered
+      Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone.
+   Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered
+      Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere human tone.
+
+
+
+
+ALTERNATION
+
+
+   BETWEEN the fountain and the rill
+   I passed, and saw the mighty will
+   To leap at sky; the careless run,
+   As earth would lead her little son.
+
+   Beneath them throbs an urgent well,
+   That here is play, and there is war.
+   I know not which had most to tell
+   Of whence we spring and what we are.
+
+
+
+
+HAWARDEN
+
+
+   WHEN comes the lighted day for men to read
+   Life's meaning, with the work before their hands
+   Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed,
+   Earth will not hear her children's wailful bands
+   Deplore the chieftain fall'n in sob and dirge;
+   Nor they look where is darkness, but on high.
+   The sun that dropped down our horizon's verge,
+   Illumes his labours through the travelled sky,
+   Now seen in sum, most glorious; and 'tis known
+   By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast.
+   A splendid image built of man has flown;
+   His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past.
+   Ours the great privilege to have had one
+   Among us who celestial tasks has done.
+
+
+
+
+AT THE CLOSE
+
+
+   TO Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal,
+   Who straightway sound the call to arms.  Thou know'st;
+   And that black spot in each embattled host,
+   Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal.
+   Now is it red artillery and white steel;
+   Till on a day will ring the victor's boast,
+   That 'tis Thy chosen towers uppermost,
+   Where Thy rejected grovels under heel.
+   So in all times of man's descent insane
+   To brute, did strength and craft combining strike,
+   Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow.
+   But at the close he entered Thy domain,
+   Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like
+   He tore the fall'n, the Eternal was his Foe.
+
+
+
+
+FOREST HISTORY
+
+
+I
+
+
+   BENEATH the vans of doom did men pass in.
+      Heroic who came out; for round them hung
+      A wavering phantom's red volcano tongue,
+   With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin:
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+   Old Earth's original Dragon; there retired
+      To his last fastness; overthrown by few.
+      Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew.
+   Then man to play devorant straight was fired.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+   More intimate became the forest fear
+      While pillared darkness hatched malicious life
+      At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife
+   And wary slid the glance from ear to ear.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+   In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray,
+      The forest's heart of fog on mossed morass,
+      On purple pool and silky cotton-grass,
+   Revealed where lured the swallower byway.
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+   Dead outlook, flattened back with hard rebound
+      Off walls of distance, left each mounted height.
+      It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spite
+   Of humble human being, held the ground.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+   Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slow
+      The feet sustained by track of feet pursued
+      Pained steps, and found the common brotherhood
+   By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+   Anon a mason's work amazed the sight,
+      And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there abode.
+      They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed;
+   Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+   What words they taught were nails to scratch the head.
+      Benignant works explained the chanting brood.
+      Their monastery lit black solitude,
+   As one might think a star that heavenward led.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+   Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet,
+      Like some gold flower nightly inward curled,
+      Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world,
+   Or played with it, and had their white retreat.
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+   Into big books of metal clasps they pored.
+      They governed, even as men; they welcomed lays.
+      The treasures women are whose aim is praise,
+   Was shown in them: the Garden half restored.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+   A deluge billow scoured the land off seas,
+      With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam.
+      For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home,
+   The lesser savage offered bogs and trees.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+   Whence reverence round grey-haired story grew:
+      And inmost spots of ancient horror shone
+      As temples under beams of trials bygone;
+   For in them sang brave times with God in view.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+   Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces green,
+      Like night's first little stars through clearing showers.
+      Was rumoured how a castle's falcon towers
+   The wilderness commanded with fierce mien.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+   Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance;
+      For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout.
+      Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout,
+   Pricked onward, bound for their unsung romance.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+   It might be that two errant lords across
+      The block of each came edged, and at sharp cry
+      They charged forthwith, the better man to try.
+   One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+   Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain,
+      The robbers into gruesome durance drew.
+      Swift should her hero come, like lightning's blue!
+   She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain.
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+   As we, that ere the worst her hero haps,
+      Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den:
+      A toady cave beside an ague fen,
+   Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps.
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+   By daylight now the forest fear could read
+      Itself, and at new wonders chuckling went.
+      Straight for the roebuck's neck the bowman spent
+   A dart that laughed at distance and at speed.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+   Right loud the bugle's hallali elate
+      Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors;
+      And deftest hand was he from foreign wars,
+   But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate.
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+   Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke;
+      At dawn the deer's wet nostrils blew their last.
+      To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast,
+   With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke.
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+   The city urchin mooned on forest air,
+      On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick
+      As swallows o'er smooth streams, and sighed him sick
+   For thinking that his dearer home was there.
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+   Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang
+      An old-world echo, like no mortal thing.
+      The hunter's horn might wind a jocund ring,
+   But held in ear it had a chilly clang.
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+   Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time;
+      Some warning haunted any sound prolonged,
+      As though the leagues of woodland held them wronged
+   To hear an axe and see a township climb.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+   The forest's erewhile emperor at eve
+      Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales.
+      At midnight a small people danced the dales,
+   So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+   Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats,
+      Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much.
+      The pensioned forester beside his crutch,
+   Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes.
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+   Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart;
+      Devourer, and insensibly devoured;
+      In whom the city over forest flowered,
+   The forest wreathed the city's drama-mart.
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+   There found he in new form that Dragon old,
+      From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught
+      How blindly each its antidote besought;
+   For either's breath the needs of either told.
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+   Now deep in woods, with song no sermon's drone,
+      He showed what charm the human concourse works:
+      Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks
+   Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone.
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+   Our conquest these: if haply we retain
+      The reverence that ne'er will overrun
+      Due boundaries of realms from Nature won,
+   Nor let the poet's awe in rapture wane.
+
+
+
+
+A GARDEN IDYL
+
+
+   WITH sagest craft Arachne worked
+   Her web, and at a corner lurked,
+   Awaiting what should plump her soon,
+   To case it in the death-cocoon.
+   Sagaciously her home she chose
+   For visits that would never close;
+   Inside my chalet-porch her feast
+   Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.
+
+   The finished structure, bar on bar,
+   Had snatched from light to form a star,
+   And struck on sight, when quick with dews,
+   Like music of the very Muse.
+   Great artists pass our single sense;
+   We hear in seeing, strung to tense;
+   Then haply marvel, groan mayhap,
+   To think such beauty means a trap.
+   But Nature's genius, even man's
+   At best, is practical in plans;
+   Subservient to the needy thought,
+   However rare the weapon wrought.
+   As long as Nature holds it good
+   To urge her creatures' quest for food
+   Will beauty stamp the just intent
+   Of weapons upon service bent.
+   For beauty is a flower of roots
+   Embedded lower than our boots;
+   Out of the primal strata springs,
+   And shows for crown of useful things
+
+   Arachne's dream of prey to size
+   Aspired; so she could nigh despise
+   The puny specks the breezes round
+   Supplied, and let them shake unwound;
+   Assured of her fat fly to come;
+   Perhaps a blue, the spider's plum;
+   Who takes the fatal odds in fight,
+   And gives repast an appetite,
+   By plunging, whizzing, till his wings
+   Are webbed, and in the lists he swings,
+   A shrouded lump, for her to see
+   Her banquet in her victory.
+
+   This matron of the unnumbered threads,
+   One day of dandelions' heads
+   Distributing their gray perruques
+   Up every gust, I watched with looks
+   Discreet beside the chalet-door;
+   And gracefully a light wind bore,
+   Direct upon my webster's wall,
+   A monster in the form of ball;
+   The mildest captive ever snared,
+   That neither struggled nor despaired,
+   On half the net invading hung,
+   And plain as in her mother tongue,
+   While low the weaver cursed her lures,
+   Remarked, "You have me; I am yours."
+
+   Thrice magnified, in phantom shape,
+   Her dream of size she saw, agape.
+   Midway the vast round-raying beard
+   A desiccated midge appeared;
+   Whose body pricked the name of meal,
+   Whose hair had growth in earth's unreal;
+   Provocative of dread and wrath,
+   Contempt and horror, in one froth,
+   Inextricable, insensible,
+   His poison presence there would dwell,
+   Declaring him her dream fulfilled,
+   A catch to compliment the skilled;
+   And she reduced to beaky skin,
+   Disgraceful among kith and kin
+
+   Against her corner, humped and aged,
+   Arachne wrinkled, past enraged,
+   Beyond disgust or hope in guile.
+   Ridiculously volatile
+   He seemed to her last spark of mind;
+   And that in pallid ash declined
+   Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt,
+   Wherein throughout her frame she felt
+   That he, the light wind's libertine,
+   Without a scoff, without a grin,
+   And mannered like the courtly few,
+   Who merely danced when light winds blew,
+   Impervious to beak and claws,
+   Tradition's ruinous Whitebeard was;
+   Of whom, as actors in old scenes,
+   Had grannam weavers warned their weans,
+   With word, that less than feather-weight,
+   He smote the web like bolt of Fate.
+
+   This muted drama, hour by hour,
+   I watched amid a world in flower,
+   Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid
+   Their gray-blue o'er the grass's blade,
+   And still along the garden-run
+   The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun.
+   Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance
+   Her visitor performed a dance;
+   She puckered thinner; he the same
+   As when on that light wind he came.
+
+   Next day was told what deeds of night
+   Were done; the web had vanished quite;
+   With it the strange opposing pair;
+   And listless waved on vacant air,
+   For her adieu to heart's content,
+   A solitary filament.
+
+
+
+
+FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE
+
+
+   SPRUNG of the father blood, the mother brain,
+   Are they who point our pathway and sustain.
+   They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired.
+   When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.
+
+   To see Life's formless offspring and subdue
+   Desire of times unripe, we have these two,
+   Whose union is right reason: join they hands,
+   The world shall know itself and where it stands;
+   What cowering angel and what upright beast
+   Make man, behold, nor count the low the least,
+   Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers.
+   When these two meet, a point of time is ours.
+
+   As in a land of waterfalls, that flow
+   Smooth for the leap on their great voice below,
+   Some eddies near the brink borne swift along,
+   Will capture hearing with the liquid song,
+   So, while the headlong world's imperious force
+   Resounded under, heard I these discourse.
+
+   First words, where down my woodland walk she led,
+   To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said:
+
+   --Your faith in me appals, to shake my own,
+   When still I find you in this mire alone.
+
+   --The few steps taken at a funeral pace
+   By men had slain me but for those you trace.
+
+   --Look I once back, a broken pinion I:
+   Black as the rebel angels rained from sky!
+
+   --Needs must you drink of me while here you live,
+   And make me rich in feeling I can give.
+
+   --A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow:
+   Yet must I read my sister for the How.
+   My daisy better knows her God of beams
+   Than doth an eagle that to mount him seems.
+   She hath the secret never fieriest reach
+   Of wing shall master till men hear her teach.
+
+   --Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough,
+   My semblance when I have you not as now.
+   The quiet creatures who escape mishap
+   Bear likeness to pure growths of the green sap:
+   A picture of the settled peace desired
+   By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired.
+   I listen at their breasts: is there no jar
+   Of wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are,
+   And such a picture as the piercing mind
+   Ranks beneath vegetation.  Not resigned
+   Are my true pupils while the world is brute.
+   What edict of the stronger keeps me mute,
+   Stronger impels the motion of my heart.
+   I am not Resignation's counterpart.
+   If that I teach, 'tis little the dry word,
+   Content, but how to savour hope deferred.
+   We come of earth, and rich of earth may be;
+   Soon carrion if very earth are we!
+   The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use
+   Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce;
+   Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat,
+   And pass despised; "a-cold for lack of heat,"
+   Like other corpses, but without death's plea.
+
+   --My sister calls for battle; is it she?
+
+   --Rather a world of pressing men in arms,
+   Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms
+   Each drowsy malady and coiling vice
+   With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price!
+   No home is here for peace while evil breeds,
+   While error governs, none; and must the seeds
+   You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain,
+   Lie barren at the doorway of the brain,
+   Let stout contention drive deep furrows, blood
+   Moisten, and make new channels of its flood!
+
+   --My sober little maid, when we meet first,
+   Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst.
+   So can I not of her till circumstance
+   Drugs cravings.  Here we see how men advance
+   A doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred,
+   Like dead weeds on whipped waters.  Shout the word
+   Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march,
+   As to band-music under Victory's arch.
+   Thus was it, and thus is it; save that then
+   The beauty of frank animals had men.
+
+   --Observe them, and down rearward for a term,
+   Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm.
+   Thence look this way, across the fields that show
+   Men's early form of speech for Yes and No.
+   My sister a bruised infant's utterance had;
+   And issuing stronger, to mankind 'twas mad.
+   I knew my home where I had choice to feel
+   The toad beneath a harrow or a heel.
+
+   --Speak of this Age.
+
+                           --When you it shall discern
+   Bright as you are, to me the Age will turn.
+
+   --For neither of us has it any care;
+   Its learning is through Science to despair.
+
+   --Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not
+   With evil, casts the burden of its lot.
+   This Age climbs earth.
+
+                                 --To challenge heaven.
+
+                                                         --Not less
+   The lower deeps.  It laughs at Happiness!
+   That know I, though the echoes of it wail,
+   For one step upward on the crags you scale.
+   Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust,
+   Which means our soul asleep or body's lust,
+   Until from warmth of many breasts, that beat
+   A temperate common music, sunlike heat
+   The happiness not predatory sheds!
+
+   --But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads,
+   Now rages to outdo a horny Past.
+   Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast
+   Are thrown by every novel light upraised.
+   The world's whole round smokes ominously, amazed
+   And trembling as its pregnant AEtna swells.
+   Combustibles on hot combustibles
+   Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire
+   The mountain-torrent of infernal ire
+   And leave the track of devils where men built.
+   Perceptive of a doom, the sinner's guilt
+   Confesses in a cry for help shrill loud,
+   If drops the chillness of a passing cloud,
+   To conscience, reason, human love; in vain:
+   None save they but the souls which them contain.
+   No extramural God, the God within
+   Alone gives aid to city charged with sin.
+   A world that for the spur of fool and knave,
+   Sweats in its laboratory, what shall save?
+   But men who ply their wits in such a school,
+   Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool.
+
+   --Much have I studied hard Necessity!
+   To know her Wisdom's mother, and that we
+   May deem the harshness of her later cries
+   In labour a sure goad to prick the wise,
+   If men among the warnings which convulse,
+   Can gravely dread without the craven's pulse.
+   Long ere the rising of this Age of ours,
+   The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers.
+   Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring,
+   And are as lasting as the parent thing.
+   Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill,
+   They might o'ermatch and have mankind at will.
+
+   Behold such army gathering: ours the spur,
+   No scattered foe to face, but Lucifer.
+   Not fool or knave is now the enemy
+   O'ershadowing men, 'tis Folly, Knavery!
+   A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach.
+   Now must the brother soul alive in each,
+   His traitorous individual devildom
+   Hold subject lest the grand destruction come.
+   Dimly men see it menacing apace
+   To overthrow, perchance uproot the race.
+   Within, without, they are a field of tares:
+   Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares,
+   And wherefore warrior service they must yield,
+   Shines visible as life on either field.
+   That is my comfort, following shock on shock,
+   Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock.
+   Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night,
+   Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight,
+   Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect,
+   The human and Satanic intellect,
+   Determined for their uses to control
+   What forces on the earth and under roll,
+   Their granite rock runs igneous; now they stand
+   Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land.
+   They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are:
+   Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war.
+
+   --My sister, as I read them in my glass,
+   Their field of tares they take for pasture grass.
+   How waken them that have not any bent
+   Save browsing--the concrete indifferent!
+   Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff:
+   They fear not for the race when full the trough.
+   They have much fear of giving up the ghost;
+   And these are of mankind the unnumbered host.
+
+   --If I could see with you, and did not faint
+   In beating wing, the future I would paint.
+   Those massed indifferents will learn to quake:
+   Now meanwhile is another mass awake,
+   Once denser than the grunters of the sty.
+   If I could see with you!  Could I but fly!
+
+   --The length of days that you with them have housed,
+   An outcast else, approves their cause espoused.
+
+   --O true, they have a cause, and woe for us,
+   While still they have a cause too piteous!
+   Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined,
+   They walk no longer with a stumbler blind,
+   And quicken in the virtue of their cause,
+   To think me a poor mouther of old saws!
+   I wait the issue of a battling Age;
+   The toilers with your "troughsters" now engage;
+   Instructing them through their acutest sense,
+   How close the dangers of indifference!
+   Already have my people shown their worth,
+   More love they light, which folds the love of Earth.
+   That love to love of labour leads: thence love
+   Of humankind--earth's incense flung above.
+
+   --Admit some other features: Faithless, mean;
+   Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene;
+   Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells
+   On Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles;
+   And if I bid it face what _I_ observe,
+   Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve!
+
+   --Oft has your prophet, for reward of toil,
+   Seen nests of seeming cockatrices coil:
+   Disowned them as the unholiest of Time,
+   Which were his offspring, born of flame on slime.
+   Nor him, their sire, have known the filial fry:
+   As little as Time's earliest knew the sky.
+   Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flame
+   At intervals, in proof of whom they came.
+   To strengthen our foundations is the task
+   Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask,
+   Though, lighted by your beams, down mining caves
+   The rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves.
+   My sister sees no round beyond her mood;
+   To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood.
+   Out of the course of ancient ruts and grooves,
+   It moves: O much for me to say it moves!
+   About his AEthiop Highlands Nile is Nile,
+   Though not the stream of the paternal smile:
+   And where his tide of nourishment he drives,
+   An Abyssinian wantonness revives.
+   Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he swims;
+   He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs,
+   The Past yet flowing, the fair time that fills;
+   Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills.
+
+   To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers,
+   He is the vast Insensate who devours
+   His golden promise over leagues of seed,
+   Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed.
+   The races which on barbarous force begin,
+   Inherit onward of their origin,
+   And cancelled blessings will the current length
+   Reveal till they know need of shaping strength.
+   'Tis not in men to recognize the need
+   Before they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed.
+   Then may sharp suffering their nature grind;
+   Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind.
+   Yet mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed,
+   For tens up the safe mountains at his head.
+   Few would be fed, not far his course prolong,
+   Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong.
+
+   --That rings of truth!  More do your people thrive;
+   Your Many are more merrily alive
+   Than erewhile when I gloried in the page
+   Of radiant singer and anointed sage.
+   Greece was my lamp: burnt out for lack of oil;
+   Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil!
+   All structures built upon a narrow space
+   Must fall, from having not your hosts for base.
+   O thrice must one be you, to see them shift
+   Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift;
+   With faith, that of privations and spilt blood,
+   Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood!
+   And thrice must one be you, to wait release
+   From duress in the swamp of their increase.
+   At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest,
+   A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed,
+   Philosophers behold; desponding view.
+   Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few;
+   Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins,
+   Dive down the fumy AEtna of their brains.
+   Belated vessels on a rising sea,
+   They seem: they pass!
+
+                                    --But not Philosophy!
+
+   --Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despise
+   Nought but the coward in us!  That way lies
+   The wisdom making passage through our slough.
+   Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow;
+   Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait.
+   Philosophy is Life's one match for Fate.
+   That photosphere of our high fountain One,
+   Our spirit's Lord and Reason's fostering sun,
+   Philosophy, shall light us in the shade,
+   Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid.
+   Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed,
+   Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good!
+   Advantage to the Many: that we name
+   God's voice; have there the surety in our aim.
+   This thought unto my sister do I owe,
+   And irony and satire off me throw.
+   They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds,
+   Where numbers crave their sustenance in words.
+   Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen,
+   Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene.
+   Who never yet of scattered lamps was born
+   To speed a world, a marching world to warn,
+   But sunward from the vivid Many springs,
+   Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings.
+
+
+
+
+FRAGMENTS OF THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH HEXAMETER VERSE
+
+
+THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES
+
+
+                           ILIAD, B. I. V. 149
+
+   "HEIGH me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one,
+   Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians,
+   Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen?
+   I, not hither I fared on account of the spear-armed Trojans,
+   Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done;
+   Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen;
+   Never in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests
+   Ravaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksome
+   Mountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy sea-waters.
+   O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, justice
+   Pluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed!
+   Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou reckest.
+   Worse, it is thou whose threat 'tis to ravish my prize from me,
+   portion
+   Won with much labour, the which my gift from the sons of Achaia.
+   Never, in sooth, have I known my prize equal thine when Achaians
+   Gave some flourishing populous Trojan town up to pillage.
+   Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most in the storm of the combat,
+   Yet when came peradventure share of the booty amongst us,
+   Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some small blessed thing bore
+   Off to the ships, my share of reward for my toil in the bloodshed!
+   So now go I to Phthia, for better by much it beseems me
+   Homeward go with my beaked ships now, and I hold not in prospect,
+   I being outraged, thou mayst gather here plunder and wealth-store."
+
+
+
+V. 225
+
+
+   "Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer, thou!
+   Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the conflict,
+   Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia
+   Dared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a
+   death-stroke.
+   Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians,
+   Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted against
+   thee.
+   Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over abjects;
+   Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one.
+   Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it likewise:
+   Yea, by the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-buds
+   Never again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the
+   mountains,
+   No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal clipped
+   off
+   Leaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia,
+   Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement,
+   Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have its portent;
+   Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons of Achaia
+   Throughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though in an anguish,
+   How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying Hector
+   Tumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy
+   heart-strings,
+   Rage-wrung, thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower of
+   Achaians."
+
+
+
+MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS
+
+
+                           ILIAD, B. II V. 455
+
+   LIKE as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous,
+   Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far,
+   So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the
+   splendour
+   Gleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-vault.
+   They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged flocks,
+   Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the
+   wild-swans,
+   Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaistros;
+   Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions,
+   Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them
+   resoundeth;
+   So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings poured
+   forth
+   On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath them
+   Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of the
+   horse-hooves.
+   Stopped they then on the fair-flower'd field of Scamander, their
+   thousands
+   Many as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season.
+   Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes traverse,
+   Clouds of them, under some herdsman's wonning, where then are the
+   milk-pails
+   Also, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of spring-time;
+   Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held,
+   Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crush
+   them.
+   Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks of goats,
+   know
+   Easily one from the other when all get mixed o'er the pasture,
+   So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places for
+   onslaught,
+   Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon,
+   He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his thunder,
+   He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon.
+
+
+
+AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT
+
+
+                           ILIAD, B. XI. V. 148
+
+   THESE, then, he left, and away where ranks were now clashing the
+   thickest,
+   Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved Achaians.
+   Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful compulsion,
+   Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the dust-cloud,
+   Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering
+   horse-hooves)
+   Hewed with the sword's sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord Agamemnon
+   Followed, chasing and slaughtering aye, on-urgeing the Argives.
+
+   Now, as when fire voracious catches the unclipped woodland,
+   This way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the
+   scrubwood
+   Stretches uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire's fury rageing,
+   So beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scattered
+   Trojans fell; and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened,
+   Rattled their vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the war-field,
+   Missing the blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were
+   outstretched
+   Flat upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their home-mates.
+
+
+
+PARIS AND DIOMEDES
+
+
+                           ILIAD; B. XI V. 378
+
+         SO he, with a clear shout of laughter,
+   Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise:
+   "Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it had
+   pierced thee
+   Into the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-breath!
+   Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their direst,
+   They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a lion."
+   Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes:
+   "Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins!
+   If that thou dared'st face me here out in the open with weapons,
+   Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows.
+   Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole;
+   Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant.
+   Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that's emasculate, noughtworth!
+   Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the
+   slightest,
+   My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway.
+   Torn, troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen
+   slaughtered,
+   Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his
+   blood-drops,
+   Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the women."
+
+
+
+HYPNOS ON IDA
+
+
+                          ILIAD, B. XIV. V. 283
+
+   THEY then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts,
+   Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos,
+   Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the woodland.
+   There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant,
+   Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida
+   Lustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether.
+   There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine for
+   concealment,
+   That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in the
+   mountains,
+   Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis.
+
+
+
+CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS
+
+
+                          ILIAD, B. XIV.  V. 394
+
+   NOT the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle,
+   Whipped from the sea's deeps up by the terrible blast of the
+   Northwind;
+   Nay, nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire's rush so arousing,
+   Down along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a woodland;
+   Nay, nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the oak-trees'
+   Foliage-tresses high, when it rages to raveing its utmost;
+   As rose then stupendous the Trojan's cry and Achaians',
+   Dread upshouting as one when together they clashed in the conflict.
+
+
+
+THE HORSES OF ACHILLES
+
+
+                          ILIAD, B. XVII. V. 426
+
+   SO now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground,
+   Wept, since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown there,
+   Cast down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying Hector.
+   Sooth, meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores,
+   Oft, on the one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, and
+   oft, too,
+   Coax entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten.
+   Vainly, for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont spacious,
+   Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians.
+   Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone,
+   Haply, of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under;
+   Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious war-car,
+   Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamenting incessant
+   Ran the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their eyelids,
+   Mourning their charioteer; all their lustrous manes dusty-clotted,
+   Right side and left of the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of the
+   yoke-bow.
+   Now when the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head shook
+   Pitying them for their grief, these words then he spake in his bosom;
+   "Why, ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortal
+   Master; ye that are ageless both, ye both of you deathless!
+   Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have
+   heart-grief?
+   'Tis most true, than the race of these men is there wretcheder nowhere
+   Aught over earth's range found that is gifted with breath and has
+   movement."
+
+
+
+THE MARES OF THE CAMARGUE
+
+
+                       FROM THE _Mireio_ OF MISTRAL
+
+         A HUNDRED mares, all white! their manes
+         Like mace-reed of the marshy plains
+         Thick-tufted, wavy, free o' the shears:
+         And when the fiery squadron rears
+         Bursting at speed, each mane appears
+         Even as the white scarf of a fay
+   Floating upon their necks along the heavens away.
+
+         O race of humankind, take shame!
+         For never yet a hand could tame,
+   Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdue
+         The mares of the Camargue.  I have known,
+         By treason snared, some captives shown;
+         Expatriate from their native Rhone,
+   Led off, their saline pastures far from view:
+
+         And on a day, with prompt rebound,
+         They have flung their riders to the ground,
+   And at a single gallop, scouring free,
+         Wide-nostril'd to the wind, twice ten
+         Of long marsh-leagues devour'd, and then,
+         Back to the Vacares again,
+   After ten years of slavery just to breathe salt sea
+
+         For of this savage race unbent,
+         The ocean is the element.
+   Of old escaped from Neptune's car, full sure,
+         Still with the white foam fleck'd are they,
+         And when the sea puffs black from grey,
+         And ships part cables, loudly neigh
+   The stallions of Camargue, all joyful in the roar;
+
+         And keen as a whip they lash and crack
+         Their tails that drag the dust, and back
+   Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their flesh, where he,
+         The God, drives deep his trident teeth,
+         Who in one horror, above, beneath,
+         Bids storm and watery deluge seethe,
+   And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea.
+
+                                                               _Cant._ iv.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+    Butler and Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
+
+
+

PG1044_text.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,1668 @@
+VISIT TO HEAVEN***
+
+
+Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+
+
+
+
+                               Extract from
+                           Captain Stormfield’s
+                             Visit to Heaven
+
+
+                                    BY
+                                Mark Twain
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                           NEW YORK AND LONDON
+                            HARPER & BROTHERS
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                  Copyright, 1909, by MARK TWAIN COMPANY
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                _Printed in the United States of America_
+
+                      [Picture: Captain Stormfield]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a little
+anxious.  Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that time, like a
+comet.  _Like_ a comet!  Why, Peters, I laid over the lot of them!  Of
+course there warn’t any of them going my way, as a steady thing, you
+know, because they travel in a long circle like the loop of a lasso,
+whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart for the Hereafter; but I
+happened on one every now and then that was going my way for an hour or
+so, and then we had a bit of a brush together.  But it was generally
+pretty one-sided, because I sailed by them the same as if they were
+standing still.  An ordinary comet don’t make more than about 200,000
+miles a minute.  Of course when I came across one of that sort—like
+Encke’s and Halley’s comets, for instance—it warn’t anything but just a
+flash and a vanish, you see.  You couldn’t rightly call it a race.  It
+was as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was a telegraph despatch.
+But after I got outside of our astronomical system, I used to flush a
+comet occasionally that was something _like_.  _We_ haven’t got any such
+comets—ours don’t begin.  One night I was swinging along at a good round
+gait, everything taut and trim, and the wind in my favor—I judged I was
+going about a million miles a minute—it might have been more, it couldn’t
+have been less—when I flushed a most uncommonly big one about three
+points off my starboard bow.  By his stern lights I judged he was bearing
+about northeast-and-by-north-half-east.  Well, it was so near my course
+that I wouldn’t throw away the chance; so I fell off a point, steadied my
+helm, and went for him.  You should have heard me whiz, and seen the
+electric fur fly!  In about a minute and a half I was fringed out with an
+electrical nimbus that flamed around for miles and miles and lit up all
+space like broad day.  The comet was burning blue in the distance, like a
+sickly torch, when I first sighted him, but he begun to grow bigger and
+bigger as I crept up on him.  I slipped up on him so fast that when I had
+gone about 150,000,000 miles I was close enough to be swallowed up in the
+phosphorescent glory of his wake, and I couldn’t see anything for the
+glare.  Thinks I, it won’t do to run into him, so I shunted to one side
+and tore along.  By and by I closed up abreast of his tail.  Do you know
+what it was like?  It was like a gnat closing up on the continent of
+America.  I forged along.  By and by I had sailed along his coast for a
+little upwards of a hundred and fifty million miles, and then I could see
+by the shape of him that I hadn’t even got up to his waistband yet.  Why,
+Peters, _we_ don’t know anything about comets, down here.  If you want to
+see comets that _are_ comets, you’ve got to go outside of our solar
+system—where there’s room for them, you understand.  My friend, I’ve seen
+comets out there that couldn’t even lay down inside the _orbits_ of our
+noblest comets without their tails hanging over.
+
+Well, I boomed along another hundred and fifty million miles, and got up
+abreast his shoulder, as you may say.  I was feeling pretty fine, I tell
+you; but just then I noticed the officer of the deck come to the side and
+hoist his glass in my direction.  Straight off I heard him sing
+out—“Below there, ahoy!  Shake her up, shake her up!  Heave on a hundred
+million billion tons of brimstone!”
+
+“Ay-ay, sir!”
+
+“Pipe the stabboard watch!  All hands on deck!”
+
+“Ay-ay, sir!”
+
+“Send two hundred thousand million men aloft to shake out royals and
+sky-scrapers!”
+
+“Ay-ay, sir!”
+
+“Hand the stuns’ls!  Hang out every rag you’ve got!  Clothe her from stem
+to rudder-post!”
+
+“Ay-ay, sir!”
+
+In about a second I begun to see I’d woke up a pretty ugly customer,
+Peters.  In less than ten seconds that comet was just a blazing cloud of
+red-hot canvas.  It was piled up into the heavens clean out of sight—the
+old thing seemed to swell out and occupy all space; the sulphur smoke
+from the furnaces—oh, well, nobody can describe the way it rolled and
+tumbled up into the skies, and nobody can half describe the way it smelt.
+Neither can anybody begin to describe the way that monstrous craft begun
+to crash along.  And such another powwow—thousands of bo’s’n’s whistles
+screaming at once, and a crew like the populations of a hundred thousand
+worlds like ours all swearing at once.  Well, I never heard the like of
+it before.
+
+We roared and thundered along side by side, both doing our level best,
+because I’d never struck a comet before that could lay over me, and so I
+was bound to beat this one or break something.  I judged I had some
+reputation in space, and I calculated to keep it.  I noticed I wasn’t
+gaining as fast, now, as I was before, but still I was gaining.  There
+was a power of excitement on board the comet.  Upwards of a hundred
+billion passengers swarmed up from below and rushed to the side and begun
+to bet on the race.  Of course this careened her and damaged her speed.
+My, but wasn’t the mate mad!  He jumped at that crowd, with his trumpet
+in his hand, and sung out—
+
+“Amidships! amidships, you—! {9} or I’ll brain the last idiot of you!”
+
+Well, sir, I gained and gained, little by little, till at last I went
+skimming sweetly by the magnificent old conflagration’s nose.  By this
+time the captain of the comet had been rousted out, and he stood there in
+the red glare for’ard, by the mate, in his shirt-sleeves and slippers,
+his hair all rats’ nests and one suspender hanging, and how sick those
+two men did look!  I just simply couldn’t help putting my thumb to my
+nose as I glided away and singing out:
+
+“Ta-ta! ta-ta!  Any word to send to your family?”
+
+Peters, it was a mistake.  Yes, sir, I’ve often regretted that—it was a
+mistake.  You see, the captain had given up the race, but that remark was
+too tedious for him—he couldn’t stand it.  He turned to the mate, and
+says he—
+
+“Have we got brimstone enough of our own to make the trip?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Sure?”
+
+“Yes, sir—more than enough.”
+
+“How much have we got in cargo for Satan?”
+
+“Eighteen hundred thousand billion quintillions of kazarks.”
+
+“Very well, then, let his boarders freeze till the next comet comes.
+Lighten ship!  Lively, now, lively, men!  Heave the whole cargo
+overboard!”
+
+Peters, look me in the eye, and be calm.  I found out, over there, that a
+kazark is exactly the bulk of a _hundred and sixty-nine worlds like
+ours_!  They hove all that load overboard.  When it fell it wiped out a
+considerable raft of stars just as clean as if they’d been candles and
+somebody blowed them out.  As for the race, that was at an end.  The
+minute she was lightened the comet swung along by me the same as if I was
+anchored.  The captain stood on the stern, by the after-davits, and put
+his thumb to his nose and sung out—
+
+“Ta-ta! ta-ta!  Maybe _you’ve_ got some message to send your friends in
+the Everlasting Tropics!”
+
+Then he hove up his other suspender and started for’ard, and inside of
+three-quarters of an hour his craft was only a pale torch again in the
+distance.  Yes, it was a mistake, Peters—that remark of mine.  I don’t
+reckon I’ll ever get over being sorry about it.  I’d ’a’ beat the bully
+of the firmament if I’d kept my mouth shut.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+But I’ve wandered a little off the track of my tale; I’ll get back on my
+course again.  Now you see what kind of speed I was making.  So, as I
+said, when I had been tearing along this way about thirty years I begun
+to get uneasy.  Oh, it was pleasant enough, with a good deal to find out,
+but then it was kind of lonesome, you know.  Besides, I wanted to get
+somewhere.  I hadn’t shipped with the idea of cruising forever.  First
+off, I liked the delay, because I judged I was going to fetch up in
+pretty warm quarters when I got through; but towards the last I begun to
+feel that I’d rather go to—well, most any place, so as to finish up the
+uncertainty.
+
+Well, one night—it was always night, except when I was rushing by some
+star that was occupying the whole universe with its fire and its
+glare—light enough then, of course, but I necessarily left it behind in a
+minute or two and plunged into a solid week of darkness again.  The stars
+ain’t so close together as they look to be.  Where was I?  Oh yes; one
+night I was sailing along, when I discovered a tremendous long row of
+blinking lights away on the horizon ahead.  As I approached, they begun
+to tower and swell and look like mighty furnaces.  Says I to myself—
+
+“By George, I’ve arrived at last—and at the wrong place, just as I
+expected!”
+
+Then I fainted.  I don’t know how long I was insensible, but it must have
+been a good while, for, when I came to, the darkness was all gone and
+there was the loveliest sunshine and the balmiest, fragrantest air in its
+place.  And there was such a marvellous world spread out before me—such a
+glowing, beautiful, bewitching country.  The things I took for furnaces
+were gates, miles high, made all of flashing jewels, and they pierced a
+wall of solid gold that you couldn’t see the top of, nor yet the end of,
+in either direction.  I was pointed straight for one of these gates, and
+a-coming like a house afire.  Now I noticed that the skies were black
+with millions of people, pointed for those gates.  What a roar they made,
+rushing through the air!  The ground was as thick as ants with people,
+too—billions of them, I judge.
+
+I lit.  I drifted up to a gate with a swarm of people, and when it was my
+turn the head clerk says, in a business-like way—
+
+“Well, quick!  Where are you from?”
+
+“San Francisco,” says I.
+
+“San Fran—_what_?” says he.
+
+“San Francisco.”
+
+He scratched his head and looked puzzled, then he says—
+
+“Is it a planet?”
+
+By George, Peters, think of it!  “_Planet_?” says I; “it’s a city.  And
+moreover, it’s one of the biggest and finest and—”
+
+“There, there!” says he, “no time here for conversation.  We don’t deal
+in cities here.  Where are you from in a _general_ way?”
+
+“Oh,” I says, “I beg your pardon.  Put me down for California.”
+
+I had him _again_, Peters!  He puzzled a second, then he says, sharp and
+irritable—
+
+“I don’t know any such planet—is it a constellation?”
+
+“Oh, my goodness!” says I.  “Constellation, says you?  No—it’s a State.”
+
+“Man, we don’t deal in States here.  _Will_ you tell me where you are
+from _in general—at large_, don’t you understand?”
+
+“Oh, now I get your idea,” I says.  “I’m from America,—the United States
+of America.”
+
+Peters, do you know I had him _again_?  If I hadn’t I’m a clam!  His face
+was as blank as a target after a militia shooting-match.  He turned to an
+under clerk and says—
+
+“Where is America?  _What_ is America?”
+
+The under clerk answered up prompt and says—
+
+“There ain’t any such orb.”
+
+“_Orb_?” says I.  “Why, what are you talking about, young man?  It ain’t
+an orb; it’s a country; it’s a continent.  Columbus discovered it; I
+reckon likely you’ve heard of _him_, anyway.  America—why, sir, America—”
+
+“Silence!” says the head clerk.  “Once for all, where—are—you—_from_?”
+
+“Well,” says I, “I don’t know anything more to say—unless I lump things,
+and just say I’m from the world.”
+
+“Ah,” says he, brightening up, “now that’s something like!  _What_
+world?”
+
+Peters, he had _me_, that time.  I looked at him, puzzled, he looked at
+me, worried.  Then he burst out—
+
+“Come, come, what world?”
+
+Says I, “Why, _the_ world, of course.”
+
+“_The_ world!” he says.  “H’m! there’s billions of them! . . . Next!”
+
+That meant for me to stand aside.  I done so, and a sky-blue man with
+seven heads and only one leg hopped into my place.  I took a walk.  It
+just occurred to me, then, that all the myriads I had seen swarming to
+that gate, up to this time, were just like that creature.  I tried to run
+across somebody I was acquainted with, but they were out of acquaintances
+of mine just then.  So I thought the thing all over and finally sidled
+back there pretty meek and feeling rather stumped, as you may say.
+
+“Well?” said the head clerk.
+
+“Well, sir,” I says, pretty humble, “I don’t seem to make out which world
+it is I’m from.  But you may know it from this—it’s the one the Saviour
+saved.”
+
+He bent his head at the Name.  Then he says, gently—
+
+“The worlds He has saved are like to the gates of heaven in number—none
+can count them.  What astronomical system is your world in?—perhaps that
+may assist.”
+
+“It’s the one that has the sun in it—and the moon—and Mars”—he shook his
+head at each name—hadn’t ever heard of them, you see—“and Neptune—and
+Uranus—and Jupiter—”
+
+“Hold on!” says he—“hold on a minute!  Jupiter . . . Jupiter . . . Seems
+to me we had a man from there eight or nine hundred years ago—but people
+from that system very seldom enter by this gate.”  All of a sudden he
+begun to look me so straight in the eye that I thought he was going to
+bore through me.  Then he says, very deliberate, “Did you come _straight
+here_ from your system?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” I says—but I blushed the least little bit in the world when I
+said it.
+
+He looked at me very stern, and says—
+
+“That is not true; and this is not the place for prevarication.  You
+wandered from your course.  How did that happen?”
+
+Says I, blushing again—
+
+“I’m sorry, and I take back what I said, and confess.  I raced a little
+with a comet one day—only just the least little bit—only the tiniest
+lit—”
+
+“So—so,” says he—and without any sugar in his voice to speak of.
+
+I went on, and says—
+
+“But I only fell off just a bare point, and I went right back on my
+course again the minute the race was over.”
+
+“No matter—that divergence has made all this trouble.  It has brought you
+to a gate that is billions of leagues from the right one.  If you had
+gone to your own gate they would have known all about your world at once
+and there would have been no delay.  But we will try to accommodate you.”
+He turned to an under clerk and says—
+
+“What system is Jupiter in?”
+
+“I don’t remember, sir, but I think there is such a planet in one of the
+little new systems away out in one of the thinly worlded corners of the
+universe.  I will see.”
+
+He got a balloon and sailed up and up and up, in front of a map that was
+as big as Rhode Island.  He went on up till he was out of sight, and by
+and by he came down and got something to eat and went up again.  To cut a
+long story short, he kept on doing this for a day or two, and finally he
+came down and said he thought he had found that solar system, but it
+might be fly-specks.  So he got a microscope and went back.  It turned
+out better than he feared.  He had rousted out our system, sure enough.
+He got me to describe our planet and its distance from the sun, and then
+he says to his chief—
+
+“Oh, I know the one he means, now, sir.  It is on the map.  It is called
+the Wart.”
+
+Says I to myself, “Young man, it wouldn’t be wholesome for you to go down
+_there_ and call it the Wart.”
+
+Well, they let me in, then, and told me I was safe forever and wouldn’t
+have any more trouble.
+
+Then they turned from me and went on with their work, the same as if they
+considered my case all complete and shipshape.  I was a good deal
+surprised at this, but I was diffident about speaking up and reminding
+them.  I did so hate to do it, you know; it seemed a pity to bother them,
+they had so much on their hands.  Twice I thought I would give up and let
+the thing go; so twice I started to leave, but immediately I thought what
+a figure I should cut stepping out amongst the redeemed in such a rig,
+and that made me hang back and come to anchor again.  People got to eying
+me—clerks, you know—wondering why I didn’t get under way.  I couldn’t
+stand this long—it was too uncomfortable.  So at last I plucked up
+courage and tipped the head clerk a signal.  He says—
+
+“What! you here yet?  What’s wanting?”
+
+Says I, in a low voice and very confidential, making a trumpet with my
+hands at his ear—
+
+“I beg pardon, and you mustn’t mind my reminding you, and seeming to
+meddle, but hain’t you forgot something?”
+
+He studied a second, and says—
+
+“Forgot something? . . . No, not that I know of.”
+
+“Think,” says I.
+
+He thought.  Then he says—
+
+“No, I can’t seem to have forgot anything.  What is it?”
+
+“Look at me,” says I, “look me all over.”
+
+He done it.
+
+“Well?” says he.
+
+“Well,” says I, “you don’t notice anything?  If I branched out amongst
+the elect looking like this, wouldn’t I attract considerable
+attention?—wouldn’t I be a little conspicuous?”
+
+“Well,” he says, “I don’t see anything the matter.  What do you lack?”
+
+“Lack!  Why, I lack my harp, and my wreath, and my halo, and my
+hymn-book, and my palm branch—I lack everything that a body naturally
+requires up here, my friend.”
+
+Puzzled?  Peters, he was the worst puzzled man you ever saw.  Finally he
+says—
+
+“Well, you seem to be a curiosity every way a body takes you.  I never
+heard of these things before.”
+
+I looked at the man awhile in solid astonishment; then I says—
+
+“Now, I hope you don’t take it as an offence, for I don’t mean any, but
+really, for a man that has been in the Kingdom as long as I reckon you
+have, you do seem to know powerful little about its customs.”
+
+“Its customs!” says he.  “Heaven is a large place, good friend.  Large
+empires have many and diverse customs.  Even small dominions have, as you
+doubtless know by what you have seen of the matter on a small scale in
+the Wart.  How can you imagine I could ever learn the varied customs of
+the countless kingdoms of heaven?  It makes my head ache to think of it.
+I know the customs that prevail in those portions inhabited by peoples
+that are appointed to enter by my own gate—and hark ye, that is quite
+enough knowledge for one individual to try to pack into his head in the
+thirty-seven millions of years I have devoted night and day to that
+study.  But the idea of learning the customs of the whole appalling
+expanse of heaven—O man, how insanely you talk!  Now I don’t doubt that
+this odd costume you talk about is the fashion in that district of heaven
+you belong to, but you won’t be conspicuous in this section without it.”
+
+I felt all right, if that was the case, so I bade him good-day and left.
+All day I walked towards the far end of a prodigious hall of the office,
+hoping to come out into heaven any moment, but it was a mistake.  That
+hall was built on the general heavenly plan—it naturally couldn’t be
+small.  At last I got so tired I couldn’t go any farther; so I sat down
+to rest, and begun to tackle the queerest sort of strangers and ask for
+information, but I didn’t get any; they couldn’t understand my language,
+and I could not understand theirs.  I got dreadfully lonesome.  I was so
+down-hearted and homesick I wished a hundred times I never had died.  I
+turned back, of course.  About noon next day, I got back at last and was
+on hand at the booking-office once more.  Says I to the head clerk—
+
+“I begin to see that a man’s got to be in his own Heaven to be happy.”
+
+“Perfectly correct,” says he.  “Did you imagine the same heaven would
+suit all sorts of men?”
+
+“Well, I had that idea—but I see the foolishness of it.  Which way am I
+to go to get to my district?”
+
+He called the under clerk that had examined the map, and he gave me
+general directions.  I thanked him and started; but he says—
+
+“Wait a minute; it is millions of leagues from here.  Go outside and
+stand on that red wishing-carpet; shut your eyes, hold your breath, and
+wish yourself there.”
+
+“I’m much obliged,” says I; “why didn’t you dart me through when I first
+arrived?”
+
+“We have a good deal to think of here; it was your place to think of it
+and ask for it.  Good-by; we probably sha’n’t see you in this region for
+a thousand centuries or so.”
+
+“In that case, _o revoor_,” says I.
+
+I hopped onto the carpet and held my breath and shut my eyes and wished I
+was in the booking-office of my own section.  The very next instant a
+voice I knew sung out in a business kind of a way—
+
+“A harp and a hymn-book, pair of wings and a halo, size 13, for Cap’n Eli
+Stormfield, of San Francisco!—make him out a clean bill of health, and
+let him in.”
+
+I opened my eyes.  Sure enough, it was a Pi Ute Injun I used to know in
+Tulare County; mighty good fellow—I remembered being at his funeral,
+which consisted of him being burnt and the other Injuns gauming their
+faces with his ashes and howling like wildcats.  He was powerful glad to
+see me, and you may make up your mind I was just as glad to see him, and
+feel that I was in the right kind of a heaven at last.
+
+Just as far as your eye could reach, there was swarms of clerks, running
+and bustling around, tricking out thousands of Yanks and Mexicans and
+English and Arabs, and all sorts of people in their new outfits; and when
+they gave me my kit and I put on my halo and took a look in the glass, I
+could have jumped over a house for joy, I was so happy.  “Now _this_ is
+something like!” says I.  “Now,” says I, “I’m all right—show me a cloud.”
+
+Inside of fifteen minutes I was a mile on my way towards the cloud-banks
+and about a million people along with me.  Most of us tried to fly, but
+some got crippled and nobody made a success of it.  So we concluded to
+walk, for the present, till we had had some wing practice.
+
+We begun to meet swarms of folks who were coming back.  Some had harps
+and nothing else; some had hymn-books and nothing else; some had nothing
+at all; all of them looked meek and uncomfortable; one young fellow
+hadn’t anything left but his halo, and he was carrying that in his hand;
+all of a sudden he offered it to me and says—
+
+“Will you hold it for me a minute?”
+
+Then he disappeared in the crowd.  I went on.  A woman asked me to hold
+her palm branch, and then _she_ disappeared.  A girl got me to hold her
+harp for her, and by George, _she_ disappeared; and so on and so on, till
+I was about loaded down to the guards.  Then comes a smiling old
+gentleman and asked me to hold _his_ things.  I swabbed off the
+perspiration and says, pretty tart—
+
+“I’ll have to get you to excuse me, my friend,—_I_ ain’t no hat-rack.”
+
+About this time I begun to run across piles of those traps, lying in the
+road.  I just quietly dumped my extra cargo along with them.  I looked
+around, and, Peters, that whole nation that was following me were loaded
+down the same as I’d been.  The return crowd had got them to hold their
+things a minute, you see.  They all dumped their loads, too, and we went
+on.
+
+When I found myself perched on a cloud, with a million other people, I
+never felt so good in my life.  Says I, “Now this is according to the
+promises; I’ve been having my doubts, but now I am in heaven, sure
+enough.”  I gave my palm branch a wave or two, for luck, and then I
+tautened up my harp-strings and struck in.  Well, Peters, you can’t
+imagine anything like the row we made.  It was grand to listen to, and
+made a body thrill all over, but there was considerable many tunes going
+on at once, and that was a drawback to the harmony, you understand; and
+then there was a lot of Injun tribes, and they kept up such another
+war-whooping that they kind of took the tuck out of the music.  By and by
+I quit performing, and judged I’d take a rest.  There was quite a nice
+mild old gentleman sitting next me, and I noticed he didn’t take a hand;
+I encouraged him, but he said he was naturally bashful, and was afraid to
+try before so many people.  By and by the old gentleman said he never
+could seem to enjoy music somehow.  The fact was, I was beginning to feel
+the same way; but I didn’t say anything.  Him and I had a considerable
+long silence, then, but of course it warn’t noticeable in that place.
+After about sixteen or seventeen hours, during which I played and sung a
+little, now and then—always the same tune, because I didn’t know any
+other—I laid down my harp and begun to fan myself with my palm branch.
+Then we both got to sighing pretty regular.  Finally, says he—
+
+“Don’t you know any tune but the one you’ve been pegging at all day?”
+
+“Not another blessed one,” says I.
+
+“Don’t you reckon you could learn another one?” says he.
+
+“Never,” says I; “I’ve tried to, but I couldn’t manage it.”
+
+“It’s a long time to hang to the one—eternity, you know.”
+
+“Don’t break my heart,” says I; “I’m getting low-spirited enough
+already.”
+
+After another long silence, says he—
+
+“Are you glad to be here?”
+
+Says I, “Old man, I’ll be frank with you.  This _ain’t_ just as near my
+idea of bliss as I thought it was going to be, when I used to go to
+church.”
+
+Says he, “What do you say to knocking off and calling it half a day?”
+
+“That’s me,” says I.  “I never wanted to get off watch so bad in my
+life.”
+
+So we started.  Millions were coming to the cloud-bank all the time,
+happy and hosannahing; millions were leaving it all the time, looking
+mighty quiet, I tell you.  We laid for the new-comers, and pretty soon
+I’d got them to hold all my things a minute, and then I was a free man
+again and most outrageously happy.  Just then I ran across old Sam
+Bartlett, who had been dead a long time, and stopped to have a talk with
+him.  Says I—
+
+“Now tell me—is this to go on forever?  Ain’t there anything else for a
+change?”
+
+Says he—
+
+“I’ll set you right on that point very quick.  People take the figurative
+language of the Bible and the allegories for literal, and the first thing
+they ask for when they get here is a halo and a harp, and so on.  Nothing
+that’s harmless and reasonable is refused a body here, if he asks it in
+the right spirit.  So they are outfitted with these things without a
+word.  They go and sing and play just about one day, and that’s the last
+you’ll ever see them in the choir.  They don’t need anybody to tell them
+that that sort of thing wouldn’t make a heaven—at least not a heaven that
+a sane man could stand a week and remain sane.  That cloud-bank is placed
+where the noise can’t disturb the old inhabitants, and so there ain’t any
+harm in letting everybody get up there and cure himself as soon as he
+comes.
+
+“Now you just remember this—heaven is as blissful and lovely as it can
+be; but it’s just the busiest place you ever heard of.  There ain’t any
+idle people here after the first day.  Singing hymns and waving palm
+branches through all eternity is pretty when you hear about it in the
+pulpit, but it’s as poor a way to put in valuable time as a body could
+contrive.  It would just make a heaven of warbling ignoramuses, don’t you
+see?  Eternal Rest sounds comforting in the pulpit, too.  Well, you try
+it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands.  Why,
+Stormfield, a man like you, that had been active and stirring all his
+life, would go mad in six months in a heaven where he hadn’t anything to
+do.  Heaven is the very last place to come to _rest_ in,—and don’t you be
+afraid to bet on that!”
+
+Says I—
+
+“Sam, I’m as glad to hear it as I thought I’d be sorry.  I’m glad I come,
+now.”
+
+Says he—
+
+“Cap’n, ain’t you pretty physically tired?”
+
+Says I—
+
+“Sam, it ain’t any name for it!  I’m dog-tired.”
+
+“Just so—just so.  You’ve earned a good sleep, and you’ll get it.  You’ve
+earned a good appetite, and you’ll enjoy your dinner.  It’s the same here
+as it is on earth—you’ve got to earn a thing, square and honest, before
+you enjoy it.  You can’t enjoy first and earn afterwards.  But there’s
+this difference, here: you can choose your own occupation, and all the
+powers of heaven will be put forth to help you make a success of it, if
+you do your level best.  The shoemaker on earth that had the soul of a
+poet in him won’t have to make shoes here.”
+
+“Now that’s all reasonable and right,” says I.  “Plenty of work, and the
+kind you hanker after; no more pain, no more suffering—”
+
+“Oh, hold on; there’s plenty of pain here—but it don’t kill.  There’s
+plenty of suffering here, but it don’t last.  You see, happiness ain’t a
+_thing in itself_—it’s only a _contrast_ with something that ain’t
+pleasant.  That’s all it is.  There ain’t a thing you can mention that is
+happiness in its own self—it’s only so by contrast with the other thing.
+And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast
+dulled, it ain’t happiness any longer, and you have to get something
+fresh.  Well, there’s plenty of pain and suffering in heaven—consequently
+there’s plenty of contrasts, and just no end of happiness.”
+
+Says I, “It’s the sensiblest heaven I’ve heard of yet, Sam, though it’s
+about as different from the one I was brought up on as a live princess is
+different from her own wax figger.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Along in the first months I knocked around about the Kingdom, making
+friends and looking at the country, and finally settled down in a pretty
+likely region, to have a rest before taking another start.  I went on
+making acquaintances and gathering up information.  I had a good deal of
+talk with an old bald-headed angel by the name of Sandy McWilliams.  He
+was from somewhere in New Jersey.  I went about with him, considerable.
+We used to lay around, warm afternoons, in the shade of a rock, on some
+meadow-ground that was pretty high and out of the marshy slush of his
+cranberry-farm, and there we used to talk about all kinds of things, and
+smoke pipes.  One day, says I—
+
+“About how old might you be, Sandy?”
+
+“Seventy-two.”
+
+“I judged so.  How long you been in heaven?”
+
+“Twenty-seven years, come Christmas.”
+
+“How old was you when you come up?”
+
+“Why, seventy-two, of course.”
+
+“You can’t mean it!”
+
+“Why can’t I mean it?”
+
+“Because, if you was seventy-two then, you are naturally ninety-nine
+now.”
+
+“No, but I ain’t.  I stay the same age I was when I come.”
+
+“Well,” says I, “come to think, there’s something just here that I want
+to ask about.  Down below, I always had an idea that in heaven we would
+all be young, and bright, and spry.”
+
+“Well, you can be young if you want to.  You’ve only got to wish.”
+
+“Well, then, why didn’t you wish?”
+
+“I did.  They all do.  You’ll try it, some day, like enough; but you’ll
+get tired of the change pretty soon.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Well, I’ll tell you.  Now you’ve always been a sailor; did you ever try
+some other business?”
+
+“Yes, I tried keeping grocery, once, up in the mines; but I couldn’t
+stand it; it was too dull—no stir, no storm, no life about it; it was
+like being part dead and part alive, both at the same time.  I wanted to
+be one thing or t’other.  I shut up shop pretty quick and went to sea.”
+
+“That’s it.  Grocery people like it, but you couldn’t.  You see you
+wasn’t used to it.  Well, I wasn’t used to being young, and I couldn’t
+seem to take any interest in it.  I was strong, and handsome, and had
+curly hair,—yes, and wings, too!—gay wings like a butterfly.  I went to
+picnics and dances and parties with the fellows, and tried to carry on
+and talk nonsense with the girls, but it wasn’t any use; I couldn’t take
+to it—fact is, it was an awful bore.  What I wanted was early to bed and
+early to rise, and something to _do_; and when my work was done, I wanted
+to sit quiet, and smoke and think—not tear around with a parcel of giddy
+young kids.  You can’t think what I suffered whilst I was young.”
+
+“How long was you young?”
+
+“Only two weeks.  That was plenty for me.  Laws, I was so lonesome!  You
+see, I was full of the knowledge and experience of seventy-two years; the
+deepest subject those young folks could strike was only _a-b-c_ to me.
+And to hear them argue—oh, my! it would have been funny, if it hadn’t
+been so pitiful.  Well, I was so hungry for the ways and the sober talk I
+was used to, that I tried to ring in with the old people, but they
+wouldn’t have it.  They considered me a conceited young upstart, and gave
+me the cold shoulder.  Two weeks was a-plenty for me.  I was glad to get
+back my bald head again, and my pipe, and my old drowsy reflections in
+the shade of a rock or a tree.”
+
+“Well,” says I, “do you mean to say you’re going to stand still at
+seventy-two, forever?”
+
+“I don’t know, and I ain’t particular.  But I ain’t going to drop back to
+twenty-five any more—I know that, mighty well.  I know a sight more than
+I did twenty-seven years ago, and I enjoy learning, all the time, but I
+don’t seem to get any older.  That is, bodily—my mind gets older, and
+stronger, and better seasoned, and more satisfactory.”
+
+Says I, “If a man comes here at ninety, don’t he ever set himself back?”
+
+“Of course he does.  He sets himself back to fourteen; tries it a couple
+of hours, and feels like a fool; sets himself forward to twenty; it ain’t
+much improvement; tries thirty, fifty, eighty, and finally ninety—finds
+he is more at home and comfortable at the same old figure he is used to
+than any other way.  Or, if his mind begun to fail him on earth at
+eighty, that’s where he finally sticks up here.  He sticks at the place
+where his mind was last at its best, for there’s where his enjoyment is
+best, and his ways most set and established.”
+
+“Does a chap of twenty-five stay always twenty-five, and look it?”
+
+“If he is a fool, yes.  But if he is bright, and ambitious and
+industrious, the knowledge he gains and the experiences he has, change
+his ways and thoughts and likings, and make him find his best pleasure in
+the company of people above that age; so he allows his body to take on
+that look of as many added years as he needs to make him comfortable and
+proper in that sort of society; he lets his body go on taking the look of
+age, according as he progresses, and by and by he will be bald and
+wrinkled outside, and wise and deep within.”
+
+“Babies the same?”
+
+“Babies the same.  Laws, what asses we used to be, on earth, about these
+things!  We said we’d be always young in heaven.  We didn’t say _how_
+young—we didn’t think of that, perhaps—that is, we didn’t all think
+alike, anyway.  When I was a boy of seven, I suppose I thought we’d all
+be twelve, in heaven; when I was twelve, I suppose I thought we’d all be
+eighteen or twenty in heaven; when I was forty, I begun to go back; I
+remember I hoped we’d all be about _thirty_ years old in heaven.  Neither
+a man nor a boy ever thinks the age he _has_ is exactly the best one—he
+puts the right age a few years older or a few years younger than he is.
+Then he makes that ideal age the general age of the heavenly people.  And
+he expects everybody _to stick_ at that age—stand stock-still—and expects
+them to enjoy it!—Now just think of the idea of standing still in heaven!
+Think of a heaven made up entirely of hoop-rolling, marble-playing cubs
+of seven years!—or of awkward, diffident, sentimental immaturities of
+nineteen!—or of vigorous people of thirty, healthy-minded, brimming with
+ambition, but chained hand and foot to that one age and its limitations
+like so many helpless galley-slaves!  Think of the dull sameness of a
+society made up of people all of one age and one set of looks, habits,
+tastes and feelings.  Think how superior to it earth would be, with its
+variety of types and faces and ages, and the enlivening attrition of the
+myriad interests that come into pleasant collision in such a variegated
+society.”
+
+“Look here,” says I, “do you know what you’re doing?”
+
+“Well, what am I doing?”
+
+“You are making heaven pretty comfortable in one way, but you are playing
+the mischief with it in another.”
+
+“How d’you mean?”
+
+“Well,” I says, “take a young mother that’s lost her child, and—”
+
+“Sh!” he says.  “Look!”
+
+It was a woman.  Middle-aged, and had grizzled hair.  She was walking
+slow, and her head was bent down, and her wings hanging limp and droopy;
+and she looked ever so tired, and was crying, poor thing!  She passed
+along by, with her head down, that way, and the tears running down her
+face, and didn’t see us.  Then Sandy said, low and gentle, and full of
+pity:
+
+“_She’s_ hunting for her child!  No, _found_ it, I reckon.  Lord, how
+she’s changed!  But I recognized her in a minute, though it’s
+twenty-seven years since I saw her.  A young mother she was, about twenty
+two or four, or along there; and blooming and lovely and sweet? oh, just
+a flower!  And all her heart and all her soul was wrapped up in her
+child, her little girl, two years old.  And it died, and she went wild
+with grief, just wild!  Well, the only comfort she had was that she’d see
+her child again, in heaven—‘never more to part,’ she said, and kept on
+saying it over and over, ‘never more to part.’  And the words made her
+happy; yes, they did; they made her joyful, and when I was dying,
+twenty-seven years ago, she told me to find her child the first thing,
+and say she was coming—‘soon, soon, _very_ soon, she hoped and
+believed!’”
+
+“Why, it’s pitiful, Sandy.”
+
+He didn’t say anything for a while, but sat looking at the ground,
+thinking.  Then he says, kind of mournful:
+
+“And now she’s come!”
+
+“Well?  Go on.”
+
+“Stormfield, maybe she hasn’t found the child, but _I_ think she has.
+Looks so to me.  I’ve seen cases before.  You see, she’s kept that child
+in her head just the same as it was when she jounced it in her arms a
+little chubby thing.  But here it didn’t elect to _stay_ a child.  No, it
+elected to grow up, which it did.  And in these twenty-seven years it has
+learned all the deep scientific learning there is to learn, and is
+studying and studying and learning and learning more and more, all the
+time, and don’t give a damn for anything _but_ learning; just learning,
+and discussing gigantic problems with people like herself.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Stormfield, don’t you see?  Her mother knows _cranberries_, and how to
+tend them, and pick them, and put them up, and market them; and not
+another blamed thing!  Her and her daughter can’t be any more company for
+each other _now_ than mud turtle and bird o’ paradise.  Poor thing, she
+was looking for a baby to jounce; _I_ think she’s struck a
+disapp’intment.”
+
+“Sandy, what will they do—stay unhappy forever in heaven?”
+
+“No, they’ll come together and get adjusted by and by.  But not this
+year, and not next.  By and by.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+I had been having considerable trouble with my wings.  The day after I
+helped the choir I made a dash or two with them, but was not lucky.
+First off, I flew thirty yards, and then fouled an Irishman and brought
+him down—brought us both down, in fact.  Next, I had a collision with a
+Bishop—and bowled him down, of course.  We had some sharp words, and I
+felt pretty cheap, to come banging into a grave old person like that,
+with a million strangers looking on and smiling to themselves.
+
+I saw I hadn’t got the hang of the steering, and so couldn’t rightly tell
+where I was going to bring up when I started.  I went afoot the rest of
+the day, and let my wings hang.  Early next morning I went to a private
+place to have some practice.  I got up on a pretty high rock, and got a
+good start, and went swooping down, aiming for a bush a little over three
+hundred yards off; but I couldn’t seem to calculate for the wind, which
+was about two points abaft my beam.  I could see I was going considerable
+to looard of the bush, so I worked my starboard wing slow and went ahead
+strong on the port one, but it wouldn’t answer; I could see I was going
+to broach to, so I slowed down on both, and lit.  I went back to the rock
+and took another chance at it.  I aimed two or three points to starboard
+of the bush—yes, more than that—enough so as to make it nearly a
+head-wind.  I done well enough, but made pretty poor time.  I could see,
+plain enough, that on a head-wind, wings was a mistake.  I could see that
+a body could sail pretty close to the wind, but he couldn’t go in the
+wind’s eye.  I could see that if I wanted to go a-visiting any distance
+from home, and the wind was ahead, I might have to wait days, maybe, for
+a change; and I could see, too, that these things could not be any use at
+all in a gale; if you tried to run before the wind, you would make a mess
+of it, for there isn’t anyway to shorten sail—like reefing, you know—you
+have to take it _all_ in—shut your feathers down flat to your sides.
+That would _land_ you, of course.  You could lay to, with your head to
+the wind—that is the best you could do, and right hard work you’d find
+it, too.  If you tried any other game, you would founder, sure.
+
+I judge it was about a couple of weeks or so after this that I dropped
+old Sandy McWilliams a note one day—it was a Tuesday—and asked him to
+come over and take his manna and quails with me next day; and the first
+thing he did when he stepped in was to twinkle his eye in a sly way, and
+say,—
+
+“Well, Cap, what you done with your wings?”
+
+I saw in a minute that there was some sarcasm done up in that rag
+somewheres, but I never let on.  I only says,—
+
+“Gone to the wash.”
+
+“Yes,” he says, in a dry sort of way, “they mostly go to the wash—about
+this time—I’ve often noticed it.  Fresh angels are powerful neat.  When
+do you look for ’em back?”
+
+“Day after to-morrow,” says I.
+
+He winked at me, and smiled.
+
+Says I,—
+
+“Sandy, out with it.  Come—no secrets among friends.  I notice you don’t
+ever wear wings—and plenty others don’t.  I’ve been making an ass of
+myself—is that it?”
+
+“That is about the size of it.  But it is no harm.  We all do it at
+first.  It’s perfectly natural.  You see, on earth we jump to such
+foolish conclusions as to things up here.  In the pictures we always saw
+the angels with wings on—and that was all right; but we jumped to the
+conclusion that that was their way of getting around—and that was all
+wrong.  The wings ain’t anything but a uniform, that’s all.  When they
+are in the field—so to speak,—they always wear them; you never see an
+angel going with a message anywhere without his wings, any more than you
+would see a military officer presiding at a court-martial without his
+uniform, or a postman delivering letters, or a policeman walking his
+beat, in plain clothes.  But they ain’t to _fly_ with!  The wings are for
+show, not for use.  Old experienced angels are like officers of the
+regular army—they dress plain, when they are off duty.  New angels are
+like the militia—never shed the uniform—always fluttering and floundering
+around in their wings, butting people down, flapping here, and there, and
+everywhere, always imagining they are attracting the admiring eye—well,
+they just think they are the very most important people in heaven.  And
+when you see one of them come sailing around with one wing tipped up and
+t’other down, you make up your mind he is saying to himself: ‘I wish Mary
+Ann in Arkansaw could see me now.  I reckon she’d wish she hadn’t shook
+me.’  No, they’re just for show, that’s all—only just for show.”
+
+“I judge you’ve got it about right, Sandy,” says I.
+
+“Why, look at it yourself,” says he.  “_You_ ain’t built for wings—no man
+is.  You know what a grist of years it took you to come here from the
+earth—and yet you were booming along faster than any cannon-ball could
+go.  Suppose you had to fly that distance with your wings—wouldn’t
+eternity have been over before you got here?  Certainly.  Well, angels
+have to go to the earth every day—millions of them—to appear in visions
+to dying children and good people, you know—it’s the heft of their
+business.  They appear with their wings, of course, because they are on
+official service, and because the dying persons wouldn’t know they were
+angels if they hadn’t wings—but do you reckon they fly with them?  It
+stands to reason they don’t.  The wings would wear out before they got
+half-way; even the pin-feathers would be gone; the wing frames would be
+as bare as kite sticks before the paper is pasted on.  The distances in
+heaven are billions of times greater; angels have to go all over heaven
+every day; could they do it with their wings alone?  No, indeed; they
+wear the wings for style, but they travel any distance in an instant by
+_wishing_.  The wishing-carpet of the Arabian Nights was a sensible
+idea—but our earthly idea of angels flying these awful distances with
+their clumsy wings was foolish.
+
+“Our young saints, of both sexes, wear wings all the time—blazing red
+ones, and blue and green, and gold, and variegated, and rainbowed, and
+ring-streaked-and-striped ones—and nobody finds fault.  It is suitable to
+their time of life.  The things are beautiful, and they set the young
+people off.  They are the most striking and lovely part of their outfit—a
+halo don’t _begin_.”
+
+“Well,” says I, “I’ve tucked mine away in the cupboard, and I allow to
+let them lay there till there’s mud.”
+
+“Yes—or a reception.”
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+“Well, you can see one to-night if you want to.  There’s a barkeeper from
+Jersey City going to be received.”
+
+“Go on—tell me about it.”
+
+“This barkeeper got converted at a Moody and Sankey meeting, in New York,
+and started home on the ferry-boat, and there was a collision and he got
+drowned.  He is of a class that think all heaven goes wild with joy when
+a particularly hard lot like him is saved; they think all heaven turns
+out hosannahing to welcome them; they think there isn’t anything talked
+about in the realms of the blest but their case, for that day.  This
+barkeeper thinks there hasn’t been such another stir here in years, as
+his coming is going to raise.—And I’ve always noticed this peculiarity
+about a dead barkeeper—he not only expects all hands to turn out when he
+arrives, but he expects to be received with a torchlight procession.”
+
+“I reckon he is disappointed, then.”
+
+“No, he isn’t.  No man is allowed to be disappointed here.  Whatever he
+wants, when he comes—that is, any reasonable and unsacrilegious thing—he
+can have.  There’s always a few millions or billions of young folks
+around who don’t want any better entertainment than to fill up their
+lungs and swarm out with their torches and have a high time over a
+barkeeper.  It tickles the barkeeper till he can’t rest, it makes a
+charming lark for the young folks, it don’t do anybody any harm, it don’t
+cost a rap, and it keeps up the place’s reputation for making all comers
+happy and content.”
+
+“Very good.  I’ll be on hand and see them land the barkeeper.”
+
+“It is manners to go in full dress.  You want to wear your wings, you
+know, and your other things.”
+
+“Which ones?”
+
+“Halo, and harp, and palm branch, and all that.”
+
+“Well,” says I, “I reckon I ought to be ashamed of myself, but the fact
+is I left them laying around that day I resigned from the choir.  I
+haven’t got a rag to wear but this robe and the wings.”
+
+“That’s all right.  You’ll find they’ve been raked up and saved for you.
+Send for them.”
+
+“I’ll do it, Sandy.  But what was it you was saying about unsacrilegious
+things, which people expect to get, and will be disappointed about?”
+
+“Oh, there are a lot of such things that people expect and don’t get.
+For instance, there’s a Brooklyn preacher by the name of Talmage, who is
+laying up a considerable disappointment for himself.  He says, every now
+and then in his sermons, that the first thing he does when he gets to
+heaven, will be to fling his arms around Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and
+kiss them and weep on them.  There’s millions of people down there on
+earth that are promising themselves the same thing.  As many as sixty
+thousand people arrive here every single day, that want to run straight
+to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and hug them and weep on them.  Now mind
+you, sixty thousand a day is a pretty heavy contract for those old
+people.  If they were a mind to allow it, they wouldn’t ever have
+anything to do, year in and year out, but stand up and be hugged and wept
+on thirty-two hours in the twenty-four.  They would be tired out and as
+wet as muskrats all the time.  What would heaven be, to _them_?  It would
+be a mighty good place to get out of—you know that, yourself.  Those are
+kind and gentle old Jews, but they ain’t any fonder of kissing the
+emotional highlights of Brooklyn than you be.  You mark my words, Mr.
+T.’s endearments are going to be declined, with thanks.  There are limits
+to the privileges of the elect, even in heaven.  Why, if Adam was to show
+himself to every new comer that wants to call and gaze at him and strike
+him for his autograph, he would never have time to do anything else but
+just that.  Talmage has said he is going to give Adam some of his
+attentions, as well as A., I. and J.  But he will have to change his mind
+about that.”
+
+“Do you think Talmage will really come here?”
+
+“Why, certainly, he will; but don’t you be alarmed; he will run with his
+own kind, and there’s plenty of them.  That is the main charm of
+heaven—there’s all kinds here—which wouldn’t be the case if you let the
+preachers tell it.  Anybody can find the sort he prefers, here, and he
+just lets the others alone, and they let him alone.  When the Deity
+builds a heaven, it is built right, and on a liberal plan.”
+
+Sandy sent home for his things, and I sent for mine, and about nine in
+the evening we begun to dress.  Sandy says,—
+
+“This is going to be a grand time for you, Stormy.  Like as not some of
+the patriarchs will turn out.”
+
+“No, but will they?”
+
+“Like as not.  Of course they are pretty exclusive.  They hardly ever
+show themselves to the common public.  I believe they never turn out
+except for an eleventh-hour convert.  They wouldn’t do it then, only
+earthly tradition makes a grand show pretty necessary on that kind of an
+occasion.”
+
+“Do they an turn out, Sandy?”
+
+“Who?—all the patriarchs?  Oh, no—hardly ever more than a couple.  You
+will be here fifty thousand years—maybe more—before you get a glimpse of
+all the patriarchs and prophets.  Since I have been here, Job has been to
+the front once, and once Ham and Jeremiah both at the same time.  But the
+finest thing that has happened in my day was a year or so ago; that was
+Charles Peace’s reception—him they called ‘the Bannercross Murderer’—an
+Englishman.  There were four patriarchs and two prophets on the Grand
+Stand that time—there hasn’t been anything like it since Captain Kidd
+came; Abel was there—the first time in twelve hundred years.  A report
+got around that Adam was coming; well, of course, Abel was enough to
+bring a crowd, all by himself, but there is nobody that can draw like
+Adam.  It was a false report, but it got around, anyway, as I say, and it
+will be a long day before I see the like of it again.  The reception was
+in the English department, of course, which is eight hundred and eleven
+million miles from the New Jersey line.  I went, along with a good many
+of my neighbors, and it was a sight to see, I can tell you.  Flocks came
+from all the departments.  I saw Esquimaux there, and Tartars, Negroes,
+Chinamen—people from everywhere.  You see a mixture like that in the
+Grand Choir, the first day you land here, but you hardly ever see it
+again.  There were billions of people; when they were singing or
+hosannahing, the noise was wonderful; and even when their tongues were
+still the drumming of the wings was nearly enough to burst your head, for
+all the sky was as thick as if it was snowing angels.  Although Adam was
+not there, it was a great time anyway, because we had three archangels on
+the Grand Stand—it is a seldom thing that even one comes out.”
+
+“What did they look like, Sandy?”
+
+“Well, they had shining faces, and shining robes, and wonderful rainbow
+wings, and they stood eighteen feet high, and wore swords, and held their
+heads up in a noble way, and looked like soldiers.”
+
+“Did they have halos?”
+
+“No—anyway, not the hoop kind.  The archangels and the upper-class
+patriarchs wear a finer thing than that.  It is a round, solid, splendid
+glory of gold, that is blinding to look at.  You have often seen a
+patriarch in a picture, on earth, with that thing on—you remember it?—he
+looks as if he had his head in a brass platter.  That don’t give you the
+right idea of it at all—it is much more shining and beautiful.”
+
+“Did you talk with those archangels and patriarchs, Sandy?”
+
+“Who—_I_?  Why, what can you be thinking about, Stormy?  I ain’t worthy
+to speak to such as they.”
+
+“Is Talmage?”
+
+“Of course not.  You have got the same mixed-up idea about these things
+that everybody has down there.  I had it once, but I got over it.  Down
+there they talk of the heavenly King—and that is right—but then they go
+right on speaking as if this was a republic and everybody was on a dead
+level with everybody else, and privileged to fling his arms around
+anybody he comes across, and be hail-fellow-well-met with all the elect,
+from the highest down.  How tangled up and absurd that is!  How are you
+going to have a republic under a king?  How are you going to have a
+republic at all, where the head of the government is absolute, holds his
+place forever, and has no parliament, no council to meddle or make in his
+affairs, nobody voted for, nobody elected, nobody in the whole universe
+with a voice in the government, nobody asked to take a hand in its
+matters, and nobody _allowed_ to do it?  Fine republic, ain’t it?”
+
+“Well, yes—it _is_ a little different from the idea I had—but I thought I
+might go around and get acquainted with the grandees, anyway—not exactly
+splice the main-brace with them, you know, but shake hands and pass the
+time of day.”
+
+“Could Tom, Dick and Harry call on the Cabinet of Russia and do that?—on
+Prince Gortschakoff, for instance?”
+
+“I reckon not, Sandy.”
+
+“Well, this is Russia—only more so.  There’s not the shadow of a republic
+about it anywhere.  There are ranks, here.  There are viceroys, princes,
+governors, sub-governors, sub-sub-governors, and a hundred orders of
+nobility, grading along down from grand-ducal archangels, stage by stage,
+till the general level is struck, where there ain’t any titles.  Do you
+know what a prince of the blood is, on earth?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Well, a prince of the blood don’t belong to the royal family exactly,
+and he don’t belong to the mere nobility of the kingdom; he is lower than
+the one, and higher than t’other.  That’s about the position of the
+patriarchs and prophets here.  There’s some mighty high nobility
+here—people that you and I ain’t worthy to polish sandals for—and _they_
+ain’t worthy to polish sandals for the patriarchs and prophets.  That
+gives you a kind of an idea of their rank, don’t it?  You begin to see
+how high up they are, don’t you? just to get a two-minute glimpse of one
+of them is a thing for a body to remember and tell about for a thousand
+years.  Why, Captain, just think of this: if Abraham was to set his foot
+down here by this door, there would be a railing set up around that
+foot-track right away, and a shelter put over it, and people would flock
+here from all over heaven, for hundreds and hundreds of years, to look at
+it.  Abraham is one of the parties that Mr. Talmage, of Brooklyn, is
+going to embrace, and kiss, and weep on, when he comes.  He wants to lay
+in a good stock of tears, you know, or five to one he will go dry before
+he gets a chance to do it.”
+
+“Sandy,” says I, “I had an idea that _I_ was going to be equals with
+everybody here, too, but I will let that drop.  It don’t matter, and I am
+plenty happy enough anyway.”
+
+“Captain, you are happier than you would be, the other way.  These old
+patriarchs and prophets have got ages the start of you; they know more in
+two minutes than you know in a year.  Did you ever try to have a sociable
+improving-time discussing winds, and currents and variations of compass
+with an undertaker?”
+
+“I get your idea, Sandy.  He couldn’t interest me.  He would be an
+ignoramus in such things—he would bore me, and I would bore him.”
+
+“You have got it.  You would bore the patriarchs when you talked, and
+when they talked they would shoot over your head.  By and by you would
+say, ‘Good morning, your Eminence, I will call again’—but you wouldn’t.
+Did you ever ask the slush-boy to come up in the cabin and take dinner
+with you?”
+
+“I get your drift again, Sandy.  I wouldn’t be used to such grand people
+as the patriarchs and prophets, and I would be sheepish and tongue-tied
+in their company, and mighty glad to get out of it.  Sandy, which is the
+highest rank, patriarch or prophet?”
+
+“Oh, the prophets hold over the patriarchs.  The newest prophet, even, is
+of a sight more consequence than the oldest patriarch.  Yes, sir, Adam
+himself has to walk behind Shakespeare.”
+
+“Was Shakespeare a prophet?”
+
+“Of course he was; and so was Homer, and heaps more.  But Shakespeare and
+the rest have to walk behind a common tailor from Tennessee, by the name
+of Billings; and behind a horse-doctor named Sakka, from Afghanistan.
+Jeremiah, and Billings and Buddha walk together, side by side, right
+behind a crowd from planets not in our astronomy; next come a dozen or
+two from Jupiter and other worlds; next come Daniel, and Sakka and
+Confucius; next a lot from systems outside of ours; next come Ezekiel,
+and Mahomet, Zoroaster, and a knife-grinder from ancient Egypt; then
+there is a long string, and after them, away down toward the bottom, come
+Shakespeare and Homer, and a shoemaker named Marais, from the back
+settlements of France.”
+
+“Have they really rung in Mahomet and all those other heathens?”
+
+“Yes—they all had their message, and they all get their reward.  The man
+who don’t get his reward on earth, needn’t bother—he will get it here,
+sure.”
+
+“But why did they throw off on Shakespeare, that way, and put him away
+down there below those shoe-makers and horse-doctors and knife-grinders—a
+lot of people nobody ever heard of?”
+
+“That is the heavenly justice of it—they warn’t rewarded according to
+their deserts, on earth, but here they get their rightful rank.  That
+tailor Billings, from Tennessee, wrote poetry that Homer and Shakespeare
+couldn’t begin to come up to; but nobody would print it, nobody read it
+but his neighbors, an ignorant lot, and they laughed at it.  Whenever the
+village had a drunken frolic and a dance, they would drag him in and
+crown him with cabbage leaves, and pretend to bow down to him; and one
+night when he was sick and nearly starved to death, they had him out and
+crowned him, and then they rode him on a rail about the village, and
+everybody followed along, beating tin pans and yelling.  Well, he died
+before morning.  He wasn’t ever expecting to go to heaven, much less that
+there was going to be any fuss made over him, so I reckon he was a good
+deal surprised when the reception broke on him.”
+
+“Was you there, Sandy?”
+
+“Bless you, no!”
+
+“Why?  Didn’t you know it was going to come off?”
+
+“Well, I judge I did.  It was the talk of these realms—not for a day,
+like this barkeeper business, but for twenty years before the man died.”
+
+“Why the mischief didn’t you go, then?”
+
+“Now how you talk!  The like of me go meddling around at the reception of
+a prophet?  A mudsill like me trying to push in and help receive an awful
+grandee like Edward J. Billings?  Why, I should have been laughed at for
+a billion miles around.  I shouldn’t ever heard the last of it.”
+
+“Well, who did go, then?”
+
+“Mighty few people that you and I will ever get a chance to see, Captain.
+Not a solitary commoner ever has the luck to see a reception of a
+prophet, I can tell you.  All the nobility, and all the patriarchs and
+prophets—every last one of them—and all the archangels, and all the
+princes and governors and viceroys, were there,—and _no_ small fry—not a
+single one.  And mind you, I’m not talking about only the grandees from
+_our_ world, but the princes and patriarchs and so on from _all_ the
+worlds that shine in our sky, and from billions more that belong in
+systems upon systems away outside of the one our sun is in.  There were
+some prophets and patriarchs there that ours ain’t a circumstance to, for
+rank and illustriousness and all that.  Some were from Jupiter and other
+worlds in our own system, but the most celebrated were three poets, Saa,
+Bo and Soof, from great planets in three different and very remote
+systems.  These three names are common and familiar in every nook and
+corner of heaven, clear from one end of it to the other—fully as well
+known as the eighty Supreme Archangels, in fact—where as our Moses, and
+Adam, and the rest, have not been heard of outside of our world’s little
+corner of heaven, except by a few very learned men scattered here and
+there—and they always spell their names wrong, and get the performances
+of one mixed up with the doings of another, and they almost always locate
+them simply _in our solar system_, and think that is enough without going
+into little details such as naming the particular world they are from.
+It is like a learned Hindoo showing off how much he knows by saying
+Longfellow lives in the United States—as if he lived all over the United
+States, and as if the country was so small you couldn’t throw a brick
+there without hitting him.  Between you and me, it does gravel me, the
+cool way people from those monster worlds outside our system snub our
+little world, and even our system.  Of course we think a good deal of
+Jupiter, because our world is only a potato to it, for size; but then
+there are worlds in other systems that Jupiter isn’t even a mustard-seed
+to—like the planet Goobra, for instance, which you couldn’t squeeze
+inside the orbit of Halley’s comet without straining the rivets.
+Tourists from Goobra (I mean parties that lived and died there—natives)
+come here, now and then, and inquire about our world, and when they find
+out it is so little that a streak of lightning can flash clear around it
+in the eighth of a second, they have to lean up against something to
+laugh.  Then they screw a glass into their eye and go to examining us, as
+if we were a curious kind of foreign bug, or something of that sort.  One
+of them asked me how long our day was; and when I told him it was twelve
+hours long, as a general thing, he asked me if people where I was from
+considered it worth while to get up and wash for such a day as that.
+That is the way with those Goobra people—they can’t seem to let a chance
+go by to throw it in your face that their day is three hundred and
+twenty-two of our years long.  This young snob was just of age—he was six
+or seven thousand of his days old—say two million of our years—and he had
+all the puppy airs that belong to that time of life—that turning-point
+when a person has got over being a boy and yet ain’t quite a man exactly.
+If it had been anywhere else but in heaven, I would have given him a
+piece of my mind.  Well, anyway, Billings had the grandest reception that
+has been seen in thousands of centuries, and I think it will have a good
+effect.  His name will be carried pretty far, and it will make our system
+talked about, and maybe our world, too, and raise us in the respect of
+the general public of heaven.  Why, look here—Shakespeare walked
+backwards before that tailor from Tennessee, and scattered flowers for
+him to walk on, and Homer stood behind his chair and waited on him at the
+banquet.  Of course that didn’t go for much _there_, amongst all those
+big foreigners from other systems, as they hadn’t heard of Shakespeare or
+Homer either, but it would amount to considerable down there on our
+little earth if they could know about it.  I wish there was something in
+that miserable spiritualism, so we could send them word.  That Tennessee
+village would set up a monument to Billings, then, and his autograph
+would outsell Satan’s.  Well, they had grand times at that reception—a
+small-fry noble from Hoboken told me all about it—Sir Richard Duffer,
+Baronet.”
+
+“What, Sandy, a nobleman from Hoboken?  How is that?”
+
+“Easy enough.  Duffer kept a sausage-shop and never saved a cent in his
+life because he used to give all his spare meat to the poor, in a quiet
+way.  Not tramps,—no, the other sort—the sort that will starve before
+they will beg—honest square people out of work.  Dick used to watch
+hungry-looking men and women and children, and track them home, and find
+out all about them from the neighbors, and then feed them and find them
+work.  As nobody ever saw him give anything to anybody, he had the
+reputation of being mean; he died with it, too, and everybody said it was
+a good riddance; but the minute he landed here, they made him a baronet,
+and the very first words Dick the sausage-maker of Hoboken heard when he
+stepped upon the heavenly shore were, ‘Welcome, Sir Richard Duffer!’  It
+surprised him some, because he thought he had reasons to believe he was
+pointed for a warmer climate than this one.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+All of a sudden the whole region fairly rocked under the crash of eleven
+hundred and one thunder blasts, all let off at once, and Sandy says,—
+
+“There, that’s for the barkeep.”
+
+I jumped up and says,—
+
+“Then let’s be moving along, Sandy; we don’t want to miss any of this
+thing, you know.”
+
+“Keep your seat,” he says; “he is only just telegraphed, that is all.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“That blast only means that he has been sighted from the signal-station.
+He is off Sandy Hook.  The committees will go down to meet him, now, and
+escort him in.  There will be ceremonies and delays; they won’t he coming
+up the Bay for a considerable time, yet.  It is several billion miles
+away, anyway.”
+
+“_I_ could have been a barkeeper and a hard lot just as well as not,”
+says I, remembering the lonesome way I arrived, and how there wasn’t any
+committee nor anything.
+
+“I notice some regret in your voice,” says Sandy, “and it is natural
+enough; but let bygones be bygones; you went according to your lights,
+and it is too late now to mend the thing.”
+
+“No, let it slide, Sandy, I don’t mind.  But you’ve got a Sandy Hook
+_here_, too, have you?”
+
+“We’ve got everything here, just as it is below.  All the States and
+Territories of the Union, and all the kingdoms of the earth and the
+islands of the sea are laid out here just as they are on the globe—all
+the same shape they are down there, and all graded to the relative size,
+only each State and realm and island is a good many billion times bigger
+here than it is below.  There goes another blast.”
+
+“What is that one for?”
+
+“That is only another fort answering the first one.  They each fire
+eleven hundred and one thunder blasts at a single dash—it is the usual
+salute for an eleventh-hour guest; a hundred for each hour and an extra
+one for the guest’s sex; if it was a woman we would know it by their
+leaving off the extra gun.”
+
+“How do we know there’s eleven hundred and one, Sandy, when they all go
+off at once?—and yet we certainly do know.”
+
+“Our intellects are a good deal sharpened up, here, in some ways, and
+that is one of them.  Numbers and sizes and distances are so great, here,
+that we have to be made so we can _feel_ them—our old ways of counting
+and measuring and ciphering wouldn’t ever give us an idea of them, but
+would only confuse us and oppress us and make our heads ache.”
+
+After some more talk about this, I says: “Sandy, I notice that I hardly
+ever see a white angel; where I run across one white angel, I strike as
+many as a hundred million copper-colored ones—people that can’t speak
+English.  How is that?”
+
+“Well, you will find it the same in any State or Territory of the
+American corner of heaven you choose to go to.  I have shot along, a
+whole week on a stretch, and gone millions and millions of miles, through
+perfect swarms of angels, without ever seeing a single white one, or
+hearing a word I could understand.  You see, America was occupied a
+billion years and more, by Injuns and Aztecs, and that sort of folks,
+before a white man ever set his foot in it.  During the first three
+hundred years after Columbus’s discovery, there wasn’t ever more than one
+good lecture audience of white people, all put together, in America—I
+mean the whole thing, British Possessions and all; in the beginning of
+our century there were only 6,000,000 or 7,000,000—say seven; 12,000,000
+or 14,000,000 in 1825; say 23,000,000 in 1850; 40,000,000 in 1875.  Our
+death-rate has always been 20 in 1000 per annum.  Well, 140,000 died the
+first year of the century; 280,000 the twenty-fifth year; 500,000 the
+fiftieth year; about a million the seventy-fifth year.  Now I am going to
+be liberal about this thing, and consider that fifty million whites have
+died in America from the beginning up to to-day—make it sixty, if you
+want to; make it a hundred million—it’s no difference about a few
+millions one way or t’other.  Well, now, you can see, yourself, that when
+you come to spread a little dab of people like that over these hundreds
+of billions of miles of American territory here in heaven, it is like
+scattering a ten-cent box of homoeopathic pills over the Great Sahara and
+expecting to find them again.  You can’t expect us to amount to anything
+in heaven, and we _don’t_—now that is the simple fact, and we have got to
+do the best we can with it.  The learned men from other planets and other
+systems come here and hang around a while, when they are touring around
+the Kingdom, and then go back to their own section of heaven and write a
+book of travels, and they give America about five lines in it.  And what
+do they say about us?  They say this wilderness is populated with a
+scattering few hundred thousand billions of red angels, with now and then
+a curiously complected _diseased_ one.  You see, they think we whites and
+the occasional nigger are Injuns that have been bleached out or blackened
+by some leprous disease or other—for some peculiarly rascally _sin_, mind
+you.  It is a mighty sour pill for us all, my friend—even the modestest
+of us, let alone the other kind, that think they are going to be received
+like a long-lost government bond, and hug Abraham into the bargain.  I
+haven’t asked you any of the particulars, Captain, but I judge it goes
+without saying—if my experience is worth anything—that there wasn’t much
+of a hooraw made over you when you arrived—now was there?”
+
+“Don’t mention it, Sandy,” says I, coloring up a little; “I wouldn’t have
+had the family see it for any amount you are a mind to name.  Change the
+subject, Sandy, change the subject.”
+
+“Well, do you think of settling in the California department of bliss?”
+
+“I don’t know.  I wasn’t calculating on doing anything really definite in
+that direction till the family come.  I thought I would just look around,
+meantime, in a quiet way, and make up my mind.  Besides, I know a good
+many dead people, and I was calculating to hunt them up and swap a little
+gossip with them about friends, and old times, and one thing or another,
+and ask them how they like it here, as far as they have got.  I reckon my
+wife will want to camp in the California range, though, because most all
+her departed will be there, and she likes to be with folks she knows.”
+
+“Don’t you let her.  You see what the Jersey district of heaven is, for
+whites; well, the Californian district is a thousand times worse.  It
+swarms with a mean kind of leather-headed mud-colored angels—and your
+nearest white neighbor is likely to be a million miles away.  _What a man
+mostly misses_, _in heaven_, _is company_—company of his own sort and
+color and language.  I have come near settling in the European part of
+heaven once or twice on that account.”
+
+“Well, why didn’t you, Sandy?”
+
+“Oh, various reasons.  For one thing, although you _see_ plenty of whites
+there, you can’t understand any of them, hardly, and so you go about as
+hungry for talk as you do here.  I like to look at a Russian or a German
+or an Italian—I even like to look at a Frenchman if I ever have the luck
+to catch him engaged in anything that ain’t indelicate—but _looking_
+don’t cure the hunger—what you want is talk.”
+
+“Well, there’s England, Sandy—the English district of heaven.”
+
+“Yes, but it is not so very much better than this end of the heavenly
+domain.  As long as you run across Englishmen born this side of three
+hundred years ago, you are all right; but the minute you get back of
+Elizabeth’s time the language begins to fog up, and the further back you
+go the foggier it gets.  I had some talk with one Langland and a man by
+the name of Chaucer—old-time poets—but it was no use, I couldn’t quite
+understand them, and they couldn’t quite understand me.  I have had
+letters from them since, but it is such broken English I can’t make it
+out.  Back of those men’s time the English are just simply foreigners,
+nothing more, nothing less; they talk Danish, German, Norman French, and
+sometimes a mixture of all three; back of _them_, they talk Latin, and
+ancient British, Irish, and Gaelic; and then back of these come billions
+and billions of pure savages that talk a gibberish that Satan himself
+couldn’t understand.  The fact is, where you strike one man in the
+English settlements that you can understand, you wade through awful
+swarms that talk something you can’t make head nor tail of.  You see,
+every country on earth has been overlaid so often, in the course of a
+billion years, with different kinds of people and different sorts of
+languages, that this sort of mongrel business was bound to be the result
+in heaven.”
+
+“Sandy,” says I, “did you see a good many of the great people history
+tells about?”
+
+“Yes—plenty.  I saw kings and all sorts of distinguished people.”
+
+“Do the kings rank just as they did below?”
+
+“No; a body can’t bring his rank up here with him.  Divine right is a
+good-enough earthly romance, but it don’t go, here.  Kings drop down to
+the general level as soon as they reach the realms of grace.  I knew
+Charles the Second very well—one of the most popular comedians in the
+English section—draws first rate.  There are better, of course—people
+that were never heard of on earth—but Charles is making a very good
+reputation indeed, and is considered a rising man.  Richard the
+Lion-hearted is in the prize-ring, and coming into considerable favor.
+Henry the Eighth is a tragedian, and the scenes where he kills people are
+done to the very life.  Henry the Sixth keeps a religious-book stand.”
+
+“Did you ever see Napoleon, Sandy?”
+
+“Often—sometimes in the Corsican range, sometimes in the French.  He
+always hunts up a conspicuous place, and goes frowning around with his
+arms folded and his field-glass under his arm, looking as grand, gloomy
+and peculiar as his reputation calls for, and very much bothered because
+he don’t stand as high, here, for a soldier, as he expected to.”
+
+“Why, who stands higher?”
+
+“Oh, a _lot_ of people _we_ never heard of before—the shoemaker and
+horse-doctor and knife-grinder kind, you know—clodhoppers from goodness
+knows where that never handled a sword or fired a shot in their lives—but
+the soldiership was in them, though they never had a chance to show it.
+But here they take their right place, and Cæsar and Napoleon and
+Alexander have to take a back seat.  The greatest military genius our
+world ever produced was a brick-layer from somewhere back of Boston—died
+during the Revolution—by the name of Absalom Jones.  Wherever he goes,
+crowds flock to see him.  You see, everybody knows that if he had had a
+chance he would have shown the world some generalship that would have
+made all generalship before look like child’s play and ’prentice work.
+But he never got a chance; he tried heaps of times to enlist as a
+private, but he had lost both thumbs and a couple of front teeth, and the
+recruiting sergeant wouldn’t pass him.  However, as I say, everybody
+knows, now, what he _would_ have been,—and so they flock by the million
+to get a glimpse of him whenever they hear he is going to be anywhere.
+Cæsar, and Hannibal, and Alexander, and Napoleon are all on his staff,
+and ever so many more great generals; but the public hardly care to look
+at _them_ when _he_ is around.  Boom!  There goes another salute.  The
+barkeeper’s off quarantine now.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Sandy and I put on our things.  Then we made a wish, and in a second we
+were at the reception-place.  We stood on the edge of the ocean of space,
+and looked out over the dimness, but couldn’t make out anything.  Close
+by us was the Grand Stand—tier on tier of dim thrones rising up toward
+the zenith.  From each side of it spread away the tiers of seats for the
+general public.  They spread away for leagues and leagues—you couldn’t
+see the ends.  They were empty and still, and hadn’t a cheerful look, but
+looked dreary, like a theatre before anybody comes—gas turned down.
+Sandy says,—
+
+“We’ll sit down here and wait.  We’ll see the head of the procession come
+in sight away off yonder pretty soon, now.”
+
+Says I,—
+
+“It’s pretty lonesome, Sandy; I reckon there’s a hitch somewheres.
+Nobody but just you and me—it ain’t much of a display for the barkeeper.”
+
+“Don’t you fret, it’s all right.  There’ll be one more gun-fire—then
+you’ll see.”
+
+In a little while we noticed a sort of a lightish flush, away off on the
+horizon.
+
+“Head of the torchlight procession,” says Sandy.
+
+It spread, and got lighter and brighter: soon it had a strong glare like
+a locomotive headlight; it kept on getting brighter and brighter till it
+was like the sun peeping above the horizon-line at sea—the big red rays
+shot high up into the sky.
+
+“Keep your eyes on the Grand Stand and the miles of seats—sharp!” says
+Sandy, “and listen for the gun-fire.”
+
+Just then it burst out, “Boom-boom-boom!” like a million thunderstorms in
+one, and made the whole heavens rock.  Then there was a sudden and awful
+glare of light all about us, and in that very instant every one of the
+millions of seats was occupied, and as far as you could see, in both
+directions, was just a solid pack of people, and the place was all
+splendidly lit up!  It was enough to take a body’s breath away.  Sandy
+says,—
+
+“That is the way we do it here.  No time fooled away; nobody straggling
+in after the curtain’s up.  Wishing is quicker work than travelling.  A
+quarter of a second ago these folks were millions of miles from here.
+When they heard the last signal, all they had to do was to wish, and here
+they are.”
+
+The prodigious choir struck up,—
+
+    We long to hear thy voice,
+    To see thee face to face.
+
+It was noble music, but the uneducated chipped in and spoilt it, just as
+the congregations used to do on earth.
+
+The head of the procession began to pass, now, and it was a wonderful
+sight.  It swept along, thick and solid, five hundred thousand angels
+abreast, and every angel carrying a torch and singing—the whirring
+thunder of the wings made a body’s head ache.  You could follow the line
+of the procession back, and slanting upward into the sky, far away in a
+glittering snaky rope, till it was only a faint streak in the distance.
+The rush went on and on, for a long time, and at last, sure enough, along
+comes the barkeeper, and then everybody rose, and a cheer went up that
+made the heavens shake, I tell you!  He was all smiles, and had his halo
+tilted over one ear in a cocky way, and was the most satisfied-looking
+saint I ever saw.  While he marched up the steps of the Grand Stand, the
+choir struck up,—
+
+    “The whole wide heaven groans,
+    And waits to hear that voice.”
+
+There were four gorgeous tents standing side by side in the place of
+honor, on a broad railed platform in the centre of the Grand Stand, with
+a shining guard of honor round about them.  The tents had been shut up
+all this time.  As the barkeeper climbed along up, bowing and smiling to
+everybody, and at last got to the platform, these tents were jerked up
+aloft all of a sudden, and we saw four noble thrones of gold, all caked
+with jewels, and in the two middle ones sat old white-whiskered men, and
+in the two others a couple of the most glorious and gaudy giants, with
+platter halos and beautiful armor.  All the millions went down on their
+knees, and stared, and looked glad, and burst out into a joyful kind of
+murmurs.  They said,—
+
+“Two archangels!—that is splendid.  Who can the others be?”
+
+The archangels gave the barkeeper a stiff little military bow; the two
+old men rose; one of them said, “Moses and Esau welcome thee!” and then
+all the four vanished, and the thrones were empty.
+
+The barkeeper looked a little disappointed, for he was calculating to hug
+those old people, I judge; but it was the gladdest and proudest multitude
+you ever saw—because they had seen Moses and Esau.  Everybody was saying,
+“Did you see them?—I did—Esau’s side face was to me, but I saw Moses full
+in the face, just as plain as I see you this minute!”
+
+The procession took up the barkeeper and moved on with him again, and the
+crowd broke up and scattered.  As we went along home, Sandy said it was a
+great success, and the barkeeper would have a right to be proud of it
+forever.  And he said we were in luck, too; said we might attend
+receptions for forty thousand years to come, and not have a chance to see
+a brace of such grand moguls as Moses and Esau.  We found afterwards that
+we had come near seeing another patriarch, and likewise a genuine prophet
+besides, but at the last moment they sent regrets.  Sandy said there
+would be a monument put up there, where Moses and Esau had stood, with
+the date and circumstances, and all about the whole business, and
+travellers would come for thousands of years and gawk at it, and climb
+over it, and scribble their names on it.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+{9}  The captain could not remember what this word was.  He said it was
+in a foreign tongue.
+
+
+

PG1045_text.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,1441 @@
+
+
+
+
+ VENUS AND ADONIS
+
+
+ by William Shakespeare
+
+
+            _Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo
+            Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua._
+
+
+TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
+
+HENRY WRIOTHESLEY,  EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON,
+
+and Baron of Titchfield.
+
+
+Right Honourable, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my
+unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me
+for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burthen: only, if
+your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow
+to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some
+graver labour. But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I
+shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so
+barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it
+to your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart’s content;
+which I wish may always answer your own wish and the world’s hopeful
+expectation.
+
+
+Your honour’s in all duty,
+
+
+WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+ VENUS AND ADONIS
+
+
+Even as the sun with purple-colour’d face
+Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn,
+Rose-cheek’d Adonis hied him to the chase;
+Hunting he lov’d, but love he laugh’d to scorn;        4
+  Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
+  And like a bold-fac’d suitor ’gins to woo him.
+
+“Thrice fairer than myself,” thus she began,
+“The field’s chief flower, sweet above compare,        8
+Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man,
+More white and red than doves or roses are:
+  Nature that made thee, with herself at strife,
+  Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.     12
+
+“Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed,
+And rein his proud head to the saddle-bow;
+If thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed
+A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know:             16
+  Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses,
+  And being set, I’ll smother thee with kisses.
+
+“And yet not cloy thy lips with loath’d satiety,
+But rather famish them amid their plenty,             20
+Making them red, and pale, with fresh variety:
+Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty:
+  A summer’s day will seem an hour but short,
+  Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.”         24
+
+With this she seizeth on his sweating palm,
+The precedent of pith and livelihood,
+And trembling in her passion, calls it balm,
+Earth’s sovereign salve to do a goddess good:         28
+  Being so enrag’d, desire doth lend her force
+  Courageously to pluck him from his horse.
+
+Over one arm the lusty courser’s rein,
+Under her other was the tender boy,                   32
+Who blush’d and pouted in a dull disdain,
+With leaden appetite, unapt to toy;
+  She red and hot as coals of glowing fire,
+  He red for shame, but frosty in desire.             36
+
+The studded bridle on a ragged bough
+Nimbly she fastens;—O! how quick is love!—
+The steed is stalled up, and even now
+To tie the rider she begins to prove:                 40
+  Backward she push’d him, as she would be thrust,
+  And govern’d him in strength, though not in lust.
+
+So soon was she along, as he was down,
+Each leaning on their elbows and their hips:          44
+Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown,
+And ’gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips,
+  And kissing speaks, with lustful language broken,
+  “If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.”    48
+
+He burns with bashful shame, she with her tears
+Doth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks;
+Then with her windy sighs and golden hairs
+To fan and blow them dry again she seeks.             52
+  He saith she is immodest, blames her miss;
+  What follows more, she murders with a kiss.
+
+Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,
+Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone,      56
+Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste,
+Till either gorge be stuff’d or prey be gone:
+  Even so she kiss’d his brow, his cheek, his chin,
+  And where she ends she doth anew begin.             60
+
+Forc’d to content, but never to obey,
+Panting he lies, and breatheth in her face.
+She feedeth on the steam, as on a prey,
+And calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace,         64
+  Wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers
+  So they were dew’d with such distilling showers.
+
+Look how a bird lies tangled in a net,
+So fasten’d in her arms Adonis lies;                  68
+Pure shame and aw’d resistance made him fret,
+Which bred more beauty in his angry eyes:
+  Rain added to a river that is rank
+  Perforce will force it overflow the bank.           72
+
+Still she entreats, and prettily entreats,
+For to a pretty ear she tunes her tale.
+Still is he sullen, still he lours and frets,
+’Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy pale;             76
+  Being red she loves him best, and being white,
+  Her best is better’d with a more delight.
+
+Look how he can, she cannot choose but love;
+And by her fair immortal hand she swears,             80
+From his soft bosom never to remove,
+Till he take truce with her contending tears,
+  Which long have rain’d, making her cheeks all wet;
+  And one sweet kiss shall pay this countless debt.
+
+Upon this promise did he raise his chin,               85
+Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave,
+Who, being look’d on, ducks as quickly in;
+So offers he to give what she did crave,               88
+  But when her lips were ready for his pay,
+  He winks, and turns his lips another way.
+
+Never did passenger in summer’s heat
+More thirst for drink than she for this good turn.    92
+Her help she sees, but help she cannot get;
+She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn:
+  “O! pity,” ’gan she cry, “flint-hearted boy,
+  ’Tis but a kiss I beg; why art thou coy?            96
+
+“I have been woo’d as I entreat thee now,
+Even by the stern and direful god of war,
+Whose sinewy neck in battle ne’er did bow,
+Who conquers where he comes in every jar;             100
+  Yet hath he been my captive and my slave,
+  And begg’d for that which thou unask’d shalt have.
+
+“Over my altars hath he hung his lance,
+His batter’d shield, his uncontrolled crest,          104
+And for my sake hath learn’d to sport and dance,
+To toy, to wanton, dally, smile, and jest;
+  Scorning his churlish drum and ensign red
+  Making my arms his field, his tent my bed.         108
+
+“Thus he that overrul’d I oversway’d,
+Leading him prisoner in a red rose chain:
+Strong-temper’d steel his stronger strength obey’d,
+Yet was he servile to my coy disdain.                112
+  Oh be not proud, nor brag not of thy might,
+  For mast’ring her that foil’d the god of fight.
+
+“Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine,
+Though mine be not so fair, yet are they red,        116
+The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine:
+What see’st thou in the ground? hold up thy head,
+  Look in mine eyeballs, there thy beauty lies;
+  Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes?     120
+
+“Art thou asham’d to kiss? then wink again,
+And I will wink; so shall the day seem night.
+Love keeps his revels where there are but twain;
+Be bold to play, our sport is not in sight,          124
+  These blue-vein’d violets whereon we lean
+  Never can blab, nor know not what we mean.
+
+“The tender spring upon thy tempting lip             127
+Shows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted,
+Make use of time, let not advantage slip;
+Beauty within itself should not be wasted,
+  Fair flowers that are not gather’d in their prime
+  Rot, and consume themselves in little time.         132
+
+“Were I hard-favour’d, foul, or wrinkled old,
+Ill-nurtur’d, crooked, churlish, harsh in voice,
+O’erworn, despised, rheumatic, and cold,
+Thick-sighted, barren, lean, and lacking juice,      136
+  Then mightst thou pause, for then I were not for thee;
+  But having no defects, why dost abhor me?
+
+“Thou canst not see one wrinkle in my brow,           139
+Mine eyes are grey and bright, and quick in turning;
+My beauty as the spring doth yearly grow,
+My flesh is soft and plump, my marrow burning,
+  My smooth moist hand, were it with thy hand felt,
+  Would in thy palm dissolve, or seem to melt.       144
+
+“Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,
+Or like a fairy, trip upon the green,
+Or like a nymph, with long dishevell’d hair,
+Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen.         148
+  Love is a spirit all compact of fire,
+  Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.
+
+“Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie:           151
+These forceless flowers like sturdy trees support me;
+Two strengthless doves will draw me through the sky,
+From morn till night, even where I list to sport me.
+  Is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be
+  That thou shouldst think it heavy unto thee?       156
+
+“Is thine own heart to thine own face affected?
+Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left?
+Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected,
+Steal thine own freedom, and complain on theft.      160
+  Narcissus so himself himself forsook,
+  And died to kiss his shadow in the brook.
+
+“Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,
+Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use,         164
+Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear;
+Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse,
+  Seeds spring from seeds, and beauty breedeth beauty;
+  Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty.            168
+
+“Upon the earth’s increase why shouldst thou feed,
+Unless the earth with thy increase be fed?
+By law of nature thou art bound to breed,
+That thine may live when thou thyself art dead;      172
+  And so in spite of death thou dost survive,
+  In that thy likeness still is left alive.”
+
+By this the love-sick queen began to sweat,
+For where they lay the shadow had forsook them,      176
+And Titan, tired in the midday heat,
+With burning eye did hotly overlook them,
+  Wishing Adonis had his team to guide,
+  So he were like him and by Venus’ side.            180
+
+And now Adonis with a lazy spright,
+And with a heavy, dark, disliking eye,
+His louring brows o’erwhelming his fair sight,
+Like misty vapours when they blot the sky,           184
+  Souring his cheeks, cries, “Fie, no more of love:
+  The sun doth burn my face; I must remove.”
+
+“Ay me,” quoth Venus, “young, and so unkind!
+What bare excuses mak’st thou to be gone!            188
+I’ll sigh celestial breath, whose gentle wind
+Shall cool the heat of this descending sun:
+  I’ll make a shadow for thee of my hairs;
+  If they burn too, I’ll quench them with my tears.  192
+
+“The sun that shines from heaven shines but warm,
+And lo I lie between that sun and thee:
+The heat I have from thence doth little harm,
+Thine eye darts forth the fire that burneth me;      196
+  And were I not immortal, life were done,
+  Between this heavenly and earthly sun.
+
+“Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel?
+Nay more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth:    200
+Art thou a woman’s son and canst not feel
+What ’tis to love, how want of love tormenteth?
+  O had thy mother borne so hard a mind,
+  She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind.   204
+
+“What am I that thou shouldst contemn me this?
+Or what great danger dwells upon my suit?
+What were thy lips the worse for one poor kiss?
+Speak, fair; but speak fair words, or else be mute:  208
+  Give me one kiss, I’ll give it thee again,
+  And one for int’rest, if thou wilt have twain.
+
+“Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone,
+Well-painted idol, image dull and dead,              212
+Statue contenting but the eye alone,
+Thing like a man, but of no woman bred:
+  Thou art no man, though of a man’s complexion,
+  For men will kiss even by their own direction.”    216
+
+This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue,
+And swelling passion doth provoke a pause;
+Red cheeks and fiery eyes blaze forth her wrong;
+Being judge in love, she cannot right her cause.     220
+  And now she weeps, and now she fain would speak,
+  And now her sobs do her intendments break.
+
+Sometimes she shakes her head, and then his hand,
+Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground;            224
+Sometimes her arms infold him like a band:
+She would, he will not in her arms be bound;
+  And when from thence he struggles to be gone,
+  She locks her lily fingers one in one.             228
+
+“Fondling,” she saith, “since I have hemm’d thee here
+Within the circuit of this ivory pale,
+I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
+Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:        232
+  Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,
+  Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.
+
+“Within this limit is relief enough,
+Sweet bottom grass and high delightful plain,        236
+Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough,
+To shelter thee from tempest and from rain:
+  Then be my deer, since I am such a park,           239
+  No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.”
+
+At this Adonis smiles as in disdain,
+That in each cheek appears a pretty dimple;
+Love made those hollows, if himself were slain,
+He might be buried in a tomb so simple;              244
+  Foreknowing well, if there he came to lie,
+  Why there love liv’d, and there he could not die.
+
+These lovely caves, these round enchanting pits,
+Open’d their mouths to swallow Venus’ liking.        248
+Being mad before, how doth she now for wits?
+Struck dead at first, what needs a second striking?
+  Poor queen of love, in thine own law forlorn,
+  To love a cheek that smiles at thee in scorn!      252
+
+Now which way shall she turn? what shall she say?
+Her words are done, her woes the more increasing;
+The time is spent, her object will away,
+And from her twining arms doth urge releasing:       256
+  “Pity,” she cries; “some favour, some remorse!”
+  Away he springs, and hasteth to his horse.
+
+But lo from forth a copse that neighbours by,
+A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud,          260
+Adonis’ tramping courser doth espy,
+And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud:
+  The strong-neck’d steed, being tied unto a tree,
+  Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he.    264
+
+Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,
+And now his woven girths he breaks asunder;
+The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds,
+Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven’s thunder;
+  The iron bit he crusheth ’tween his teeth,         269
+  Controlling what he was controlled with.
+
+His ears up-prick’d; his braided hanging mane
+Upon his compass’d crest now stand on end;           272
+His nostrils drink the air, and forth again,
+As from a furnace, vapours doth he send:
+  His eye, which scornfully glisters like fire,
+  Shows his hot courage and his high desire.         276
+
+Sometime he trots, as if he told the steps,
+With gentle majesty and modest pride;
+Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps,
+As who should say, “Lo thus my strength is tried;
+  And this I do to captivate the eye                 281
+  Of the fair breeder that is standing by.”
+
+What recketh he his rider’s angry stir,
+His flattering “Holla”, or his “Stand, I say”?       284
+What cares he now for curb or pricking spur?
+For rich caparisons or trappings gay?
+  He sees his love, and nothing else he sees,
+  For nothing else with his proud sight agrees.      288
+
+Look when a painter would surpass the life,
+In limning out a well-proportion’d steed,
+His art with nature’s workmanship at strife,
+As if the dead the living should exceed:             292
+  So did this horse excel a common one,
+  In shape, in courage, colour, pace and bone.
+
+Round-hoof’d, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,
+Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide,
+High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,
+Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide:
+  Look, what a horse should have he did not lack,
+  Save a proud rider on so proud a back.             300
+
+Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares;
+Anon he starts at stirring of a feather:
+To bid the wind a base he now prepares,
+And where he run or fly they know not whether;       304
+  For through his mane and tail the high wind sings,
+  Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather’d wings.
+
+He looks upon his love, and neighs unto her;
+She answers him as if she knew his mind,             308
+Being proud, as females are, to see him woo her,
+She puts on outward strangeness, seems unkind,
+  Spurns at his love and scorns the heat he feels,
+  Beating his kind embracements with her heels.      312
+
+Then like a melancholy malcontent,
+He vails his tail that like a falling plume,
+Cool shadow to his melting buttock lent:
+He stamps, and bites the poor flies in his fume.     316
+  His love, perceiving how he was enrag’d,
+  Grew kinder, and his fury was assuag’d.
+
+His testy master goeth about to take him,
+When lo the unback’d breeder, full of fear,         320
+Jealous of catching, swiftly doth forsake him,
+With her the horse, and left Adonis there:
+  As they were mad, unto the wood they hie them,
+  Outstripping crows that strive to overfly them.    324
+
+All swoln with chafing, down Adonis sits,
+Banning his boisterous and unruly beast;
+And now the happy season once more fits
+That love-sick love by pleading may be blest;        328
+  For lovers say, the heart hath treble wrong,
+  When it is barr’d the aidance of the tongue.
+
+An oven that is stopp’d, or river stay’d,
+Burneth more hotly, swelleth with more rage:         332
+So of concealed sorrow may be said,
+Free vent of words love’s fire doth assuage;
+  But when the heart’s attorney once is mute,
+  The client breaks, as desperate in his suit.       336
+
+He sees her coming, and begins to glow,
+Even as a dying coal revives with wind,
+And with his bonnet hides his angry brow,
+Looks on the dull earth with disturbed mind,         340
+  Taking no notice that she is so nigh,
+  For all askance he holds her in his eye.
+
+O what a sight it was, wistly to view
+How she came stealing to the wayward boy,            344
+To note the fighting conflict of her hue,
+How white and red each other did destroy:
+  But now her cheek was pale, and by and by
+  It flash’d forth fire, as lightning from the sky.  348
+
+Now was she just before him as he sat,
+And like a lowly lover down she kneels;
+With one fair hand she heaveth up his hat,
+Her other tender hand his fair cheek feels:          352
+  His tend’rer cheek receives her soft hand’s print,
+  As apt as new-fall’n snow takes any dint.
+
+Oh what a war of looks was then between them,
+Her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing,              356
+His eyes saw her eyes, as they had not seen them,
+Her eyes woo’d still, his eyes disdain’d the wooing:
+  And all this dumb play had his acts made plain
+  With tears, which, chorus-like, her eyes did rain.
+
+Full gently now she takes him by the hand,           361
+A lily prison’d in a gaol of snow,
+Or ivory in an alabaster band,
+So white a friend engirts so white a foe:            364
+  This beauteous combat, wilful and unwilling,
+  Show’d like two silver doves that sit a-billing.
+
+Once more the engine of her thoughts began:
+“O fairest mover on this mortal round,               368
+Would thou wert as I am, and I a man,
+My heart all whole as thine, thy heart my wound,
+  For one sweet look thy help I would assure thee,
+  Though nothing but my body’s bane would cure thee.”
+
+“Give me my hand,” saith he, “why dost thou feel it?”
+“Give me my heart,” saith she, “and thou shalt have it.
+O give it me lest thy hard heart do steel it,
+And being steel’d, soft sighs can never grave it.    376
+  Then love’s deep groans I never shall regard,
+  Because Adonis’ heart hath made mine hard.”
+
+“For shame,” he cries, “let go, and let me go,
+My day’s delight is past, my horse is gone,          380
+And ’tis your fault I am bereft him so,
+I pray you hence, and leave me here alone,
+  For all my mind, my thought, my busy care,
+  Is how to get my palfrey from the mare.”           384
+
+Thus she replies: “Thy palfrey as he should,
+Welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire,
+Affection is a coal that must be cool’d;
+Else, suffer’d, it will set the heart on fire,       388
+  The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none;
+  Therefore no marvel though thy horse be gone.
+
+“How like a jade he stood tied to the tree,
+Servilely master’d with a leathern rein!             392
+But when he saw his love, his youth’s fair fee,
+He held such petty bondage in disdain;
+  Throwing the base thong from his bending crest,
+  Enfranchising his mouth, his back, his breast.     396
+
+“Who sees his true-love in her naked bed,
+Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white,
+But when his glutton eye so full hath fed,
+His other agents aim at like delight?                400
+  Who is so faint that dare not be so bold
+  To touch the fire, the weather being cold?
+
+“Let me excuse thy courser, gentle boy,
+And learn of him, I heartily beseech thee,           404
+To take advantage on presented joy,
+Though I were dumb, yet his proceedings teach thee.
+  O learn to love, the lesson is but plain,
+  And once made perfect, never lost again.”          408
+
+“I know not love,” quoth he, “nor will not know it,
+Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it;
+’Tis much to borrow, and I will not owe it;
+My love to love is love but to disgrace it;          412
+  For I have heard, it is a life in death,
+  That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath.
+
+“Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinish’d?
+Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth?        416
+If springing things be any jot diminish’d,
+They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth;
+  The colt that’s back’d and burden’d being young,
+  Loseth his pride, and never waxeth strong.         420
+
+“You hurt my hand with wringing. Let us part,
+And leave this idle theme, this bootless chat:
+Remove your siege from my unyielding heart,
+To love’s alarms it will not ope the gate:           424
+  Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flatt’ry;
+  For where a heart is hard they make no batt’ry.”
+
+“What! canst thou talk?” quoth she, “hast thou a tongue?
+O would thou hadst not, or I had no hearing;        428
+Thy mermaid’s voice hath done me double wrong;
+I had my load before, now press’d with bearing:
+  Melodious discord, heavenly tune, harsh-sounding,
+  Ear’s deep sweet music, and heart’s deep sore wounding.
+
+“Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love          433
+That inward beauty and invisible;
+Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move
+Each part in me that were but sensible:              436
+  Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see,
+  Yet should I be in love by touching thee.
+
+“Say that the sense of feeling were bereft me,
+And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch,       440
+And nothing but the very smell were left me,
+Yet would my love to thee be still as much;
+  For from the stillitory of thy face excelling
+  Comes breath perfum’d, that breedeth love by smelling.
+
+“But oh what banquet wert thou to the taste,         445
+Being nurse and feeder of the other four;
+Would they not wish the feast might ever last,
+And bid suspicion double-lock the door,
+  Lest jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest,
+  Should by his stealing in disturb the feast?”      448
+
+Once more the ruby-colour’d portal open’d,
+Which to his speech did honey passage yield,         452
+Like a red morn that ever yet betoken’d
+Wrack to the seaman, tempest to the field,
+  Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,
+  Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.      456
+
+This ill presage advisedly she marketh:
+Even as the wind is hush’d before it raineth,
+Or as the wolf doth grin before he barketh,
+Or as the berry breaks before it staineth,           460
+  Or like the deadly bullet of a gun,
+  His meaning struck her ere his words begun.
+
+And at his look she flatly falleth down
+For looks kill love, and love by looks reviveth;     464
+A smile recures the wounding of a frown;
+But blessed bankrout, that by love so thriveth!
+  The silly boy, believing she is dead,
+  Claps her pale cheek, till clapping makes it red.  468
+
+And all amaz’d brake off his late intent,
+For sharply he did think to reprehend her,
+Which cunning love did wittily prevent:
+Fair fall the wit that can so well defend her!       472
+  For on the grass she lies as she were slain,
+  Till his breath breatheth life in her again.
+
+He wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks,
+He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard,         476
+He chafes her lips; a thousand ways he seeks
+To mend the hurt that his unkindness marr’d:
+  He kisses her; and she, by her good will,
+  Will never rise, so he will kiss her still.        480
+
+The night of sorrow now is turn’d to day:
+Her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth,
+Like the fair sun when in his fresh array
+He cheers the morn, and all the world relieveth:     484
+  And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,
+  So is her face illumin’d with her eye.
+
+Whose beams upon his hairless face are fix’d,
+As if from thence they borrow’d all their shine.     488
+Were never four such lamps together mix’d,
+Had not his clouded with his brow’s repine;
+  But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light
+  Shone like the moon in water seen by night.        492
+
+“O where am I?” quoth she, “in earth or heaven?
+Or in the ocean drench’d, or in the fire?
+What hour is this? or morn or weary even?
+Do I delight to die, or life desire?                 496
+  But now I liv’d, and life was death’s annoy;
+  But now I died, and death was lively joy.
+
+“O thou didst kill me; kill me once again:
+Thy eyes’ shrewd tutor, that hard heart of thine,    500
+Hath taught them scornful tricks, and such disdain,
+That they have murder’d this poor heart of mine;
+  And these mine eyes, true leaders to their queen,
+  But for thy piteous lips no more had seen.         504
+
+“Long may they kiss each other for this cure!
+Oh never let their crimson liveries wear,
+And as they last, their verdure still endure,
+To drive infection from the dangerous year:          508
+  That the star-gazers, having writ on death,
+  May say, the plague is banish’d by thy breath.
+
+“Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted,
+What bargains may I make, still to be sealing?       512
+To sell myself I can be well contented,
+So thou wilt buy, and pay, and use good dealing;
+  Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips,
+  Set thy seal manual on my wax-red lips.            516
+
+“A thousand kisses buys my heart from me;
+And pay them at thy leisure, one by one,
+What is ten hundred touches unto thee?
+Are they not quickly told and quickly gone?          520
+  Say, for non-payment that the debt should double,
+  Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?”
+
+“Fair queen,” quoth he, “if any love you owe me,
+Measure my strangeness with my unripe years:         524
+Before I know myself, seek not to know me;
+No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears:
+  The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast,
+  Or being early pluck’d, is sour to taste.          528
+
+“Look the world’s comforter, with weary gait
+His day’s hot task hath ended in the west;
+The owl, night’s herald, shrieks, ’tis very late;
+The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest,     532
+  And coal-black clouds that shadow heaven’s light
+  Do summon us to part, and bid good night.
+
+“Now let me say good night, and so say you;
+If you will say so, you shall have a kiss.”          536
+“Good night,” quoth she; and ere he says adieu,
+The honey fee of parting tender’d is:
+  Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace;
+  Incorporate then they seem, face grows to face.    540
+
+Till breathless he disjoin’d, and backward drew
+The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth,
+Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew,
+Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drouth,        544
+  He with her plenty press’d, she faint with dearth,
+  Their lips together glued, fall to the earth.
+
+Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey,
+And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth;       548
+Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey,
+Paying what ransom the insulter willeth;
+  Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high,
+  That she will draw his lips’ rich treasure dry.    552
+
+And having felt the sweetness of the spoil,
+With blindfold fury she begins to forage;
+Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil,
+And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage,      556
+  Planting oblivion, beating reason back,
+  Forgetting shame’s pure blush and honour’s wrack.
+
+Hot, faint, and weary, with her hard embracing,
+Like a wild bird being tam’d with too much handling,
+Or as the fleet-foot roe that’s tir’d with chasing,  561
+Or like the froward infant still’d with dandling:
+  He now obeys, and now no more resisteth,
+  While she takes all she can, not all she listeth.  564
+
+What wax so frozen but dissolves with temp’ring,
+And yields at last to every light impression?
+Things out of hope are compass’d oft with vent’ring,
+Chiefly in love, whose leave exceeds commission:     568
+  Affection faints not like a pale-fac’d coward,
+  But then woos best when most his choice is froward.
+
+When he did frown, O had she then gave over,
+Such nectar from his lips she had not suck’d.        572
+Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover;
+What though the rose have prickles, yet ’tis pluck’d.
+  Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast,
+  Yet love breaks through, and picks them all at last.
+
+For pity now she can no more detain him;             577
+The poor fool prays her that he may depart:
+She is resolv’d no longer to restrain him,
+Bids him farewell, and look well to her heart,       580
+  The which by Cupid’s bow she doth protest,
+  He carries thence encaged in his breast.
+
+“Sweet boy,” she says, “this night I’ll waste in sorrow,
+For my sick heart commands mine eyes to watch.       584
+Tell me, love’s master, shall we meet tomorrow
+Say, shall we? shall we? wilt thou make the match?”
+  He tells her no, tomorrow he intends
+  To hunt the boar with certain of his friends.      588
+
+“The boar!” quoth she; whereat a sudden pale,
+Like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose,
+Usurps her cheek, she trembles at his tale,
+And on his neck her yoking arms she throws.          592
+  She sinketh down, still hanging by his neck,
+  He on her belly falls, she on her back.
+
+Now is she in the very lists of love,
+Her champion mounted for the hot encounter:          596
+All is imaginary she doth prove,
+He will not manage her, although he mount her;
+  That worse than Tantalus’ is her annoy,
+  To clip Elysium and to lack her joy.               600
+
+Even as poor birds, deceiv’d with painted grapes,
+Do surfeit by the eye and pine the maw:
+Even so she languisheth in her mishaps,
+As those poor birds that helpless berries saw.       604
+  The warm effects which she in him finds missing,
+  She seeks to kindle with continual kissing.
+
+But all in vain, good queen, it will not be,
+She hath assay’d as much as may be prov’d;           608
+Her pleading hath deserv’d a greater fee;
+She’s love, she loves, and yet she is not lov’d.
+  “Fie, fie,” he says, “you crush me; let me go;
+  You have no reason to withhold me so.”             612
+
+“Thou hadst been gone,” quoth she, “sweet boy, ere this,
+But that thou told’st me thou wouldst hunt the boar.
+Oh be advis’d; thou know’st not what it is,
+With javelin’s point a churlish swine to gore,       616
+  Whose tushes never sheath’d he whetteth still,
+  Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill.
+
+“On his bow-back he hath a battle set
+Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes;         620
+His eyes like glow-worms shine when he doth fret;
+His snout digs sepulchres where’er he goes;
+  Being mov’d, he strikes whate’er is in his way,
+  And whom he strikes his crooked tushes slay.       624
+
+“His brawny sides, with hairy bristles armed,
+Are better proof than thy spear’s point can enter;
+His short thick neck cannot be easily harmed;
+Being ireful, on the lion he will venture:           628
+  The thorny brambles and embracing bushes,
+  As fearful of him, part, through whom he rushes.
+
+“Alas! he naught esteems that face of thine,
+To which love’s eyes pay tributary gazes;            632
+Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips, and crystal eyne,
+Whose full perfection all the world amazes;
+  But having thee at vantage, wondrous dread!
+  Would root these beauties as he roots the mead.
+
+“Oh let him keep his loathsome cabin still,          637
+Beauty hath naught to do with such foul fiends:
+Come not within his danger by thy will;
+They that thrive well, take counsel of their friends.
+  When thou didst name the boar, not to dissemble,
+  I fear’d thy fortune, and my joints did tremble.
+
+“Didst thou not mark my face, was it not white?
+Saw’st thou not signs of fear lurk in mine eye?      644
+Grew I not faint, and fell I not downright?
+Within my bosom, whereon thou dost lie,
+  My boding heart pants, beats, and takes no rest,
+  But like an earthquake, shakes thee on my breast.
+
+“For where love reigns, disturbing jealousy          649
+Doth call himself affection’s sentinel;
+Gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny,
+And in a peaceful hour doth cry “Kill, kill!”        652
+  Distemp’ring gentle love in his desire,
+  As air and water do abate the fire.
+
+“This sour informer, this bate-breeding spy,
+This canker that eats up love’s tender spring,       656
+This carry-tale, dissentious jealousy,
+That sometime true news, sometime false doth bring,
+  Knocks at my heart, and whispers in mine ear,
+  That if I love thee, I thy death should fear.      660
+
+“And more than so, presenteth to mine eye
+The picture of an angry chafing boar,
+Under whose sharp fangs on his back doth lie
+An image like thyself, all stain’d with gore;        664
+  Whose blood upon the fresh flowers being shed,
+  Doth make them droop with grief and hang the head.
+
+“What should I do, seeing thee so indeed,
+That tremble at th’imagination?                      668
+The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed,
+And fear doth teach it divination:
+  I prophesy thy death, my living sorrow,
+  If thou encounter with the boar tomorrow.          672
+
+“But if thou needs wilt hunt, be rul’d by me;
+Uncouple at the timorous flying hare,
+Or at the fox which lives by subtilty,
+Or at the roe which no encounter dare:               676
+  Pursue these fearful creatures o’er the downs,
+  And on thy well-breath’d horse keep with thy hounds.
+
+“And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
+Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles      680
+How he outruns the wind, and with what care
+He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles:
+  The many musits through the which he goes
+  Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.            684
+
+“Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep,
+To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,
+And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
+To stop the loud pursuers in their yell,             688
+  And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer;
+  Danger deviseth shifts, wit waits on fear.
+
+“For there his smell with others being mingled,      691
+The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,
+Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled
+With much ado the cold fault cleanly out;
+  Then do they spend their mouths: echo replies,
+  As if another chase were in the skies.             696
+
+“By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
+Stands on his hinder legs with list’ning ear,
+To hearken if his foes pursue him still.
+Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;                700
+  And now his grief may be compared well
+  To one sore sick that hears the passing bell.
+
+“Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
+Turn, and return, indenting with the way,            704
+Each envious briar his weary legs do scratch,
+Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay:
+  For misery is trodden on by many,
+  And being low never reliev’d by any.               708
+
+“Lie quietly, and hear a little more;
+Nay, do not struggle, for thou shalt not rise:
+To make thee hate the hunting of the boar,
+Unlike myself thou hear’st me moralize,              712
+  Applying this to that, and so to so,
+  For love can comment upon every woe.
+
+“Where did I leave?” “No matter where,” quoth he
+“Leave me, and then the story aptly ends:            716
+The night is spent.” “Why, what of that?” quoth she.
+“I am,” quoth he, “expected of my friends;
+  And now ’tis dark, and going I shall fall.”
+  “In night,” quoth she, “desire sees best of all.  720
+
+But if thou fall, oh then imagine this,
+The earth, in love with thee, thy footing trips,
+And all is but to rob thee of a kiss.                723
+Rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips
+  Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn,
+  Lest she should steal a kiss and die forsworn."
+
+“Now of this dark night I perceive the reason:
+Cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine          728
+Till forging nature be condemn’d of treason,
+For stealing moulds from heaven, that were divine;
+  Wherein she fram’d thee, in high heaven’s despite,
+  To shame the sun by day and her by night.          732
+
+“And therefore hath she brib’d the destinies,
+To cross the curious workmanship of nature,
+To mingle beauty with infirmities,
+And pure perfection with impure defeature,           736
+  Making it subject to the tyranny
+  Of mad mischances and much misery.
+
+“As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,
+Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wood,         740
+The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint
+Disorder breeds by heating of the blood;
+  Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damn’d despair,
+  Swear nature’s death, for framing thee so fair.    744
+
+“And not the least of all these maladies
+But in one minute’s fight brings beauty under:
+Both favour, savour, hue and qualities,
+Whereat th’impartial gazer late did wonder,          748
+  Are on the sudden wasted, thaw’d and done,
+  As mountain snow melts with the midday sun.
+
+“Therefore despite of fruitless chastity,
+Love-lacking vestals and self-loving nuns,           752
+That on the earth would breed a scarcity
+And barren dearth of daughters and of sons,
+  Be prodigal: the lamp that burns by night
+  Dries up his oil to lend the world his light.      756
+
+“What is thy body but a swallowing grave,
+Seeming to bury that posterity,
+Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,
+If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity?          760
+  If so, the world will hold thee in disdain,
+  Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain.
+
+“So in thyself thyself art made away;
+A mischief worse than civil home-bred strife,        764
+Or theirs whose desperate hands themselves do slay,
+Or butcher sire that reeves his son of life.
+  Foul cank’ring rust the hidden treasure frets,
+  But gold that’s put to use more gold begets.”      768
+
+“Nay then,” quoth Adon, “you will fall again
+Into your idle over-handled theme;
+The kiss I gave you is bestow’d in vain,
+And all in vain you strive against the stream;       772
+  For by this black-fac’d night, desire’s foul nurse,
+  Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse.
+
+“If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues,
+And every tongue more moving than your own,          776
+Bewitching like the wanton mermaid’s songs,
+Yet from mine ear the tempting tune is blown;
+  For know, my heart stands armed in mine ear,
+  And will not let a false sound enter there.        780
+
+“Lest the deceiving harmony should run
+Into the quiet closure of my breast,
+And then my little heart were quite undone,
+In his bedchamber to be barr’d of rest.              784
+  No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan,
+  But soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone.
+
+“What have you urg’d that I cannot reprove?
+The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger;        790
+I hate not love, but your device in love
+That lends embracements unto every stranger.
+  You do it for increase: O strange excuse!
+  When reason is the bawd to lust’s abuse.           792
+
+“Call it not love, for love to heaven is fled,
+Since sweating lust on earth usurp’d his name;
+Under whose simple semblance he hath fed
+Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame;           796
+  Which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves,
+  As caterpillars do the tender leaves.
+
+“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
+But lust’s effect is tempest after sun;              800
+Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
+Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done.
+  Love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies;
+  Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies.       804
+
+“More I could tell, but more I dare not say;
+The text is old, the orator too green.
+Therefore, in sadness, now I will away;
+My face is full of shame, my heart of teen,          808
+  Mine ears, that to your wanton talk attended
+  Do burn themselves for having so offended.”
+
+With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace         811
+Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,
+And homeward through the dark laund runs apace;
+Leaves love upon her back deeply distress’d.
+  Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky,
+  So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye.         816
+
+Which after him she darts, as one on shore
+Gazing upon a late embarked friend,
+Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,
+Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend:        820
+  So did the merciless and pitchy night
+  Fold in the object that did feed her sight.
+
+Whereat amaz’d, as one that unaware
+Hath dropp’d a precious jewel in the flood,          824
+Or ’stonish’d as night-wanderers often are,
+Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood;
+  Even so confounded in the dark she lay,
+  Having lost the fair discovery of her way.         828
+
+And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans,
+That all the neighbour caves, as seeming troubled,
+Make verbal repetition of her moans;
+Passion on passion deeply is redoubled:              832
+  “Ay me!” she cries, and twenty times, “Woe, woe!”
+  And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.
+
+She marking them, begins a wailing note,
+And sings extemporally a woeful ditty;               836
+How love makes young men thrall, and old men dote,
+How love is wise in folly foolish witty:
+  Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe,
+  And still the choir of echoes answer so.           840
+
+Her song was tedious, and outwore the night,
+For lovers’ hours are long, though seeming short,
+If pleas’d themselves, others they think, delight
+In such like circumstance, with such like sport:     844
+  Their copious stories oftentimes begun,
+  End without audience, and are never done.
+
+For who hath she to spend the night withal,
+But idle sounds resembling parasites;                848
+Like shrill-tongu’d tapsters answering every call,
+Soothing the humour of fantastic wits?
+  She says, “’Tis so:” they answer all, “’Tis so;”
+  And would say after her, if she said “No.”         852
+
+Lo here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
+From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
+And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
+The sun ariseth in his majesty;                      856
+  Who doth the world so gloriously behold,
+  That cedar tops and hills seem burnish’d gold.
+
+Venus salutes him with this fair good morrow:
+“Oh thou clear god, and patron of all light,         860
+From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow
+The beauteous influence that makes him bright,
+  There lives a son that suck’d an earthly mother,
+  May lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other.”
+
+This said, she hasteth to a myrtle grove,            865
+Musing the morning is so much o’erworn,
+And yet she hears no tidings of her love;
+She hearkens for his hounds and for his horn.        868
+  Anon she hears them chant it lustily,
+  And all in haste she coasteth to the cry.
+
+And as she runs, the bushes in the way
+Some catch her by the neck, some kiss her face,      872
+Some twine about her thigh to make her stay:
+She wildly breaketh from their strict embrace,
+  Like a milch doe, whose swelling dugs do ache,
+  Hasting to feed her fawn hid in some brake.        876
+
+By this she hears the hounds are at a bay,
+Whereat she starts like one that spies an adder
+Wreath’d up in fatal folds just in his way,
+The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder;    880
+  Even so the timorous yelping of the hounds
+  Appals her senses, and her spirit confounds.
+
+For now she knows it is no gentle chase,
+But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud,       884
+Because the cry remaineth in one place,
+Where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud,
+  Finding their enemy to be so curst,
+  They all strain court’sy who shall cope him first. 888
+
+This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear,
+Through which it enters to surprise her heart;
+Who overcome by doubt and bloodless fear,
+With cold-pale weakness numbs each feeling part;     892
+  Like soldiers when their captain once doth yield,
+  They basely fly and dare not stay the field.
+
+Thus stands she in a trembling ecstasy,
+Till cheering up her senses sore dismay’d,           896
+She tells them ’tis a causeless fantasy,
+And childish error, that they are afraid;
+  Bids them leave quaking, bids them fear no more:
+  And with that word, she spied the hunted boar.     900
+
+Whose frothy mouth bepainted all with red,
+Like milk and blood being mingled both together,
+A second fear through all her sinews spread,
+Which madly hurries her she knows not whither:       904
+  This way she runs, and now she will no further,
+  But back retires, to rate the boar for murther.
+
+A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways,
+She treads the path that she untreads again;         908
+Her more than haste is mated with delays,
+Like the proceedings of a drunken brain,
+  Full of respects, yet naught at all respecting,
+  In hand with all things, naught at all effecting.
+
+Here kennel’d in a brake she finds a hound,          913
+And asks the weary caitiff for his master,
+And there another licking of his wound,
+’Gainst venom’d sores the only sovereign plaster.    916
+  And here she meets another sadly scowling,
+  To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling.
+
+When he hath ceas’d his ill-resounding noise,
+Another flap-mouth’d mourner, black and grim,        920
+Against the welkin volleys out his voice;
+Another and another answer him,
+  Clapping their proud tails to the ground below,
+  Shaking their scratch’d ears, bleeding as they go.
+
+Look how the world’s poor people are amazed          925
+At apparitions, signs, and prodigies,
+Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed,
+Infusing them with dreadful prophecies;              928
+  So she at these sad signs draws up her breath,
+  And sighing it again, exclaims on death.
+
+“Hard-favour’d tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean,           931
+Hateful divorce of love,” thus chides she death,
+“Grim-grinning ghost, earth’s worm, what dost thou mean?
+To stifle beauty and to steal his breath,
+  Who when he liv’d, his breath and beauty set
+  Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet.            936
+
+“If he be dead, O no, it cannot be,
+Seeing his beauty, thou shouldst strike at it,
+O yes, it may, thou hast no eyes to see,
+But hatefully at random dost thou hit.               940
+  Thy mark is feeble age, but thy false dart
+  Mistakes that aim, and cleaves an infant’s heart.
+
+“Hadst thou but bid beware, then he had spoke,
+And hearing him, thy power had lost his power.       944
+The destinies will curse thee for this stroke;
+They bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck’st a flower.
+  Love’s golden arrow at him should have fled,
+  And not death’s ebon dart to strike him dead.      948
+
+“Dost thou drink tears, that thou provok’st such weeping?
+What may a heavy groan advantage thee?
+Why hast thou cast into eternal sleeping
+Those eyes that taught all other eyes to see?        952
+  Now nature cares not for thy mortal vigour,
+  Since her best work is ruin’d with thy rigour.”
+
+Here overcome, as one full of despair,
+She vail’d her eyelids, who like sluices stopp’d     956
+The crystal tide that from her two cheeks fair
+In the sweet channel of her bosom dropp’d
+  But through the flood-gates breaks the silver rain,
+  And with his strong course opens them again.       960
+
+O how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow;
+Her eyes seen in the tears, tears in her eye;
+Both crystals, where they view’d each other’s sorrow,
+Sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry;      964
+  But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain,
+  Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.
+
+Variable passions throng her constant woe,
+As striving who should best become her grief;        968
+All entertain’d, each passion labours so,
+That every present sorrow seemeth chief,
+  But none is best, then join they all together,
+  Like many clouds consulting for foul weather.      972
+
+By this, far off she hears some huntsman holla;
+A nurse’s song ne’er pleas’d her babe so well:
+The dire imagination she did follow
+This sound of hope doth labour to expel;             976
+  For now reviving joy bids her rejoice,
+  And flatters her it is Adonis’ voice.
+
+Whereat her tears began to turn their tide,
+Being prison’d in her eye, like pearls in glass;     980
+Yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside,
+Which her cheek melts, as scorning it should pass
+  To wash the foul face of the sluttish ground,
+  Who is but drunken when she seemeth drown’d.
+
+O hard-believing love, how strange it seems          985
+Not to believe, and yet too credulous;
+Thy weal and woe are both of them extremes;
+Despair and hope make thee ridiculous,               988
+  The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely,
+  In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly.
+
+Now she unweaves the web that she hath wrought,
+Adonis lives, and death is not to blame;             992
+It was not she that call’d him all to naught;
+Now she adds honours to his hateful name.
+  She clepes him king of graves, and grave for kings,
+  Imperious supreme of all mortal things.            996
+
+“No, no,” quoth she, “sweet death, I did but jest;
+Yet pardon me, I felt a kind of fear
+Whenas I met the boar, that bloody beast,
+Which knows no pity, but is still severe;           1000
+  Then, gentle shadow,—truth I must confess—
+  I rail’d on thee, fearing my love’s decease.
+
+“’Tis not my fault, the boar provok’d my tongue;
+Be wreak’d on him, invisible commander;             1004
+’Tis he, foul creature, that hath done thee wrong;
+I did but act, he’s author of my slander.
+  Grief hath two tongues, and never woman yet,
+  Could rule them both, without ten women’s wit.”
+
+Thus hoping that Adonis is alive,                   1009
+Her rash suspect she doth extenuate;
+And that his beauty may the better thrive,
+With death she humbly doth insinuate;               1012
+  Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs and stories
+  His victories, his triumphs and his glories.
+
+“O love!” quoth she, “how much a fool was I,
+To be of such a weak and silly mind,                1016
+To wail his death who lives, and must not die
+Till mutual overthrow of mortal kind;
+  For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,
+  And beauty dead, black Chaos comes again.         1020
+
+“Fie, fie, fond love, thou art as full of fear
+As one with treasure laden, hemm’d with thieves,
+Trifles unwitnessed with eye or ear,
+Thy coward heart with false bethinking grieves.”    1024
+  Even at this word she hears a merry horn,
+  Whereat she leaps that was but late forlorn.
+
+As falcon to the lure, away she flies;
+The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light,    1028
+And in her haste unfortunately spies
+The foul boar’s conquest on her fair delight;
+  Which seen, her eyes, as murder’d with the view,
+  Like stars asham’d of day, themselves withdrew.
+
+Or as the snail, whose tender horns being hit,      1033
+Shrinks backwards in his shelly cave with pain,
+And there all smother’d up, in shade doth sit,
+Long after fearing to creep forth again:            1036
+  So at his bloody view her eyes are fled
+  Into the deep dark cabins of her head.
+
+Where they resign their office and their light
+To the disposing of her troubled brain,             1040
+Who bids them still consort with ugly night,
+And never wound the heart with looks again;
+  Who like a king perplexed in his throne,
+  By their suggestion gives a deadly groan.         1044
+
+Whereat each tributary subject quakes,
+As when the wind imprison’d in the ground,
+Struggling for passage, earth’s foundation shakes,
+Which with cold terror doth men’s minds confound.
+  This mutiny each part doth so surprise            1049
+  That from their dark beds once more leap her eyes.
+
+And being open’d, threw unwilling light
+Upon the wide wound that the boar had trench’d
+In his soft flank, whose wonted lily white          1053
+With purple tears that his wound wept, was drench’d.
+  No flower was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf or weed,
+  But stole his blood and seem’d with him to bleed.
+
+This solemn sympathy poor Venus noteth,             1057
+Over one shoulder doth she hang her head,
+Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth;
+She thinks he could not die, he is not dead:        1060
+  Her voice is stopp’d, her joints forget to bow,
+  Her eyes are mad, that they have wept till now.
+
+Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly,
+That her sight dazzling makes the wound seem three;
+And then she reprehends her mangling eye,           1065
+That makes more gashes, where no breach should be:
+  His face seems twain, each several limb is doubled,
+  For oft the eye mistakes, the brain being troubled.
+
+“My tongue cannot express my grief for one,         1069
+And yet,” quoth she, “behold two Adons dead!
+My sighs are blown away, my salt tears gone,
+Mine eyes are turn’d to fire, my heart to lead:     1072
+  Heavy heart’s lead, melt at mine eyes’ red fire!
+  So shall I die by drops of hot desire.
+
+“Alas poor world, what treasure hast thou lost!
+What face remains alive that’s worth the viewing?
+Whose tongue is music now? what canst thou boast
+Of things long since, or anything ensuing?          1078
+  The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim,
+  But true sweet beauty liv’d and died with him.
+
+“Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear!       1081
+Nor sun nor wind will ever strive to kiss you:
+Having no fair to lose, you need not fear;
+The sun doth scorn you, and the wind doth hiss you.
+  But when Adonis liv’d, sun and sharp air          1085
+  Lurk’d like two thieves, to rob him of his fair.
+
+“And therefore would he put his bonnet on,
+Under whose brim the gaudy sun would peep;          1088
+The wind would blow it off, and being gone,
+Play with his locks; then would Adonis weep;
+  And straight, in pity of his tender years,
+  They both would strive who first should dry his tears.
+
+“To see his face the lion walk’d along              1093
+Behind some hedge, because he would not fear him;
+To recreate himself when he hath sung,
+The tiger would be tame and gently hear him.        1096
+  If he had spoke, the wolf would leave his prey,
+  And never fright the silly lamb that day.
+
+“When he beheld his shadow in the brook,
+The fishes spread on it their golden gills;         1100
+When he was by, the birds such pleasure took,
+That some would sing, some other in their bills
+  Would bring him mulberries and ripe-red cherries,
+  He fed them with his sight, they him with berries.
+
+“But this foul, grim, and urchin-snouted boar,      1105
+Whose downward eye still looketh for a grave,
+Ne’er saw the beauteous livery that he wore;
+Witness the entertainment that he gave.             1108
+  If he did see his face, why then I know
+  He thought to kiss him, and hath kill’d him so.
+
+“’Tis true, ’tis true; thus was Adonis slain:
+He ran upon the boar with his sharp spear,          1112
+Who did not whet his teeth at him again,
+But by a kiss thought to persuade him there;
+  And nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine
+  Sheath’d unaware the tusk in his soft groin.      1116
+
+“Had I been tooth’d like him, I must confess,
+With kissing him I should have kill’d him first;
+But he is dead, and never did he bless
+My youth with his; the more am I accurst.”          1120
+  With this she falleth in the place she stood,
+  And stains her face with his congealed blood.
+
+She looks upon his lips, and they are pale;
+She takes him by the hand, and that is cold,        1124
+She whispers in his ears a heavy tale,
+As if they heard the woeful words she told;
+She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes,
+Where lo, two lamps burnt out in darkness lies.
+
+Two glasses where herself herself beheld            1129
+A thousand times, and now no more reflect;
+Their virtue lost, wherein they late excell’d,
+And every beauty robb’d of his effect.              1132
+  “Wonder of time,” quoth she, “this is my spite,
+  That thou being dead, the day should yet be light.
+
+“Since thou art dead, lo here I prophesy,
+Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:              1136
+It shall be waited on with jealousy,
+Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;
+  Ne’er settled equally, but high or low,
+  That all love’s pleasure shall not match his woe.
+
+“It shall be fickle, false and full of fraud,       1141
+Bud, and be blasted in a breathing while;
+The bottom poison, and the top o’erstraw’d
+With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile.    1144
+  The strongest body shall it make most weak,
+  Strike the wise dumb, and teach the fool to speak.
+
+“It shall be sparing, and too full of riot,
+Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures;        1148
+The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet,
+Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures;
+  It shall be raging mad, and silly mild,
+  Make the young old, the old become a child.       1152
+
+“It shall suspect where is no cause of fear,
+It shall not fear where it should most mistrust;
+It shall be merciful, and too severe,
+And most deceiving when it seems most just;         1156
+  Perverse it shall be, where it shows most toward,
+  Put fear to valour, courage to the coward.
+
+“It shall be cause of war and dire events,
+And set dissension ’twixt the son and sire;         1160
+Subject and servile to all discontents,
+As dry combustious matter is to fire,
+  Sith in his prime death doth my love destroy,
+  They that love best their love shall not enjoy.”  1164
+
+By this the boy that by her side lay kill’d
+Was melted like a vapour from her sight,
+And in his blood that on the ground lay spill’d,
+A purple flower sprung up, chequer’d with white,    1168
+  Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood
+  Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.
+
+She bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell,
+Comparing it to her Adonis’ breath;                 1172
+And says within her bosom it shall dwell,
+Since he himself is reft from her by death;
+  She crops the stalk, and in the breach appears
+  Green-dropping sap, which she compares to tears.
+
+“Poor flower,” quoth she, “this was thy father’s guise,
+Sweet issue of a more sweet-smelling sire,
+For every little grief to wet his eyes,
+To grow unto himself was his desire,                1180
+  And so ’tis thine; but know, it is as good
+  To wither in my breast as in his blood.
+
+“Here was thy father’s bed, here in my breast;
+Thou art the next of blood, and ’tis thy right:     1184
+Lo in this hollow cradle take thy rest,
+My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night:
+  There shall not be one minute in an hour
+  Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love’s flower.”
+
+Thus weary of the world, away she hies,             1189
+And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aid
+Their mistress mounted through the empty skies,
+In her light chariot quickly is convey’d;           1192
+  Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen
+  Means to immure herself and not be seen.
+
+
+  FINIS
+
+
+

PG1050_text.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,1727 @@
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS
+
+By Bernard Shaw
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     Preface
+     How the Play came to be Written
+     Thomas Tyler
+     Frank Harris
+     Harris "durch Mitleid wissend"
+     "Sidney's Sister:  Pembroke's Mother"
+     Shakespear's Social Standing
+     This Side Idolatry
+     Shakespear's Pessimism
+     Gaiety of Genius
+     Jupiter and Semele
+     The Idol of the Bardolaters
+     Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion
+     Shakespear and Democracy
+     Shakespear and the British Public
+     The Dark Lady of the Sonnets
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS
+
+1910
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS
+
+
+
+
+How the Play came to be Written
+
+I had better explain why, in this little _piece d'occasion_, written
+for a performance in aid of the funds of the project for establishing
+a National Theatre as a memorial to Shakespear, I have identified the
+Dark Lady with Mistress Mary Fitton.  First, let me say that I do not
+contend that the Dark Lady was Mary Fitton, because when the case in
+Mary's favor (or against her, if you please to consider that the Dark
+Lady was no better than she ought to have been) was complete, a
+portrait of Mary came to light and turned out to be that of a fair
+lady, not of a dark one.  That settles the question, if the portrait
+is authentic, which I see no reason to doubt, and the lady's hair
+undyed, which is perhaps less certain.  Shakespear rubbed in the
+lady's complexion in his sonnets mercilessly; for in his day black
+hair was as unpopular as red hair was in the early days of Queen
+Victoria.  Any tinge lighter than raven black must be held fatal to
+the strongest claim to be the Dark Lady.  And so, unless it can be
+shewn that Shakespear's sonnets exasperated Mary Fitton into dyeing
+her hair and getting painted in false colors, I must give up all
+pretence that my play is historical.  The later suggestion of Mr
+Acheson that the Dark Lady, far from being a maid of honor, kept a
+tavern in Oxford and was the mother of Davenant the poet, is the one I
+should have adopted had I wished to be up to date.  Why, then, did I
+introduce the Dark Lady as Mistress Fitton?
+
+Well, I had two reasons.  The play was not to have been written by me
+at all, but by Mrs Alfred Lyttelton; and it was she who suggested a
+scene of jealousy between Queen Elizabeth and the Dark Lady at the
+expense of the unfortunate Bard.  Now this, if the Dark Lady was a
+maid of honor, was quite easy.  If she were a tavern landlady, it
+would have strained all probability.  So I stuck to Mary Fitton.  But
+I had another and more personal reason.  I was, in a manner, present
+at the birth of the Fitton theory.  Its parent and I had become
+acquainted; and he used to consult me on obscure passages in the
+sonnets, on which, as far as I can remember, I never succeeded in
+throwing the faintest light, at a time when nobody else thought my
+opinion, on that or any other subject, of the slightest importance.  I
+thought it would be friendly to immortalize him, as the silly literary
+saying is, much as Shakespear immortalized Mr W. H., as he said he
+would, simply by writing about him.
+
+Let me tell the story formally.
+
+
+
+
+Thomas Tyler
+
+Throughout the eighties at least, and probably for some years before,
+the British Museum reading room was used daily by a gentleman of such
+astonishing and crushing ugliness that no one who had once seen him
+could ever thereafter forget him.  He was of fair complexion, rather
+golden red than sandy; aged between forty-five and sixty; and dressed
+in frock coat and tall hat of presentable but never new appearance.
+His figure was rectangular, waistless, neckless, ankleless, of middle
+height, looking shortish because, though he was not particularly
+stout, there was nothing slender about him.  His ugliness was not
+unamiable; it was accidental, external, excrescential.  Attached to
+his face from the left ear to the point of his chin was a monstrous
+goitre, which hung down to his collar bone, and was very inadequately
+balanced by a smaller one on his right eyelid.  Nature's malice was so
+overdone in his case that it somehow failed to produce the effect of
+repulsion it seemed to have aimed at.  When you first met Thomas Tyler
+you could think of nothing else but whether surgery could really do
+nothing for him.  But after a very brief acquaintance you never
+thought of his disfigurements at all, and talked to him as you might
+to Romeo or Lovelace; only, so many people, especially women, would
+not risk the preliminary ordeal, that he remained a man apart and a
+bachelor all his days.  I am not to be frightened or prejudiced by a
+tumor; and I struck up a cordial acquaintance with him, in the course
+of which he kept me pretty closely on the track of his work at the
+Museum, in which I was then, like himself, a daily reader.
+
+He was by profession a man of letters of an uncommercial kind.  He was
+a specialist in pessimism; had made a translation of Ecclesiastes of
+which eight copies a year were sold; and followed up the pessimism of
+Shakespear and Swift with keen interest.  He delighted in a hideous
+conception which he called the theory of the cycles, according to
+which the history of mankind and the universe keeps eternally
+repeating itself without the slightest variation throughout all
+eternity; so that he had lived and died and had his goitre before and
+would live and die and have it again and again and again.  He liked to
+believe that nothing that happened to him was completely novel:  he
+was persuaded that he often had some recollection of its previous
+occurrence in the last cycle.  He hunted out allusions to this
+favorite theory in his three favorite pessimists.  He tried his hand
+occasionally at deciphering ancient inscriptions, reading them as
+people seem to read the stars, by discovering bears and bulls and
+swords and goats where, as it seems to me, no sane human being can see
+anything but stars higgledy-piggledy.  Next to the translation of
+Ecclesiastes, his _magnum opus_ was his work on Shakespear's Sonnets,
+in which he accepted a previous identification of Mr W. H., the "onlie
+begetter" of the sonnets, with the Earl of Pembroke (William Herbert),
+and promulgated his own identification of Mistress Mary Fitton with
+the Dark Lady.  Whether he was right or wrong about the Dark Lady did
+not matter urgently to me:  she might have been Maria Tompkins for all
+I cared.  But Tyler would have it that she was Mary Fitton; and he
+tracked Mary down from the first of her marriages in her teens to her
+tomb in Cheshire, whither he made a pilgrimage and whence returned in
+triumph with a picture of her statue, and the news that he was
+convinced she was a dark lady by traces of paint still discernible.
+
+In due course he published his edition of the Sonnets, with the
+evidence he had collected.  He lent me a copy of the book, which I
+never returned.  But I reviewed it in the Pall Mall Gazette on the 7th
+of January 1886, and thereby let loose the Fitton theory in a wider
+circle of readers than the book could reach.  Then Tyler died, sinking
+unnoted like a stone in the sea.  I observed that Mr Acheson, Mrs
+Davenant's champion, calls him Reverend.  It may very well be that he
+got his knowledge of Hebrew in reading for the Church; and there was
+always something of the clergyman or the schoolmaster in his dress and
+air.  Possibly he may actually have been ordained.  But he never told
+me that or anything else about his affairs; and his black pessimism
+would have shot him violently out of any church at present established
+in the West.  We never talked about affairs:  we talked about
+Shakespear, and the Dark Lady, and Swift, and Koheleth, and the
+cycles, and the mysterious moments when a feeling came over us that
+this had happened to us before, and about the forgeries of the
+Pentateuch which were offered for sale to the British Museum, and
+about literature and things of the spirit generally.  He always came
+to my desk at the Museum and spoke to me about something or other, no
+doubt finding that people who were keen on this sort of conversation
+were rather scarce.  He remains a vivid spot of memory in the void of
+my forgetfulness, a quite considerable and dignified soul in a
+grotesquely disfigured body.
+
+
+
+
+Frank Harris
+
+To the review in the Pall Mall Gazette I attribute, rightly or
+wrongly, the introduction of Mary Fitton to Mr Frank Harris.  My
+reason for this is that Mr Harris wrote a play about Shakespear and
+Mary Fitton; and when I, as a pious duty to Tyler's ghost, reminded
+the world that it was to Tyler we owed the Fitton theory, Frank
+Harris, who clearly had not a notion of what had first put Mary into
+his head, believed, I think, that I had invented Tyler expressly for
+his discomfiture; for the stress I laid on Tyler's claims must have
+seemed unaccountable and perhaps malicious on the assumption that he
+was to me a mere name among the thousands of names in the British
+Museum catalogue.  Therefore I make it clear that I had and have
+personal reasons for remembering Tyler, and for regarding myself as in
+some sort charged with the duty of reminding the world of his work.  I
+am sorry for his sake that Mary's portrait is fair, and that Mr W. H.
+has veered round again from Pembroke to Southampton; but even so his
+work was not wasted:  it is by exhausting all the hypotheses that we
+reach the verifiable one; and after all, the wrong road always leads
+somewhere.
+
+Frank Harris's play was written long before mine.  I read it in
+manuscript before the Shakespear Memorial National Theatre was mooted;
+and if there is anything except the Fitton theory (which is Tyler's
+property) in my play which is also in Mr Harris's it was I who annexed
+it from him and not he from me.  It does not matter anyhow, because
+this play of mine is a brief trifle, and full of manifest
+impossibilities at that; whilst Mr Harris's play is serious both in
+size, intention, and quality.  But there could not in the nature of
+things be much resemblance, because Frank conceives Shakespear to have
+been a broken-hearted, melancholy, enormously sentimental person,
+whereas I am convinced that he was very like myself:  in fact, if I
+had been born in 1556 instead of in 1856, I should have taken to blank
+verse and given Shakespear a harder run for his money than all the
+other Elizabethans put together.  Yet the success of Frank Harris's
+book on Shakespear gave me great delight.
+
+To those who know the literary world of London there was a sharp
+stroke of ironic comedy in the irresistible verdict in its favor.  In
+critical literature there is one prize that is always open to
+competition, one blue ribbon that always carries the highest critical
+rank with it.  To win, you must write the best book of your generation
+on Shakespear.  It is felt on all sides that to do this a certain
+fastidious refinement, a delicacy of taste, a correctness of manner
+and tone, and high academic distinction in addition to the
+indispensable scholarship and literary reputation, are needed; and men
+who pretend to these qualifications are constantly looked to with a
+gentle expectation that presently they will achieve the great feat.
+Now if there is a man on earth who is the utter contrary of everything
+that this description implies; whose very existence is an insult to
+the ideal it realizes; whose eye disparages, whose resonant voice
+denounces, whose cold shoulder jostles every decency, every delicacy,
+every amenity, every dignity, every sweet usage of that quiet life of
+mutual admiration in which perfect Shakespearian appreciation is
+expected to arise, that man is Frank Harris.  Here is one who is
+extraordinarily qualified, by a range of sympathy and understanding
+that extends from the ribaldry of a buccaneer to the shyest
+tendernesses of the most sensitive poetry, to be all things to all
+men, yet whose proud humor it is to be to every man, provided the man
+is eminent and pretentious, the champion of his enemies.  To the
+Archbishop he is an atheist, to the atheist a Catholic mystic, to the
+Bismarckian Imperialist an Anacharsis Klootz, to Anacharsis Klootz a
+Washington, to Mrs Proudie a Don Juan, to Aspasia a John Knox:  in
+short, to everyone his complement rather than his counterpart, his
+antagonist rather than his fellow-creature.  Always provided, however,
+that the persons thus confronted are respectable persons.  Sophie
+Perovskaia, who perished on the scaffold for blowing Alexander II to
+fragments, may perhaps have echoed Hamlet's
+
+     Oh God, Horatio, what a wounded name--
+     Things standing thus unknown--I leave behind!
+
+but Frank Harris, in his Sonia, has rescued her from that injustice,
+and enshrined her among the saints.  He has lifted the Chicago
+anarchists out of their infamy, and shewn that, compared with the
+Capitalism that killed them, they were heroes and martyrs.  He has
+done this with the most unusual power of conviction.  The story, as he
+tells it, inevitably and irresistibly displaces all the vulgar, mean,
+purblind, spiteful versions.  There is a precise realism and an
+unsmiling, measured, determined sincerity which gives a strange
+dignity to the work of one whose fixed practice and ungovernable
+impulse it is to kick conventional dignity whenever he sees it.
+
+
+
+
+Harris "durch Mitleid wissend"
+
+Frank Harris is everything except a humorist, not, apparently, from
+stupidity, but because scorn overcomes humor in him.  Nobody ever
+dreamt of reproaching Milton's Lucifer for not seeing the comic side
+of his fall; and nobody who has read Mr Harris's stories desires to
+have them lightened by chapters from the hand of Artemus Ward.  Yet he
+knows the taste and the value of humor.  He was one of the few men of
+letters who really appreciated Oscar Wilde, though he did not rally
+fiercely to Wilde's side until the world deserted Oscar in his ruin.
+I myself was present at a curious meeting between the two, when
+Harris, on the eve of the Queensberry trial, prophesied to Wilde with
+miraculous precision exactly what immediately afterwards happened to
+him, and warned him to leave the country.  It was the first time
+within my knowledge that such a forecast proved true.  Wilde, though
+under no illusion as to the folly of the quite unselfish suit-at-law
+he had been persuaded to begin, nevertheless so miscalculated the
+force of the social vengeance he was unloosing on himself that he
+fancied it could be stayed by putting up the editor of The Saturday
+Review (as Mr Harris then was) to declare that he considered Dorian
+Grey a highly moral book, which it certainly is.  When Harris foretold
+him the truth, Wilde denounced him as a fainthearted friend who was
+failing him in his hour of need, and left the room in anger.  Harris's
+idiosyncratic power of pity saved him from feeling or shewing the
+smallest resentment; and events presently proved to Wilde how insanely
+he had been advised in taking the action, and how accurately Harris
+had gauged the situation.
+
+The same capacity for pity governs Harris's study of Shakespear, whom,
+as I have said, he pities too much; but that he is not insensible to
+humor is shewn not only by his appreciation of Wilde, but by the fact
+that the group of contributors who made his editorship of The Saturday
+Review so remarkable, and of whom I speak none the less highly because
+I happened to be one of them myself, were all, in their various ways,
+humorists.
+
+
+
+
+"Sidney's Sister:  Pembroke's Mother"
+
+And now to return to Shakespear.  Though Mr Harris followed Tyler in
+identifying Mary Fitton as the Dark Lady, and the Earl of Pembroke as
+the addressee of the other sonnets and the man who made love
+successfully to Shakespear's mistress, he very characteristically
+refuses to follow Tyler on one point, though for the life of me I
+cannot remember whether it was one of the surmises which Tyler
+published, or only one which he submitted to me to see what I would
+say about it, just as he used to submit difficult lines from the
+sonnets.
+
+This surmise was that "Sidney's sister:  Pembroke's mother" set
+Shakespear on to persuade Pembroke to marry, and that this was the
+explanation of those earlier sonnets which so persistently and
+unnaturally urged matrimony on Mr W. H.  I take this to be one of the
+brightest of Tyler's ideas, because the persuasions in the sonnets are
+unaccountable and out of character unless they were offered to please
+somebody whom Shakespear desired to please, and who took a motherly
+interest in Pembroke.  There is a further temptation in the theory for
+me.  The most charming of all Shakespear's old women, indeed the most
+charming of all his women, young or old, is the Countess of Rousillon
+in All's Well That Ends Well.  It has a certain individuality among
+them which suggests a portrait.  Mr Harris will have it that all
+Shakespear's nice old women are drawn from his beloved mother; but I
+see no evidence whatever that Shakespear's mother was a particularly
+nice woman or that he was particularly fond of her.  That she was a
+simple incarnation of extravagant maternal pride like the mother of
+Coriolanus in Plutarch, as Mr Harris asserts, I cannot believe:  she
+is quite as likely to have borne her son a grudge for becoming "one of
+these harlotry players" and disgracing the Ardens.  Anyhow, as a
+conjectural model for the Countess of Rousillon, I prefer that one of
+whom Jonson wrote
+
+     Sidney's sister:  Pembroke's mother:
+     Death:  ere thou has slain another,
+     Learnd and fair and good as she,
+     Time shall throw a dart at thee.
+
+But Frank will not have her at any price, because his ideal Shakespear
+is rather like a sailor in a melodrama; and a sailor in a melodrama
+must adore his mother.  I do not at all belittle such sailors.  They
+are the emblems of human generosity; but Shakespear was not an emblem:
+he was a man and the author of Hamlet, who had no illusions about his
+mother.  In weak moments one almost wishes he had.
+
+
+
+
+Shakespear's Social Standing
+
+On the vexed question of Shakespear's social standing Mr Harris says
+that Shakespear "had not had the advantage of a middle-class
+training."  I suggest that Shakespear missed this questionable
+advantage, not because he was socially too low to have attained to it,
+but because he conceived himself as belonging to the upper class from
+which our public school boys are now drawn.  Let Mr Harris survey for
+a moment the field of contemporary journalism.  He will see there some
+men who have the very characteristics from which he infers that
+Shakespear was at a social disadvantage through his lack of
+middle-class training.  They are rowdy, ill-mannered, abusive,
+mischievous, fond of quoting obscene schoolboy anecdotes, adepts in
+that sort of blackmail which consists in mercilessly libelling and
+insulting every writer whose opinions are sufficiently heterodox to
+make it almost impossible for him to risk perhaps five years of a
+slender income by an appeal to a prejudiced orthodox jury; and they
+see nothing in all this cruel blackguardism but an uproariously jolly
+rag, although they are by no means without genuine literary ability, a
+love of letters, and even some artistic conscience.  But he will find
+not one of the models of his type (I say nothing of mere imitators of
+it) below the rank that looks at the middle class, not humbly and
+enviously from below, but insolently from above.  Mr Harris himself
+notes Shakespear's contempt for the tradesman and mechanic, and his
+incorrigible addiction to smutty jokes.  He does us the public service
+of sweeping away the familiar plea of the Bardolatrous ignoramus, that
+Shakespear's coarseness was part of the manners of his time, putting
+his pen with precision on the one name, Spenser, that is necessary to
+expose such a libel on Elizabethan decency.  There was nothing
+whatever to prevent Shakespear from being as decent as More was before
+him, or Bunyan after him, and as self-respecting as Raleigh or Sidney,
+except the tradition of his class, in which education or statesmanship
+may no doubt be acquired by those who have a turn for them, but in
+which insolence, derision, profligacy, obscene jesting, debt
+contracting, and rowdy mischievousness, give continual scandal to the
+pious, serious, industrious, solvent bourgeois.  No other class is
+infatuated enough to believe that gentlemen are born and not made by a
+very elaborate process of culture.  Even kings are taught and coached
+and drilled from their earliest boyhood to play their part.  But the
+man of family (I am convinced that Shakespear took that view of
+himself) will plunge into society without a lesson in table manners,
+into politics without a lesson in history, into the city without a
+lesson in business, and into the army without a lesson in honor.
+
+It has been said, with the object of proving Shakespear a laborer,
+that he could hardly write his name.  Why?  Because he "had not the
+advantage of a middle-class training."  Shakespear himself tells us,
+through Hamlet, that gentlemen purposely wrote badly lest they should
+be mistaken for scriveners; but most of them, then as now, wrote badly
+because they could not write any better.  In short, the whole range of
+Shakespear's foibles:  the snobbishness, the naughtiness, the contempt
+for tradesmen and mechanics, the assumption that witty conversation
+can only mean smutty conversation, the flunkeyism towards social
+superiors and insolence towards social inferiors, the easy ways with
+servants which is seen not only between The Two Gentlemen of Verona
+and their valets, but in the affection and respect inspired by a great
+servant like Adam:  all these are the characteristics of Eton and
+Harrow, not of the public elementary or private adventure school.
+They prove, as everything we know about Shakespear suggests, that he
+thought of the Shakespears and Ardens as families of consequence, and
+regarded himself as a gentleman under a cloud through his father's ill
+luck in business, and never for a moment as a man of the people.  This
+is at once the explanation of and excuse for his snobbery.  He was not
+a parvenu trying to cover his humble origin with a purchased coat of
+arms:  he was a gentleman resuming what he conceived to be his natural
+position as soon as he gained the means to keep it up.
+
+
+
+
+This Side Idolatry
+
+There is another matter which I think Mr Harris should ponder.  He
+says that Shakespear was but "little esteemed by his own generation."
+He even describes Jonson's description of his "little Latin and less
+Greek" as a sneer, whereas it occurs in an unmistakably sincere eulogy
+of Shakespear, written after his death, and is clearly meant to
+heighten the impression of Shakespear's prodigious natural endowments
+by pointing out that they were not due to scholastic acquirements.
+Now there is a sense in which it is true enough that Shakespear was
+too little esteemed by his own generation, or, for the matter of that,
+by any subsequent generation.  The bargees on the Regent's Canal do
+not chant Shakespear's verses as the gondoliers in Venice are said to
+chant the verses of Tasso (a practice which was suspended for some
+reason during my stay in Venice:  at least no gondolier ever did it in
+my hearing).  Shakespear is no more a popular author than Rodin is a
+popular sculptor or Richard Strauss a popular composer.  But
+Shakespear was certainly not such a fool as to expect the Toms, Dicks,
+and Harrys of his time to be any more interested in dramatic poetry
+than Newton, later on, expected them to be interested in fluxions.
+And when we come to the question whether Shakespear missed that
+assurance which all great men have had from the more capable and
+susceptible members of their generation that they were great men, Ben
+Jonson's evidence disposes of so improbable a notion at once and for
+ever.  "I loved the man," says Ben, "this side idolatry, as well as
+any."  Now why in the name of common sense should he have made that
+qualification unless there had been, not only idolatry, but idolatry
+fulsome enough to irritate Jonson into an express disavowal of it?
+Jonson, the bricklayer, must have felt sore sometimes when Shakespear
+spoke and wrote of bricklayers as his inferiors.  He must have felt it
+a little hard that being a better scholar, and perhaps a braver and
+tougher man physically than Shakespear, he was not so successful or so
+well liked.  But in spite of this he praised Shakespear to the utmost
+stretch of his powers of eulogy:  in fact, notwithstanding his
+disclaimer, he did not stop "this side idolatry."  If, therefore, even
+Jonson felt himself forced to clear himself of extravagance and
+absurdity in his appreciation of Shakespear, there must have been many
+people about who idolized Shakespear as American ladies idolize
+Paderewski, and who carried Bardolatry, even in the Bard's own time,
+to an extent that threatened to make his reasonable admirers
+ridiculous.
+
+
+
+
+Shakespear's Pessimism
+
+I submit to Mr Harris that by ruling out this idolatry, and its
+possible effect in making Shakespear think that his public would stand
+anything from him, he has ruled out a far more plausible explanation
+of the faults of such a play as Timon of Athens than his theory that
+Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady "cankered and took on proud
+flesh in him, and tortured him to nervous breakdown and madness."  In
+Timon the intellectual bankruptcy is obvious enough:  Shakespear tried
+once too often to make a play out of the cheap pessimism which is
+thrown into despair by a comparison of actual human nature with
+theoretical morality, actual law and administration with abstract
+justice, and so forth.  But Shakespear's perception of the fact that
+all men, judged by the moral standard which they apply to others and
+by which they justify their punishment of others, are fools and
+scoundrels, does not date from the Dark Lady complication:  he seems
+to have been born with it.  If in The Comedy of Errors and A Midsummer
+Night's Dream the persons of the drama are not quite so ready for
+treachery and murder as Laertes and even Hamlet himself (not to
+mention the procession of ruffians who pass through the latest plays)
+it is certainly not because they have any more regard for law or
+religion.  There is only one place in Shakespear's plays where the
+sense of shame is used as a human attribute; and that is where Hamlet
+is ashamed, not of anything he himself has done, but of his mother's
+relations with his uncle.  This scene is an unnatural one:  the son's
+reproaches to his mother, even the fact of his being able to discuss
+the subject with her, is more repulsive than her relations with her
+deceased husband's brother.
+
+Here, too, Shakespear betrays for once his religious sense by making
+Hamlet, in his agony of shame, declare that his mother's conduct makes
+"sweet religion a rhapsody of words."  But for that passage we might
+almost suppose that the feeling of Sunday morning in the country which
+Orlando describes so perfectly in As You Like It was the beginning and
+end of Shakespear's notion of religion.  I say almost, because
+Isabella in Measure for Measure has religious charm, in spite of the
+conventional theatrical assumption that female religion means an
+inhumanly ferocious chastity.  But for the most part Shakespear
+differentiates his heroes from his villains much more by what they do
+than by what they are.  Don John in Much Ado is a true villain:  a man
+with a malicious will; but he is too dull a duffer to be of any use in
+a leading part; and when we come to the great villains like Macbeth,
+we find, as Mr Harris points out, that they are precisely identical
+with the heroes:  Macbeth is only Hamlet incongruously committing
+murders and engaging in hand-to-hand combats.  And Hamlet, who does
+not dream of apologizing for the three murders he commits, is always
+apologizing because he has not yet committed a fourth, and finds, to
+his great bewilderment, that he does not want to commit it.  "It
+cannot be," he says, "but I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall to make
+oppression bitter; else, ere this, I should have fatted all the region
+kites with this slave's offal."  Really one is tempted to suspect that
+when Shylock asks "Hates any man the thing he would not kill?" he is
+expressing the natural and proper sentiments of the human race as
+Shakespear understood them, and not the vindictiveness of a stage Jew.
+
+
+
+
+Gaiety of Genius
+
+In view of these facts, it is dangerous to cite Shakespear's pessimism
+as evidence of the despair of a heart broken by the Dark Lady.  There
+is an irrepressible gaiety of genius which enables it to bear the
+whole weight of the world's misery without blenching.  There is a
+laugh always ready to avenge its tears of discouragement.  In the
+lines which Mr Harris quotes only to declare that he can make nothing
+of them, and to condemn them as out of character, Richard III,
+immediately after pitying himself because
+
+     There is no creature loves me
+     And if I die no soul will pity me,
+
+adds, with a grin,
+
+     Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
+     Find in myself no pity for myself?
+
+Let me again remind Mr Harris of Oscar Wilde.  We all dreaded to read
+De Profundis:  our instinct was to stop our ears, or run away from the
+wail of a broken, though by no means contrite, heart.  But we were
+throwing away our pity.  De Profundis was de profundis indeed:  Wilde
+was too good a dramatist to throw away so powerful an effect; but none
+the less it was de profundis in excelsis.  There was more laughter
+between the lines of that book than in a thousand farces by men of no
+genius.  Wilde, like Richard and Shakespear, found in himself no pity
+for himself.  There is nothing that marks the born dramatist more
+unmistakably than this discovery of comedy in his own misfortunes
+almost in proportion to the pathos with which the ordinary man
+announces their tragedy.  I cannot for the life of me see the broken
+heart in Shakespear's latest works.  "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's
+gate sings" is not the lyric of a broken man; nor is Cloten's comment
+that if Imogen does not appreciate it, "it is a vice in her ears which
+horse hairs, and cats' guts, and the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot,
+can never amend," the sally of a saddened one.  Is it not clear that
+to the last there was in Shakespear an incorrigible divine levity, an
+inexhaustible joy that derided sorrow?  Think of the poor Dark Lady
+having to stand up to this unbearable power of extracting a grim fun
+from everything.  Mr Harris writes as if Shakespear did all the
+suffering and the Dark Lady all the cruelty.  But why does he not put
+himself in the Dark Lady's place for a moment as he has put himself so
+successfully in Shakespear's?  Imagine her reading the hundred and
+thirtieth sonnet!
+
+     My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
+     Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
+     If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
+     If hairs be wire, black wires grow on her head;
+     I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
+     But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
+     And in some perfumes is there more delight
+     Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
+     I love to hear her speak; yet well I know
+     That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
+     I grant I never saw a goddess go:
+     My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
+          And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
+          As any she belied with false compare.
+
+Take this as a sample of the sort of compliment from which she was
+never for a moment safe with Shakespear.  Bear in mind that she was
+not a comedian; that the Elizabethan fashion of treating brunettes as
+ugly woman must have made her rather sore on the subject of her
+complexion; that no human being, male or female, can conceivably enjoy
+being chaffed on that point in the fourth couplet about the perfumes;
+that Shakespear's revulsions, as the sonnet immediately preceding
+shews, were as violent as his ardors, and were expressed with the
+realistic power and horror that makes Hamlet say that the heavens got
+sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether
+any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred"
+compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain,
+that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the
+burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his
+poems by Cloten and Touchstone.
+
+
+
+
+Jupiter and Semele
+
+This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel:  evidently he was not;
+but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes:  it
+was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a
+mortal.  The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not,
+was what Mr Harris in one passage calls it:  idolatrous.  If it had
+been, she might have been able to stand it.  The man who "dotes yet
+doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves," is tolerable even by a spoilt
+and tyrannical mistress; but what woman could possibly endure a man
+who dotes without doubting; who _knows_, and who is hugely amused at
+the absurdity of his infatuation for a woman of whose mortal
+imperfections not one escapes him:  a man always exchanging grins with
+Yorick's skull, and inviting "my lady" to laugh at the sepulchral
+humor of the fact that though she paint an inch thick (which the Dark
+Lady may have done), to Yorick's favor she must come at last.  To the
+Dark Lady he must sometimes have seemed cruel beyond description:  an
+intellectual Caliban.  True, a Caliban who could say
+
+     Be not afeard:  the isle is full of noises
+     Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
+     Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
+     Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
+     That, if I then had waked after long sleep
+     Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
+     The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches
+     Ready to drop on me:  that when I wak'd
+     I cried to dream again.
+
+which is very lovely; but the Dark Lady may have had that vice in her
+ears which Cloten dreaded:  she may not have seen the beauty of it,
+whereas there can be no doubt at all that of "My mistress' eyes are
+nothing like the sun," &c., not a word was lost on her.
+
+And is it to be supposed that Shakespear was too stupid or too modest
+not to see at last that it was a case of Jupiter and Semele?
+Shakespear was most certainly not modest in that sense.  The timid
+cough of the minor poet was never heard from him.
+
+     Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
+     Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme
+
+is only one out of a dozen passages in which he (possibly with a keen
+sense of the fun of scandalizing the modest coughers) proclaimed his
+place and his power in "the wide world dreaming of things to come."
+The Dark Lady most likely thought this side of him insufferably
+conceited; for there is no reason to suppose that she liked his plays
+any better than Minna Wagner liked Richard's music dramas:  as likely
+as not, she thought The Spanish Tragedy worth six Hamlets.  He was not
+stupid either:  if his class limitations and a profession that cut him
+off from actual participation in great affairs of State had not
+confined his opportunities of intellectual and political training to
+private conversation and to the Mermaid Tavern, he would probably have
+become one of the ablest men of his time instead of being merely its
+ablest playwright.  One might surmise that Shakespear found out that
+the Dark Lady's brains could no more keep pace with his than Anne
+Hathaway's, if there were any evidence that their friendship ceased
+when he stopped writing sonnets to her.  As a matter of fact the
+consolidation of a passion into an enduring intimacy generally puts an
+end to sonnets.
+
+That the Dark Lady broke Shakespear's heart, as Mr Harris will have it
+she did, is an extremely unShakespearian hypothesis.  "Men have died
+from time to time, and worms have eaten them; but not for love," says
+Rosalind.  Richard of Gloster, into whom Shakespear put all his own
+impish superiority to vulgar sentiment, exclaims
+
+     And this word "love," which greybeards call divine,
+     Be resident in men like one another
+     And not in me:  I am myself alone.
+
+Hamlet has not a tear for Ophelia:  her death moves him to fierce
+disgust for the sentimentality of Laertes by her grave; and when he
+discusses the scene with Horatio immediately after, he utterly forgets
+her, though he is sorry he forgot himself, and jumps at the proposal
+of a fencing match to finish the day with.  As against this view Mr
+Harris pleads Romeo, Orsino, and even Antonio; and he does it so
+penetratingly that he convinces you that Shakespear did betray himself
+again and again in these characters; but self-betrayal is one thing;
+and self-portrayal, as in Hamlet and Mercutio, is another.  Shakespear
+never "saw himself," as actors say, in Romeo or Orsino or Antonio.  In
+Mr Harris's own play Shakespear is presented with the most pathetic
+tenderness.  He is tragic, bitter, pitiable, wretched and broken among
+a robust crowd of Jonsons and Elizabeths; but to me he is not
+Shakespear because I miss the Shakespearian irony and the
+Shakespearian gaiety.  Take these away and Shakespear is no longer
+Shakespear:  all the bite, the impetus, the strength, the grim delight
+in his own power of looking terrible facts in the face with a chuckle,
+is gone; and you have nothing left but that most depressing of all
+things:  a victim.  Now who can think of Shakespear as a man with a
+grievance?  Even in that most thoroughgoing and inspired of all
+Shakespear's loves:  his love of music (which Mr Harris has been the
+first to appreciate at anything like its value), there is a dash of
+mockery.  "Spit in the hole, man; and tune again."  "Divine air!  Now
+is his soul ravished.  Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale
+the souls out of men's bodies?"  "An he had been a dog that should
+have howled thus, they would have hanged him."  There is just as much
+Shakespear here as in the inevitable quotation about the sweet south
+and the bank of violets.
+
+I lay stress on this irony of Shakespear's, this impish rejoicing in
+pessimism, this exultation in what breaks the hearts of common men,
+not only because it is diagnostic of that immense energy of life which
+we call genius, but because its omission is the one glaring defect in
+Mr Harris's otherwise extraordinarily penetrating book.  Fortunately,
+it is an omission that does not disable the book as (in my judgment)
+it disabled the hero of the play, because Mr Harris left himself out
+of his play, whereas he pervades his book, mordant, deep-voiced, and
+with an unconquerable style which is the man.
+
+
+
+
+The Idol of the Bardolaters
+
+There is even an advantage in having a book on Shakespear with the
+Shakespearian irony left out of account.  I do not say that the
+missing chapter should not be added in the next edition:  the hiatus
+is too great:  it leaves the reader too uneasy before this touching
+picture of a writhing worm substituted for the invulnerable giant.
+But it is none the less probable that in no other way could Mr Harris
+have got at his man as he has.  For, after all, what is the secret of
+the hopeless failure of the academic Bardolaters to give us a credible
+or even interesting Shakespear, and the easy triumph of Mr Harris in
+giving us both?  Simply that Mr Harris has assumed that he was dealing
+with a man, whilst the others have assumed that they were writing
+about a god, and have therefore rejected every consideration of fact,
+tradition, or interpretation, that pointed to any human imperfection
+in their hero.  They thus leave themselves with so little material
+that they are forced to begin by saying that we know very little about
+Shakespear.  As a matter of fact, with the plays and sonnets in our
+hands, we know much more about Shakespear than we know about Dickens
+or Thackeray:  the only difficulty is that we deliberately suppress it
+because it proves that Shakespear was not only very unlike the
+conception of a god current in Clapham, but was not, according to the
+same reckoning, even a respectable man.  The academic view starts with
+a Shakespear who was not scurrilous; therefore the verses about "lousy
+Lucy" cannot have been written by him, and the cognate passages in the
+plays are either strokes of character-drawing or gags interpolated by
+the actors.  This ideal Shakespear was too well behaved to get drunk;
+therefore the tradition that his death was hastened by a drinking bout
+with Jonson and Drayton must be rejected, and the remorse of Cassio
+treated as a thing observed, not experienced:  nay, the disgust of
+Hamlet at the drinking customs of Denmark is taken to establish
+Shakespear as the superior of Alexander in self-control, and the
+greatest of teetotallers.
+
+Now this system of inventing your great man to start with, and then
+rejecting all the materials that do not fit him, with the ridiculous
+result that you have to declare that there are no materials at all
+(with your waste-paper basket full of them), ends in leaving
+Shakespear with a much worse character than he deserves.  For though
+it does not greatly matter whether he wrote the lousy Lucy lines or
+not, and does not really matter at all whether he got drunk when he
+made a night of it with Jonson and Drayton, the sonnets raise an
+unpleasant question which does matter a good deal; and the refusal of
+the academic Bardolaters to discuss or even mention this question has
+had the effect of producing a silent verdict against Shakespear.  Mr
+Harris tackles the question openly, and has no difficulty whatever in
+convincing us that Shakespear was a man of normal constitution
+sexually, and was not the victim of that most cruel and pitiable of
+all the freaks of nature:  the freak which transposes the normal aim
+of the affections.  Silence on this point means condemnation; and the
+condemnation has been general throughout the present generation,
+though it only needed Mr Harris's fearless handling of the matter to
+sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern
+fashion.  There is always some stock accusation brought against
+eminent persons.  When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of
+beating his wife.  Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was
+accused of psychopathic derangement.  And this fashion is
+retrospective.  The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as
+proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and
+both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement
+is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers.
+All of which is gross nonsense.  Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case,
+prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered,
+does prevent the refutation from being shouted.  Mr Harris, the
+deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced.  He dismisses with proper
+contempt the stupidity which places an outrageous construction on
+Shakespear's apologies in the sonnets for neglecting that "perfect
+ceremony" of love which consists in returning calls and making
+protestations and giving presents and paying the trumpery attentions
+which men of genius always refuse to bother about, and to which touchy
+people who have no genius attach so much importance.  No leader who
+had not been tampered with by the psychopathic monomaniacs could ever
+put any construction but the obvious and innocent one on these
+passages.  But the general vocabulary of the sonnets to Pembroke (or
+whoever "Mr W. H." really was) is so overcharged according to modern
+ideas that a reply on the general case is necessary.
+
+
+
+
+Shakespear's alleged Sycophancy and Perversion
+
+That reply, which Mr Harris does not hesitate to give, is twofold:
+first, that Shakespear was, in his attitude towards earls, a
+sycophant; and, second, that the normality of Shakespear's sexual
+constitution is only too well attested by the excessive susceptibility
+to the normal impulse shewn in the whole mass of his writings.  This
+latter is the really conclusive reply.  In the case of Michel Angelo,
+for instance, one must admit that if his works are set beside those of
+Titian or Paul Veronese, it is impossible not to be struck by the
+absence in the Florentine of that susceptibility to feminine charm
+which pervades the pictures of the Venetians.  But, as Mr Harris
+points out (though he does not use this particular illustration) Paul
+Veronese is an anchorite compared to Shakespear.  The language of the
+sonnets addressed to Pembroke, extravagant as it now seems, is the
+language of compliment and fashion, transfigured no doubt by
+Shakespear's verbal magic, and hyperbolical, as Shakespear always
+seems to people who cannot conceive so vividly as he, but still
+unmistakable for anything else than the expression of a friendship
+delicate enough to be wounded, and a manly loyalty deep enough to be
+outraged.  But the language of the sonnets to the Dark Lady is the
+language of passion:  their cruelty shews it.  There is no evidence
+that Shakespear was capable of being unkind in cold blood.  But in his
+revulsions from love, he was bitter, wounding, even ferocious; sparing
+neither himself nor the unfortunate woman whose only offence was that
+she had reduced the great man to the common human denominator.
+
+In seizing on these two points Mr Harris has made so sure a stroke,
+and placed his evidence so featly that there is nothing left for me to
+do but to plead that the second is sounder than the first, which is, I
+think, marked by the prevalent mistake as to Shakespear's social
+position, or, if you prefer it, the confusion between his actual
+social position as a penniless tradesman's son taking to the theatre
+for a livelihood, and his own conception of himself as a gentleman of
+good family.  I am prepared to contend that though Shakespear was
+undoubtedly sentimental in his expressions of devotion to Mr W. H.
+even to a point which nowadays makes both ridiculous, he was not
+sycophantic if Mr W. H. was really attractive and promising, and
+Shakespear deeply attached to him.  A sycophant does not tell his
+patron that his fame will survive, not in the renown of his own
+actions, but in the sonnets of his sycophant.  A sycophant, when his
+patron cuts him out in a love affair, does not tell his patron exactly
+what he thinks of him.  Above all, a sycophant does not write to his
+patron precisely as he feels on all occasions; and this rare kind of
+sincerity is all over the sonnets.  Shakespear, we are told, was "a
+very civil gentleman."  This must mean that his desire to please
+people and be liked by them, and his reluctance to hurt their
+feelings, led him into amiable flattery even when his feelings were
+not strongly stirred.  If this be taken into account along with the
+fact that Shakespear conceived and expressed all his emotions with a
+vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance,
+making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of
+Cassio that
+
+     Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge
+     Had stomach for them all,
+
+we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the
+earlier and more coldblooded sonnets.
+
+
+
+
+Shakespear and Democracy
+
+Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of
+democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed
+by Mr Harris.  Will it really stand fire?  Mr Harris emphasizes the
+passages in which Shakespear spoke of mechanics and even of small
+master tradesmen as base persons whose clothes were greasy, whose
+breath was rank, and whose political imbecility and caprice moved
+Coriolanus to say to the Roman Radical who demanded at least "good
+words" from him
+
+     He that will give good words to thee will flatter
+     Beneath abhorring.
+
+But let us be honest.  As political sentiments these lines are an
+abomination to every democrat.  But suppose they are not political
+sentiments!  Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact.  John
+Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars.
+Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools.  Matthew Arnold and
+Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive.  Everybody,
+including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken,
+foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced:  in short, heirs to
+the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the
+plutocracy to all the failings of human nature.  Even Shelley
+admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal
+suffrage was out of the question.  Surely the real test, not of
+Democracy, which was not a live political issue in Shakespear's time,
+but of impartiality in judging classes, which is what one demands from
+a great human poet, is not that he should flatter the poor and
+denounce the rich, but that he should weigh them both in the same
+balance.  Now whoever will read Lear and Measure for Measure will find
+stamped on his mind such an appalled sense of the danger of dressing
+man in a little brief authority, such a merciless stripping of the
+purple from the "poor, bare, forked animal" that calls itself a king
+and fancies itself a god, that one wonders what was the real nature of
+the mysterious restraint that kept "Eliza and our James" from teaching
+Shakespear to be civil to crowned heads, just as one wonders why
+Tolstoy was allowed to go free when so many less terrible levellers
+went to the galleys or Siberia.  From the mature Shakespear we get no
+such scenes of village snobbery as that between the stage country
+gentleman Alexander Iden and the stage Radical Jack Cade.  We get the
+shepherd in As You Like It, and many honest, brave, human, and loyal
+servants, beside the inevitable comic ones.  Even in the Jingo play,
+Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as
+normal rank and file men.  In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work
+with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide
+and transfiguring the republicans.  Indeed hero-worshippers have never
+forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his
+assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of
+crimes.  Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell
+is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes
+a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear
+was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where
+thrift may follow fawning."  Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern,
+Osric, the fop who annoyed Hotspur, and a dozen passages concerning
+such people!  If such evidence can prove anything (and Mr Harris
+relies throughout on such evidence) Shakespear loathed courtiers.
+
+If, on the other hand, Shakespear's characters are mostly members of
+the leisured classes, the same thing is true of Mr Harris's own plays
+and mine.  Industrial slavery is not compatible with that freedom of
+adventure, that personal refinement and intellectual culture, that
+scope of action, which the higher and subtler drama demands.
+
+Even Cervantes had finally to drop Don Quixote's troubles with
+innkeepers demanding to be paid for his food and lodging, and make him
+as free of economic difficulties as Amadis de Gaul.  Hamlet's
+experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber.  A poor man
+is useful on the stage only as a blind man is:  to excite sympathy.
+The poverty of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet produces a great
+effect, and even points the sound moral that a poor man cannot afford
+to have a conscience; but if all the characters of the play had been
+as poor as he, it would have been nothing but a melodrama of the sort
+that the Sicilian players gave us here; and that was not the best that
+lay in Shakespear's power.  When poverty is abolished, and leisure and
+grace of life become general, the only plays surviving from our epoch
+which will have any relation to life as it will be lived then will be
+those in which none of the persons represented are troubled with want
+of money or wretched drudgery.  Our plays of poverty and squalor, now
+the only ones that are true to the life of the majority of living men,
+will then be classed with the records of misers and monsters, and read
+only by historical students of social pathology.
+
+Then consider Shakespear's kings and lords and gentlemen!  Would even
+John Ball or Jeremiah complain that they are flattered?  Surely a more
+mercilessly exposed string of scoundrels never crossed the stage.  The
+very monarch who paralyzes a rebel by appealing to the divinity that
+hedges a king, is a drunken and sensual assassin, and is presently
+killed contemptuously before our eyes in spite of his hedge of
+divinity.  I could write as convincing a chapter on Shakespear's
+Dickensian prejudice against the throne and the nobility and gentry in
+general as Mr Harris or Ernest Crosbie on the other side.  I could
+even go so far as to contend that one of Shakespear's defects is his
+lack of an intelligent comprehension of feudalism.  He had of course
+no prevision of democratic Collectivism.  He was, except in the
+commonplaces of war and patriotism, a privateer through and through.
+Nobody in his plays, whether king or citizen, has any civil public
+business or conception of such a thing, except in the method of
+appointing constables, to the abuses in which he called attention
+quite in the vein of the Fabian Society.  He was concerned about
+drunkenness and about the idolatry and hypocrisy of our judicial
+system; but his implied remedy was personal sobriety and freedom from
+idolatrous illusion in so far as he had any remedy at all, and did not
+merely despair of human nature.  His first and last word on parliament
+was "Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see
+the thing thou dost not."  He had no notion of the feeling with which
+the land nationalizers of today regard the fact that he was a party to
+the enclosure of common lands at Wellcome.  The explanation is, not a
+general deficiency in his mind, but the simple fact that in his day
+what English land needed was individual appropriation and cultivation,
+and what the English Constitution needed was the incorporation of Whig
+principles of individual liberty.
+
+
+
+
+Shakespear and the British Public
+
+I have rejected Mr Harris's view that Shakespear died broken-hearted
+of "the pangs of love despised."  I have given my reasons for
+believing that Shakespear died game, and indeed in a state of levity
+which would have been considered unbecoming in a bishop.  But Mr
+Harris's evidence does prove that Shakespear had a grievance and a
+very serious one.  He might have been jilted by ten dark ladies and
+been none the worse for it; but his treatment by the British Public
+was another matter.  The idolatry which exasperated Ben Jonson was by
+no means a popular movement; and, like all such idolatries, it was
+excited by the magic of Shakespear's art rather than by his views.
+
+He was launched on his career as a successful playwright by the Henry
+VI trilogy, a work of no originality, depth, or subtlety except the
+originality, depth, and subtlety of the feelings and fancies of the
+common people.  But Shakespear was not satisfied with this.  What is
+the use of being Shakespear if you are not allowed to express any
+notions but those of Autolycus?  Shakespear did not see the world as
+Autolycus did:  he saw it, if not exactly as Ibsen did (for it was not
+quite the same world), at least with much of Ibsen's power of
+penetrating its illusions and idolatries, and with all Swift's horror
+of its cruelty and uncleanliness.
+
+Now it happens to some men with these powers that they are forced to
+impose their fullest exercise on the world because they cannot produce
+popular work.  Take Wagner and Ibsen for instance!  Their earlier
+works are no doubt much cheaper than their later ones; still, they
+were not popular when they were written.  The alternative of doing
+popular work was never really open to them:  had they stooped they
+would have picked up less than they snatched from above the people's
+heads.  But Handel and Shakespear were not held to their best in this
+way.  They could turn out anything they were asked for, and even heap
+up the measure.  They reviled the British Public, and never forgave it
+for ignoring their best work and admiring their splendid commonplaces;
+but they produced the commonplaces all the same, and made them sound
+magnificent by mere brute faculty for their art.  When Shakespear was
+forced to write popular plays to save his theatre from ruin, he did it
+mutinously, calling the plays "As _You_ Like It," and "Much Ado About
+Nothing."  All the same, he did it so well that to this day these two
+genial vulgarities are the main Shakespearian stock-in-trade of our
+theatres.  Later on Burbage's power and popularity as an actor enabled
+Shakespear to free himself from the tyranny of the box office, and to
+express himself more freely in plays consisting largely of monologue
+to be spoken by a great actor from whom the public would stand a good
+deal.  The history of Shakespear's tragedies has thus been the history
+of a long line of famous actors, from Burbage and Betterton to Forbes
+Robertson; and the man of whom we are told that "when he would have
+said that Richard died, and cried A horse! A horse! he Burbage cried"
+was the father of nine generations of Shakespearian playgoers, all
+speaking of Garrick's Richard, and Kean's Othello, and Irving's
+Shylock, and Forbes Robertson's Hamlet without knowing or caring how
+much these had to do with Shakespear's Richard and Othello and so
+forth.  And the plays which were written without great and predominant
+parts, such as Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, and
+Measure for Measure, have dropped on our stage as dead as the second
+part of Goethe's Faust or Ibsen's Emperor or Galilean.
+
+Here, then, Shakespear had a real grievance; and though it is a
+sentimental exaggeration to describe him as a broken-hearted man in
+the face of the passages of reckless jollity and serenely happy poetry
+in his latest plays, yet the discovery that his most serious work
+could reach success only when carried on the back of a very
+fascinating actor who was enormously overcharging his part, and that
+the serious plays which did not contain parts big enough to hold the
+overcharge were left on the shelf, amply accounts for the evident fact
+that Shakespear did not end his life in a glow of enthusiastic
+satisfaction with mankind and with the theatre, which is all that Mr
+Harris can allege in support of his broken-heart theory.  But even if
+Shakespear had had no failures, it was not possible for a man of his
+powers to observe the political and moral conduct of his
+contemporaries without perceiving that they were incapable of dealing
+with the problems raised by their own civilization, and that their
+attempts to carry out the codes of law and to practise the religions
+offered to them by great prophets and law-givers were and still are so
+foolish that we now call for The Superman, virtually a new species, to
+rescue the world from mismanagement.  This is the real sorrow of great
+men; and in the face of it the notion that when a great man speaks
+bitterly or looks melancholy he must be troubled by a disappointment
+in love seems to me sentimental trifling.
+
+If I have carried the reader with me thus far, he will find that
+trivial as this little play of mine is, its sketch of Shakespear is
+more complete than its levity suggests.  Alas! its appeal for a
+National Theatre as a monument to Shakespear failed to touch the very
+stupid people who cannot see that a National Theatre is worth having
+for the sake of the National Soul.  I had unfortunately represented
+Shakespear as treasuring and using (as I do myself) the jewels of
+unconsciously musical speech which common people utter and throw away
+every day; and this was taken as a disparagement of Shakespear's
+"originality."  Why was I born with such contemporaries?  Why is
+Shakespear made ridiculous by such a posterity?
+
+
+
+_The Dark Lady of The Sonnets was first performed at the Haymarket
+Theatre, on the afternoon of Thursday, the 24th November 1910, by Mona
+Limerick as the Dark Lady, Suzanne Sheldon as Queen Elizabeth,
+Granville Barker as Shakespear, and Hugh Tabberer as the Warder._
+
+
+
+
+THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS
+
+_Fin de siecle 15-1600.  Midsummer night on the terrace of the Palace
+at Whitehall, overlooking the Thames.  The Palace clock chimes four
+quarters and strikes eleven._
+
+_A Beefeater on guard.  A Cloaked Man approaches._
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Stand.  Who goes there?  Give the word.
+
+THE MAN.  Marry!  I cannot.  I have clean forgotten it.
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Then cannot you pass here.  What is your business?
+Who are you?  Are you a true man?
+
+THE MAN.  Far from it, Master Warder.  I am not the same man two days
+together:  sometimes Adam, sometimes Benvolio, and anon the Ghost.
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  _[recoiling]_  A ghost!  Angels and ministers of grace
+defend us!
+
+THE MAN.  Well said, Master Warder.  With your leave I will set that
+down in writing; for I have a very poor and unhappy brain for
+remembrance.  _[He takes out his tablets and writes]._  Methinks this
+is a good scene, with you on your lonely watch, and I approaching like
+a ghost in the moonlight.  Stare not so amazedly at me; but mark what
+I say.  I keep tryst here to-night with a dark lady.  She promised to
+bribe the warder.  I gave her the wherewithal:  four tickets for the
+Globe Theatre.
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Plague on her!  She gave me two only.
+
+THE MAN.  _[detaching a tablet]_  My friend:  present this tablet, and
+you will be welcomed at any time when the plays of Will Shakespear are
+in hand.  Bring your wife.  Bring your friends.  Bring the whole
+garrison.  There is ever plenty of room.
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  I care not for these new-fangled plays.  No man can
+understand a word of them.  They are all talk.  Will you not give me a
+pass for The Spanish Tragedy?
+
+THE MAN.  To see The Spanish Tragedy one pays, my friend.  Here are
+the means.  _[He gives him a piece of gold]._
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  _[overwhelmed]_  Gold!  Oh, sir, you are a better
+paymaster than your dark lady.
+
+THE MAN.  Women are thrifty, my friend.
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Tis so, sir.  And you have to consider that the most
+open handed of us must een cheapen that which we buy every day.  This
+lady has to make a present to a warder nigh every night of her life.
+
+THE MAN.  _[turning pale]_  I'll not believe it.
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Now you, sir, I dare be sworn, do not have an
+adventure like this twice in the year.
+
+THE MAN.  Villain:  wouldst tell me that my dark lady hath ever done
+thus before? that she maketh occasions to meet other men?
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Now the Lord bless your innocence, sir, do you think
+you are the only pretty man in the world?  A merry lady, sir:  a warm
+bit of stuff.  Go to:  I'll not see her pass a deceit on a gentleman
+that hath given me the first piece of gold I ever handled.
+
+THE MAN.  Master Warder:  is it not a strange thing that we, knowing
+that all women are false, should be amazed to find our own particular
+drab no better than the rest?
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Not all, sir.  Decent bodies, many of them.
+
+THE MAN.  _[intolerantly]_  No.  All false.  All.  If thou deny it,
+thou liest.
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  You judge too much by the Court, sir.  There, indeed,
+you may say of frailty that its name is woman.
+
+THE MAN.  _[pulling out his tablets again]_  Prithee say that again:
+that about frailty:  the strain of music.
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  What strain of music, sir?  I'm no musician, God
+knows.
+
+THE MAN.  There is music in your soul:  many of your degree have it
+very notably.  _[Writing]_  "Frailty:  thy name is woman!"
+_[Repeating it affectionately]_  "Thy name is woman."
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Well, sir, it is but four words.  Are you a snapper-up
+of such unconsidered trifles?
+
+THE MAN.  _[eagerly]_  Snapper-up of--_[he gasps]_  Oh!  Immortal
+phrase!  _[He writes it down]._  This man is a greater than I.
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  You have my lord Pembroke's trick, sir.
+
+THE MAN.  Like enough:  he is my near friend.  But what call you his
+trick?
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Making sonnets by moonlight.  And to the same lady
+too.
+
+THE MAN.  No!
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Last night he stood here on your errand, and in your
+shoes.
+
+THE MAN.  Thou, too, Brutus!  And I called him friend!
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Tis ever so, sir.
+
+THE MAN.  Tis ever so.  Twas ever so.  _[He turns away, overcome]._
+Two Gentlemen of Verona!  Judas!  Judas!!
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Is he so bad as that, sir?
+
+THE MAN.  _[recovering his charity and self-possession]_  Bad?  Oh no.
+Human, Master Warder, human.  We call one another names when we are
+offended, as children do.  That is all.
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Ay, sir:  words, words, words.  Mere wind, sir.  We
+fill our bellies with the east wind, sir, as the Scripture hath it.
+You cannot feed capons so.
+
+THE MAN.  A good cadence.  By your leave _[He makes a note of it]._
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  What manner of thing is a cadence, sir?  I have not
+heard of it.
+
+THE MAN.  A thing to rule the world with, friend.
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  You speak strangely, sir:  no offence.  But, an't like
+you, you are a very civil gentleman; and a poor man feels drawn to
+you, you being, as twere, willing to share your thought with him.
+
+THE MAN.  Tis my trade.  But alas! the world for the most part will
+none of my thoughts.
+
+_Lamplight streams from the palace door as it opens from within._
+
+THE BEEFEATER.  Here comes your lady, sir.  I'll to t'other end of my
+ward.  You may een take your time about your business:  I shall not
+return too suddenly unless my sergeant comes prowling round.  Tis a
+fell sergeant, sir:  strict in his arrest.  Go'd'en, sir; and good
+luck!  _[He goes]._
+
+THE MAN.  "Strict in his arrest"!  "Fell sergeant"!  _[As if tasting a
+ripe plum]_  O-o-o-h!  _[He makes a note of them]._
+
+_A Cloaked Lady gropes her way from the palace and wanders along the
+terrace, walking in her sleep._
+
+THE LADY.  _[rubbing her hands as if washing them]_  Out, damned spot.
+You will mar all with these cosmetics.  God made you one face; and you
+make yourself another.  Think of your grave, woman, not ever of being
+beautified.  All the perfumes of Arabia will not whiten this Tudor
+hand.
+
+THE MAN.  "All the perfumes of Arabia"!  "Beautified"!  "Beautified"!
+a poem in a single word.  Can this be my Mary?  _[To the Lady]_  Why
+do you speak in a strange voice, and utter poetry for the first time?
+Are you ailing?  You walk like the dead.  Mary!  Mary!
+
+THE LADY.  _[echoing him]_  Mary!  Mary!  Who would have thought that
+woman to have had so much blood in her!  Is it my fault that my
+counsellors put deeds of blood on me?  Fie!  If you were women you
+would have more wit than to stain the floor so foully.  Hold not up
+her head so:  the hair is false.  I tell you yet again, Mary's buried:
+she cannot come out of her grave.  I fear her not:  these cats that
+dare jump into thrones though they be fit only for men's laps must be
+put away.  Whats done cannot be undone.  Out, I say.  Fie! a queen,
+and freckled!
+
+THE MAN.  _[shaking her arm]_  Mary, I say:  art asleep?
+
+_The Lady wakes; starts; and nearly faints.  He catches her on his
+arm._
+
+THE LADY.  Where am I?  What art thou?
+
+THE MAN.  I cry your mercy.  I have mistook your person all this
+while.  Methought you were my Mary:  my mistress.
+
+THE LADY.  _[outraged]_  Profane fellow:  how do you dare?
+
+THE MAN.  Be not wroth with me, lady.  My mistress is a marvellous
+proper woman.  But she does not speak so well as you.  "All the
+perfumes of Arabia"!  That was well said:  spoken with good accent and
+excellent discretion.
+
+THE LADY.  Have I been in speech with you here?
+
+THE MAN.  Why, yes, fair lady.  Have you forgot it?
+
+THE LADY.  I have walked in my sleep.
+
+THE MAN.  Walk ever in your sleep, fair one; for then your words drop
+like honey.
+
+THE LADY.  _[with cold majesty]_  Know you to whom you speak, sir,
+that you dare express yourself so saucily?
+
+THE MAN.  _[unabashed]_  Not I, not care neither.  You are some lady
+of the Court, belike.  To me there are but two sorts of women:  those
+with excellent voices, sweet and low, and cackling hens that cannot
+make me dream.  Your voice has all manner of loveliness in it.  Grudge
+me not a short hour of its music.
+
+THE LADY.  Sir:  you are overbold.  Season your admiration for a while
+with--
+
+THE MAN.  _[holding up his hand to stop her]_  "Season your admiration
+for a while--"
+
+THE LADY.  Fellow:  do you dare mimic me to my face?
+
+THE MAN.  Tis music.  Can you not hear?  When a good musician sings a
+song, do you not sing it and sing it again till you have caught and
+fixed its perfect melody?  "Season your admiration for a while":  God!
+the history of man's heart is in that one word admiration.
+Admiration!  _[Taking up his tablets]_  What was it?  "Suspend your
+admiration for a space--"
+
+THE LADY.  A very vile jingle of esses.  I said "Season your--"
+
+THE MAN.  _[hastily]_  Season:  ay, season, season, season.  Plague on
+my memory, my wretched memory!  I must een write it down.  _[He begins
+to write, but stops, his memory failing him]._  Yet tell me which was
+the vile jingle?  You said very justly:  mine own ear caught it even
+as my false tongue said it.
+
+THE LADY.  You said "for a space."  I said "for a while."
+
+THE MAN.  "For a while" _[he corrects it]._  Good!  _[Ardently]_  And
+now be mine neither for a space nor a while, but for ever.
+
+THE LADY.  Odds my life!  Are you by chance making love to me, knave?
+
+THE MAN.  Nay:  tis you who have made the love:  I but pour it out at
+your feet.  I cannot but love a lass that sets such store by an apt
+word.  Therefore vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman--no:  I have
+said that before somewhere; and the wordy garment of my love for you
+must be fire-new--
+
+THE LADY.  You talk too much, sir.  Let me warn you:  I am more
+accustomed to be listened to than preached at.
+
+THE MAN.  The most are like that that do talk well.  But though you
+spake with the tongues of angels, as indeed you do, yet know that I am
+the king of words--
+
+THE LADY.  A king, ha!
+
+THE MAN.  No less.  We are poor things, we men and women--
+
+THE LADY.  Dare you call me woman?
+
+THE MAN.  What nobler name can I tender you?  How else can I love you?
+Yet you may well shrink from the name:  have I not said we are but
+poor things?  Yet there is a power that can redeem us.
+
+THE LADY.  Gramercy for your sermon, sir.  I hope I know my duty.
+
+THE MAN.  This is no sermon, but the living truth.  The power I speak
+of is the power of immortal poesy.  For know that vile as this world
+is, and worms as we are, you have but to invest all this vileness with
+a magical garment of words to transfigure us and uplift our souls til
+earth flowers into a million heavens.
+
+THE LADY.  You spoil your heaven with your million.  You are
+extravagant.  Observe some measure in your speech.
+
+THE MAN.  You speak now as Ben does.
+
+THE LADY.  And who, pray, is Ben?
+
+THE MAN.  A learned bricklayer who thinks that the sky is at the top
+of his ladder, and so takes it on him to rebuke me for flying.  I tell
+you there is no word yet coined and no melody yet sung that is
+extravagant and majestical enough for the glory that lovely words can
+reveal.  It is heresy to deny it:  have you not been taught that in
+the beginning was the Word? that the Word was with God? nay, that the
+Word was God?
+
+THE LADY.  Beware, fellow, how you presume to speak of holy things.
+The Queen is the head of the Church.
+
+THE MAN.  You are the head of my Church when you speak as you did at
+first.  "All the perfumes of Arabia"!  Can the Queen speak thus?  They
+say she playeth well upon the virginals.  Let her play so to me; and
+I'll kiss her hands.  But until then, you are my Queen; and I'll kiss
+those lips that have dropt music on my heart.  _[He puts his arms
+about her]._
+
+THE LADY.  Unmeasured impudence!  On your life, take your hands from
+me.
+
+_The Dark Lady comes stooping along the terrace behind them like a
+running thrush.  When she sees how they are employed, she rises
+angrily to her full height, and listens jealously._
+
+THE MAN.  _[unaware of the Dark Lady]_  Then cease to make my hands
+tremble with the streams of life you pour through them.  You hold me
+as the lodestar holds the iron:  I cannot but cling to you.  We are
+lost, you and I:  nothing can separate us now.
+
+THE DARK LADY.  We shall see that, false lying hound, you and your
+filthy trull.  _[With two vigorous cuffs, she knocks the pair asunder,
+sending the man, who is unlucky enough to receive a righthanded blow,
+sprawling an the flags]._  Take that, both of you!
+
+THE CLOAKED LADY.  _[in towering wrath, throwing off her cloak and
+turning in outraged majesty on her assailant]_  High treason!
+
+THE DARK LADY.  _[recognizing her and falling on her knees in abject
+terror]_  Will:  I am lost:  I have struck the Queen.
+
+THE MAN.  _[sitting up as majestically as his ignominious posture
+allows]_  Woman:  you have struck WILLIAM SHAKESPEAR.
+
+QUEEN ELIZABETH.  _[stupent]_  Marry, come up!!!  Struck William
+Shakespear quotha!  And who in the name of all the sluts and jades and
+light-o'-loves and fly-by-nights that infest this palace of mine, may
+William Shakespear be?
+
+THE DARK LADY.  Madam:  he is but a player.  Oh, I could have my hand
+cut off--
+
+QUEEN ELIZABETH.  Belike you will, mistress.  Have you bethought you
+that I am like to have your head cut off as well?
+
+THE DARK LADY.  Will:  save me.  Oh, save me.
+
+ELIZABETH.  Save you!  A likely savior, on my royal word!  I had
+thought this fellow at least an esquire; for I had hoped that even the
+vilest of my ladies would not have dishonored my Court by wantoning
+with a baseborn servant.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  _[indignantly scrambling to his feet]_  Base-born!  I, a
+Shakespear of Stratford!  I, whose mother was an Arden! baseborn!  You
+forget yourself, madam.
+
+ELIZABETH.  _[furious]_  S'blood! do I so?  I will teach you--
+
+THE DARK LADY.  _[rising from her knees and throwing herself between
+them]_  Will:  in God's name anger her no further.  It is death.
+Madam:  do not listen to him.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  Not were it een to save your life, Mary, not to mention
+mine own, will I flatter a monarch who forgets what is due to my
+family.  I deny not that my father was brought down to be a poor
+bankrupt; but twas his gentle blood that was ever too generous for
+trade.  Never did he disown his debts.  Tis true he paid them not; but
+it is an attested truth that he gave bills for them; and twas those
+bills, in the hands of base hucksters, that were his undoing.
+
+ELIZABETH.  _[grimly]_  The son of your father shall learn his place
+in the presence of the daughter of Harry the Eighth.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  _[swelling with intolerant importance]_  Name not that
+inordinate man in the same breath with Stratford's worthiest alderman.
+John Shakespear wedded but once:  Harry Tudor was married six times.
+You should blush to utter his name.
+
+THE DARK LADY. |    Will:  for pity's sake--      | _crying out_
+
+               |                                  | _together_
+
+ELIZABETH.     |    Insolent dog--                |
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  _[cutting them short]_  How know you that King Harry was
+indeed your father?
+
+ELIZABETH.     |    Zounds!  Now by--
+
+               |    _[she stops to grind her teeth with rage]._
+
+THE DARK LADY. |    She will have me whipped through
+
+               |    the streets.  Oh God!  Oh God!
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  Learn to know yourself better, madam.  I am an honest
+gentleman of unquestioned parentage, and have already sent in my
+demand for the coat-of-arms that is lawfully mine.  Can you say as
+much for yourself?
+
+ELIZABETH.  _[almost beside herself]_  Another word; and I begin with
+mine own hands the work the hangman shall finish.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  You are no true Tudor:  this baggage here has as good a
+right to your royal seat as you.  What maintains you on the throne of
+England?  Is it your renowned wit? your wisdom that sets at naught the
+craftiest statesmen of the Christian world?  No.  Tis the mere chance
+that might have happened to any milkmaid, the caprice of Nature that
+made you the most wondrous piece of beauty the age hath seen.
+_[Elizabeth's raised fists, on the point of striking him, fall to her
+side]._  That is what hath brought all men to your feet, and founded
+your throne on the impregnable rock of your proud heart, a stony
+island in a sea of desire.  There, madam, is some wholesome blunt
+honest speaking for you.  Now do your worst.
+
+ELIZABETH.  _[with dignity]_  Master Shakespear:  it is well for you
+that I am a merciful prince.  I make allowance for your rustic
+ignorance.  But remember that there are things which be true, and are
+yet not seemly to be said (I will not say to a queen; for you will
+have it that I am none) but to a virgin.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  _[bluntly]_  It is no fault of mine that you are a
+virgin, madam, albeit tis my misfortune.
+
+THE DARK LADY.  _[terrified again]_  In mercy, madam, hold no further
+discourse with him.  He hath ever some lewd jest on his tongue.  You
+hear how he useth me! calling me baggage and the like to your
+Majesty's face.
+
+ELIZABETH.  As for you, mistress, I have yet to demand what your
+business is at this hour in this place, and how you come to be so
+concerned with a player that you strike blindly at your sovereign in
+your jealousy of him.
+
+THE DARK LADY.  Madam:  as I live and hope for salvation--
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  _[sardonically]_  Ha!
+
+THE DARK LADY.  _[angrily]_--ay, I'm as like to be saved as thou
+that believest naught save some black magic of words and verses--I
+say, madam, as I am a living woman I came here to break with him for
+ever.  Oh, madam, if you would know what misery is, listen to this man
+that is more than man and less at the same time.  He will tie you down
+to anatomize your very soul:  he will wring tears of blood from your
+humiliation; and then he will heal the wound with flatteries that no
+woman can resist.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  Flatteries!  _[Kneeling]_  Oh, madam, I put my case at
+your royal feet.  I confess to much.  I have a rude tongue:  I am
+unmannerly:  I blaspheme against the holiness of anointed royalty; but
+oh, my royal mistress, AM I a flatterer?
+
+ELIZABETH.  I absolve you as to that.  You are far too plain a dealer
+to please me.  _[He rises gratefully]._
+
+THE DARK LADY.  Madam:  he is flattering you even as he speaks.
+
+ELIZABETH.  _[a terrible flash in her eye]_  Ha!  Is it so?
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  Madam:  she is jealous; and, heaven help me! not without
+reason.  Oh, you say you are a merciful prince; but that was cruel of
+you, that hiding of your royal dignity when you found me here.  For
+how can I ever be content with this black-haired, black-eyed,
+black-avised devil again now that I have looked upon real beauty and
+real majesty?
+
+THE DARK LADY.  _[wounded and desperate]_  He hath swore to me ten
+times over that the day shall come in England when black women, for
+all their foulness, shall be more thought on than fair ones.  _[To
+Shakespear, scolding at him]_  Deny it if thou canst.  Oh, he is
+compact of lies and scorns.  I am tired of being tossed up to heaven
+and dragged down to hell at every whim that takes him.  I am ashamed
+to my very soul that I have abased myself to love one that my father
+would not have deemed fit to hold my stirrup--one that will talk to
+all the world about me--that will put my love and my shame into his
+plays and make me blush for myself there--that will write sonnets
+about me that no man of gentle strain would put his hand to.  I am all
+disordered:  I know not what I am saying to your Majesty:  I am of all
+ladies most deject and wretched--
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  Ha!  At last sorrow hath struck a note of music out of
+thee.  "Of all ladies most deject and wretched."  _[He makes a note of
+it]._
+
+THE DARK LADY.  Madam:  I implore you give me leave to go.  I am
+distracted with grief and shame.  I--
+
+ELIZABETH.  Go _[The Dark Lady tries to kiss her hand]._  No more.
+Go.  _[The Dark Lady goes, convulsed]._  You have been cruel to that
+poor fond wretch, Master Shakespear.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  I am not cruel, madam; but you know the fable of Jupiter
+and Semele.  I could not help my lightnings scorching her.
+
+ELIZABETH.  You have an overweening conceit of yourself, sir, that
+displeases your Queen.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  Oh, madam, can I go about with the modest cough of a
+minor poet, belittling my inspiration and making the mightiest wonder
+of your reign a thing of nought?  I have said that "not marble nor the
+gilded monuments of princes shall outlive" the words with which I make
+the world glorious or foolish at my will.  Besides, I would have you
+think me great enough to grant me a boon.
+
+ELIZABETH.  I hope it is a boon that may be asked of a virgin Queen
+without offence, sir.  I mistrust your forwardness; and I bid you
+remember that I do not suffer persons of your degree (if I may say so
+without offence to your father the alderman) to presume too far.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  Oh, madam, I shall not forget myself again; though by my
+life, could I make you a serving wench, neither a queen nor a virgin
+should you be for so much longer as a flash of lightning might take to
+cross the river to the Bankside.  But since you are a queen and will
+none of me, nor of Philip of Spain, nor of any other mortal man, I
+must een contain myself as best I may, and ask you only for a boon of
+State.
+
+ELIZABETH.  A boon of State already!  You are becoming a courtier like
+the rest of them.  You lack advancement.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  "Lack advancement."  By your Majesty's leave:  a queenly
+phrase.  _[He is about to write it down]._
+
+ELIZABETH.  _[striking the tablets from his hand]_  Your tables begin
+to anger me, sir.  I am not here to write your plays for you.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  You are here to inspire them, madam.  For this, among the
+rest, were you ordained.  But the boon I crave is that you do endow a
+great playhouse, or, if I may make bold to coin a scholarly name for
+it, a National Theatre, for the better instruction and gracing of your
+Majesty's subjects.
+
+ELIZABETH.  Why, sir, are there not theatres enow on the Bankside and
+in Blackfriars?
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  Madam:  these are the adventures of needy and desperate
+men that must, to save themselves from perishing of want, give the
+sillier sort of people what they best like; and what they best like,
+God knows, is not their own betterment and instruction, as we well see
+by the example of the churches, which must needs compel men to
+frequent them, though they be open to all without charge.  Only when
+there is a matter of a murder, or a plot, or a pretty youth in
+petticoats, or some naughty tale of wantonness, will your subjects pay
+the great cost of good players and their finery, with a little profit
+to boot.  To prove this I will tell you that I have written two noble
+and excellent plays setting forth the advancement of women of high
+nature and fruitful industry even as your Majesty is:  the one a
+skilful physician, the other a sister devoted to good works.  I have
+also stole from a book of idle wanton tales two of the most damnable
+foolishnesses in the world, in the one of which a woman goeth in man's
+attire and maketh impudent love to her swain, who pleaseth the
+groundlings by overthrowing a wrestler; whilst, in the other, one of
+the same kidney sheweth her wit by saying endless naughtinesses to a
+gentleman as lewd as herself.  I have writ these to save my friends
+from penury, yet shewing my scorn for such follies and for them that
+praise them by calling the one As You Like It, meaning that it is not
+as _I_ like it, and the other Much Ado About Nothing, as it truly is.
+And now these two filthy pieces drive their nobler fellows from the
+stage, where indeed I cannot have my lady physician presented at all,
+she being too honest a woman for the taste of the town.  Wherefore I
+humbly beg your Majesty to give order that a theatre be endowed out of
+the public revenue for the playing of those pieces of mine which no
+merchant will touch, seeing that his gain is so much greater with the
+worse than with the better.  Thereby you shall also encourage other
+men to undertake the writing of plays who do now despise it and leave
+it wholly to those whose counsels will work little good to your realm.
+For this writing of plays is a great matter, forming as it does the
+minds and affections of men in such sort that whatsoever they see done
+in show on the stage, they will presently be doing in earnest in the
+world, which is but a larger stage.  Of late, as you know, the Church
+taught the people by means of plays; but the people flocked only to
+such as were full of superstitious miracles and bloody martyrdoms; and
+so the Church, which also was just then brought into straits by the
+policy of your royal father, did abandon and discountenance the art of
+playing; and thus it fell into the hands of poor players and greedy
+merchants that had their pockets to look to and not the greatness of
+this your kingdom.  Therefore now must your Majesty take up that good
+work that your Church hath abandoned, and restore the art of playing
+to its former use and dignity.
+
+ELIZABETH.  Master Shakespear:  I will speak of this matter to the
+Lord Treasurer.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  Then am I undone, madam; for there was never yet a Lord
+Treasurer that could find a penny for anything over and above the
+necessary expenses of your government, save for a war or a salary for
+his own nephew.
+
+ELIZABETH.  Master Shakespear:  you speak sooth; yet cannot I in any
+wise mend it.  I dare not offend my unruly Puritans by making so lewd
+a place as the playhouse a public charge; and there be a thousand
+things to be done in this London of mine before your poetry can have
+its penny from the general purse.  I tell thee, Master Will, it will
+be three hundred years and more before my subjects learn that man
+cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh from the
+mouth of those whom God inspires.  By that time you and I will be dust
+beneath the feet of the horses, if indeed there be any horses then,
+and men be still riding instead of flying.  Now it may be that by then
+your works will be dust also.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  They will stand, madam:  fear nor for that.
+
+ELIZABETH.  It may prove so.  But of this I am certain (for I know my
+countrymen) that until every other country in the Christian world,
+even to barbarian Muscovy and the hamlets of the boorish Germans, have
+its playhouse at the public charge, England will never adventure.  And
+she will adventure then only because it is her desire to be ever in
+the fashion, and to do humbly and dutifully whatso she seeth everybody
+else doing.  In the meantime you must content yourself as best you can
+by the playing of those two pieces which you give out as the most
+damnable ever writ, but which your countrymen, I warn you, will swear
+are the best you have ever done.  But this I will say, that if I could
+speak across the ages to our descendants, I should heartily recommend
+them to fulfil your wish; for the Scottish minstrel hath well said
+that he that maketh the songs of a nation is mightier than he that
+maketh its laws; and the same may well be true of plays and
+interludes.  _[The clock chimes the first quarter.  The warder returns
+on his round]._  And now, sir, we are upon the hour when it better
+beseems a virgin queen to be abed than to converse alone with the
+naughtiest of her subjects.  Ho there!  Who keeps ward on the queen's
+lodgings tonight?
+
+THE WARDER.  I do, an't please your majesty.
+
+ELIZABETH.  See that you keep it better in future.  You have let pass
+a most dangerous gallant even to the very door of our royal chamber.
+Lead him forth; and bring me word when he is safely locked out; for I
+shall scarce dare disrobe until the palace gates are between us.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  _[kissing her hand]_  My body goes through the gate into
+the darkness, madam; but my thoughts follow you.
+
+ELIZABETH.  How! to my bed!
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  No, madam, to your prayers, in which I beg you to
+remember my theatre.
+
+ELIZABETH.  That is my prayer to posterity.  Forget not your own to
+God; and so goodnight, Master Will.
+
+SHAKESPEAR.  Goodnight, great Elizabeth.  God save the Queen!
+
+ELIZABETH.  Amen.
+
+_Exeunt severally:  she to her chamber:  he, in custody of the warder,
+to the gate nearest Blackfriars._
+
+
+AYOT, ST. LAWRENCE, _20th June_ 1910.
+
+
+Notes on the editing:  Italicized text is delimited with underlines.
+Punctuation and spelling retained as in the printed text.
+Shaw intentionally spelled many words according to a non-standard
+system.  For example, "don't" is given as "dont" (without apostrophe),
+"Dr." is given as "Dr" (without a period at the end), and
+"Shakespeare" is given as "Shakespear" (no "e" at the end).  Where
+several characters in the play are speaking at once, I have indicated
+it with vertical bars ("|").  The pound (currency) symbol has been
+replaced by the word "pounds".
+
+
+
+