Fables in Song :: :: University of Virginia Library

I saw a man die, miserably. Death
With lips disdainful of such sorry fare
(Like one who, sauntering thro' his orchard saith
‘The fruit, tho’ flyblown, that lies rotting there
Must needs suffice me’) nibbled the remains
Of life; which long disease, with parching breath
Had ravaged so, that Death was doubtful where
To bite what look'd no longer worth his pains.
Naught of the wretch was left but sores and brains.

2

And nothing in this corpse-about-to-be
Seem'd living yet but life's last beacons, two
Bright feverish eyes, whence life defiantly
So fierce was flashing, that Death, fain to know
What meant their dumb defiance, render'd back

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A moment's breath to set the man's lips free;
As hunters on a dying fire do blow
For light to guide them on their dubious track,
Ere they fare onward thro' the midnight black.

3

Then, to Death's question, the death-rattle cried
“Long perishing I lived. On pain I fed.
I had no children, and I had no bride,
Like other men. But with Disease I wed,
And this, mine own death-hour, on her begot.
Yet all so well, against life's woes allied,
My solitary soul, from heel to head,
Was arm'd in patience, they subdued her not.
What she hath wrought can neither rest nor rot.

4

“For in me a sublime idea hath lived;
In me, and on me. What was I? Its food,
And dwelling-house. I perish: but it thrived,
And shall thrive. I have given it flesh and blood.
That flesh and blood is mine. My whole life long
Was for the good of this idea contrived,
And all mine ills have but increased its good.
Non omnis moriar! I still prolong
My power in this, whose life mine own made strong.

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5

“For there it lives—in yonder leaves—complete!
Where yesterday these feverish fingers wrote
The last word: not what crowns the closing sheet
Of vulgar volumes with appropriate note:
Not finis, my life's labour's last word was.
Because I doubt not of my guerdon meet,
Because the life, whereto did I devote
Mine own life, here no mortal ending has,
Therefore my last word is æternitas.

6

“Yes! mine idea shall live, bright, beauteous, glad.
In me all's weak, but where is weakness here?
In me all's sorrow, here is nothing sad.
Clouded my life was, but my thought is clear.
The Spirit that thro' formless space did flit,
Seeking fit form, its budding purpose clad
In a child's brain, and breath'd in that child's ear
‘Child, my thought chooseth for its servant fit,
Live for it, labour, suffer, die for it!’

7

“That child was I, and I obey'd. Alas,
I lived to die. But, dying, I set free
A life that's deathless. Into dust I pass
Content, because the thought that lived in me

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Lives and shall live. 'Tis well. My work is done.
Finis for me: for it æternitas!”
That was the man's last word. His work and he
Are both forgotten. Underneath the sun
Naught is eternal save Oblivion.

8

I saw a chrysalis. It hung beneath
My lattice eaves. I watch'd with hopeful eye
The bright release of that embodied breath,
The dead worm's destined beauteous butterfly.
I tapp'd it, and there came a hollow sound.
In Sleep's similitude, already Death
Dreaming the birth of a new life did lie.
I broke its shining shell. And there I found
Another chrysalis within it bound,

9

But swollen big, and just about to burst;
A second and surprising chrysalis,
Whose growth had eaten hollow all the first,
Which it would soon have shatter'd. What was this?
The egg of an ichneumon: who, within
The moth-grub's miserable frame, had nurst
Her bastard babe, and fed on borrow'd bliss
Its being, buried in her victim's skin
Pierced, for that purpose, with a cloven pin.

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10

The first eruca, thus, the second fed.
Sic vos non vobis! The poor moth-grub pined.
The young ichneumon in the moth-grub led
A prosperous life. Upon the patron dined
The client, well. The moth-grub labour'd sore,
And starved. The ichneumon lack'd not board or bed.
The second flourish'd as the first declined.
The moth-grub died. The ichneumon lived the more,
Wanton and wing'd, and livelier than before.

11

Doubtless that moth-grub knew not its own state:
Felt deep disquiet, and divined not why:
Was proud, perchance, that in it something great
Grew, and grew greater. Was it haunted by
Ambitious dreams? Meanwhile with toil intense
It must have labour'd, to emancipate
The life within it. Thus, its enemy,
And idol also in a certain sense,
The poor fool fatten'd at its own expense.

12

And did it, when it wove its death-shroud, say
(Poor worm, that ne'er a butterfly might be,
Whose past was pincht, whose future filch'd away
By that which lived within it!) even as he

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Whom I saw dying, did it say, “I pass,
My work remains. The Spirit I obey,
As fittest out of thousands, fixt on me
For that sublime idea whose slave I was.
Finis for me: for it æternitas!”

13

Ah, ‘fittest out of thousands?’ Yet behold!
The ichneumon which upon this worm did prey
Will find just such another worm to fold
The egg it is its wont in worms to lay.
And from that egg will soar another fly,
Which, in its turn, will do as did the old.
And thus et cætera, et cætera,
Et cætera, which, far as we can spy,
Is also Latin for Eternity.

14

Patience hath of ichneumons pointed out
As many as three hundred different kinds,
All living on as many kinds, no doubt,
Of different insects: as, on different minds,
Different ideas. Brains, we must avow,
The strongest, cannot yet per annum sprout
Three hundred new ideas; and man finds
The old ones troublesome. But troubles grow,
And even the weakest brains breed notions now.

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15

Meanwhile, whenever I behold a man
With burthen'd forehead, bald before his time,
And visage, like a lamp at noontide, wan,
Who thinks, by nourishing some thought sublime,
To pay himself, in death, life's many pains;
And, having spent his strength in prose or rhyme
On some idea which hath been the ban
Of all his being, boasts “My work remains,”
I muse “What maggot hath he in his brains?”