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29
MORAL FRAGMENTS
For money, or for money's worth,
On this unpleasant little earth
Most men will sell their souls away;
Their bodies too: to barter clay
(Unprofitable merchandise)
For glittering gold, were surely wise!
Says Rochefoucauld: ‘True wisdom brings
True knowledge of the price of things’:
We're very wise to-day.
We're very wise; I think we know
The price of all things here below.
We know that Vice and Virtue join
In having both their price in coin.
I knew of Virtue very young,
Have heard at least his praises sung;
I learned, at quite an early date,
To loathe the very name of Vice,
And circumspectly estimate
How much of goodness would suffice.
I learned from pastors, now with Shem,
That Heaven's gates seemed wide to them;
I learned from pastors, now with Ham,
How small a Vice may serve to damn.
But I digress, my gentle song
Becomes inordinately long.
Revenons a nos moutons.
On this unpleasant little earth
Most men will sell their souls away;
Their bodies too: to barter clay
(Unprofitable merchandise)
For glittering gold, were surely wise!
Says Rochefoucauld: ‘True wisdom brings
True knowledge of the price of things’:
We're very wise to-day.
We're very wise; I think we know
The price of all things here below.
We know that Vice and Virtue join
In having both their price in coin.
I knew of Virtue very young,
Have heard at least his praises sung;
I learned, at quite an early date,
To loathe the very name of Vice,
And circumspectly estimate
How much of goodness would suffice.
30
That Heaven's gates seemed wide to them;
I learned from pastors, now with Ham,
How small a Vice may serve to damn.
But I digress, my gentle song
Becomes inordinately long.
Revenons a nos moutons.
The thought to-day occurs to me
To write yet once a diary,
And therein duly to rehearse,
In careful prose, or careless verse,
All that may happen day by day,
Or wise, or witty, grave or gay:
For I, in speculation bold,
A pessimistic doctrine hold,
And would empirically decide
Whether this view be justified
By facts observed, or whether men,
Who should know better, now and then
(Being philosophers) have tried,
In sheer malignity, to make
My spiritual sponsors quake,
To spoil my happiness, to crush
The flower of young Hope, and brush
The bloom from Faith's pure cheek. And should
It prove that I have been misled
By cynics (a malignant brood),
And all my thinking on this head
Was false in drift, and in the letter,
And miserably misapplied,
All you will say is, ‘All the better.’
To write yet once a diary,
And therein duly to rehearse,
In careful prose, or careless verse,
All that may happen day by day,
Or wise, or witty, grave or gay:
For I, in speculation bold,
A pessimistic doctrine hold,
And would empirically decide
Whether this view be justified
By facts observed, or whether men,
Who should know better, now and then
(Being philosophers) have tried,
In sheer malignity, to make
My spiritual sponsors quake,
To spoil my happiness, to crush
The flower of young Hope, and brush
31
It prove that I have been misled
By cynics (a malignant brood),
And all my thinking on this head
Was false in drift, and in the letter,
And miserably misapplied,
All you will say is, ‘All the better.’
Behold then, courteous spectator,
(Reader, I mean) the raison d'être
Of this my diary. Its aim
Is purely scientific: I disclaim
All joy in any earthly things
Save such as touch the secret springs
Of human progress. . . .
(Reader, I mean) the raison d'être
Of this my diary. Its aim
Is purely scientific: I disclaim
All joy in any earthly things
Save such as touch the secret springs
Of human progress. . . .
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