The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

Two men in a cosy Hostel sitting
By a sea-coal fire, in a cheerful light,
While past the window were shadows flitting
Through the fog of a dull November night,
Were cracking their walnuts after dinner,
With dry-palate olives to flavour the wine,
Hardly feeling like saint or sinner,
But that it was good for a man to dine.

One was a smooth, smug, florid, pot-bellied,
Clean-shaven man, of a portly mould,
With tremulous cheeks, as if nicely jellied,
And coloured with port-wine rich and old;
The other an Exquisite, long-limbed, sprawling
Low on an easy soft-cushioned seat,
Lisping his words, and slowly drawling
Thoughts that ran on at a fever-heat.

Quoth the pot-bellied one: “You were saying
Life's not worth living; you're wrong, sir, quite:
This world, though it's not just for idling and playing,
Is the best of all worlds if you take it right.
It is not the heaven folk see before 'em,
When they fall in love at a country dance,
But I've seen more than you of its variorum,
And I'd live it again, if I had the chance.

Not worth living, sir! If you are sober,
Honest and willing to do its work,
Hating a rogue and a thief and a robber,
And playing a fairly good knife and fork—
For I admit that if one is dyspeptic,
He cannot well live as a good man should:
His bad digestion will make him sceptic
Of all that is happy and right and good—

But let him be sober and prudent and willing
To work, as he should, till his sixty years,
With his wits about him to turn a shilling,
And know a good thing, when his chance appears,—
Let him be civil, and follow the leading
Of common sense just, whatever he's at,
And his life shall be pleasant as novel-reading—
And I am myself now a proof of that.

I was poor enough when I was a lad, sir;
Hadn't a copper for some folk's pound;
Yet most of them, by and by, went to the bad, sir,
And God knows where they are now to be found;
But I worked at anything that was going,
And I saved up every penny I could;
And my ventures grew as my cash was growing,
And whatever I promised, my word was good:

Yes! I was poor, when first I started,
And should have been poor still, according to you,
If God does not care though we're all broken-hearted,
But just goes His own way whatever we do;

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Yet here I am, sir; I'm nobody's debtor,
And I lay a calm head on my pillow at night,
For God has been good—He could scarce have been better—
To order things rightly, because I did right.

Now if I had taken to gambling and drinking,
Do you think I should be where I am to-day
With funds in the Bank and the Stocks—though they're sinking
Almost a quarter, I'm sorry to say?—
Never, sir. But there's a God up in heaven
Who always takes care of respectable folk;
And what better proof of it could there be given?—
I feel that my faith is placed firm on a rock.

I had not a shilling once; but I determined
That I would take warning by what I had seen;
And look to me now: not a judge ever ermined
Drinks better port wine, with a conscience more clean;
My wife is a model; my children are pictures;
My business is thriving; my home, come and see
How its happiness wholly refutes all your strictures,
And tells a plain tale for my Maker and me.

Oh, I'm grateful to Him! Yes; of course, I've had losses;
There is no life without ups and downs here below;
But mine have been mostly benevolent crosses,
Where the balance came right, as the ledgers will show.
So in me He finds nothing but thankfulness truly
That I am not like some who have wasted His gift,
That I never gave way to a passion unruly,
And when things at the worst were, I always made shift

To believe in His providence; and I have seen it,
For every thing throve with me well from the first;
I am sure not an hour of my life, or a minute,
But He faithfully saw to my hunger and thirst.
But it all depends, sir, on doing your duty,
And carefully laying your doubts on the shelf,
And keeping your head clear of women and beauty,
To make it the best of all worlds—for yourself.”

To him then, the Exquisite: “Ah, it is pleasant
To meet, now and then, an exceptional case,
A man who is really content with his present,
Content with himself, and his prize in the race:
Not that I think, now, you should be contented;
I could not, though I had your luck, sir, instead
Of the emptiest life that was ever invented;
But I call no one happy, until he is dead.

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You've not seen the end yet. The cup running over
May be dashed from your lips, and its treasures all spilt:
Most likely it will; and your friend then and lover
Will look on your trouble as if it were guilt.
We are playthings of Nature, and Nature is cruel;
She mocks us with favours to break our hearts worse;
To-day, she adorns us with some precious jewel,
To-morrow, the jewel of life is its curse.

We have pure thoughts of love, we have high thoughts of goodness,
We glow with fine feelings, and call them divine,
While Nature is raging in wrath, or in lewdness,
And planning an earthquake, or twisting the spine.
And why has she made us so, but for the keen edge
Which conscience can put on the pain we must bear?
And we fondly look on to a happy serene age,
While she has made sure of its sorrow and care.

Oh, your life has been filled full of mercies and blessings,
Wife and children and all that your heart can desire;
Your God whom you trust has been kind and caressing,
And how can you praise Him enough and admire!
Well; I hope it may last, sir; but sometimes one's children
Have broken the hearts that they once made so glad—
I don't say yours will; but it's rather bewildering
When our mercies turn out the worst ills we have had.

You think it's all goodness that sends you your treasures;
And yet your heart sinks at a fall in Consols,
And there is a bitter drop mixed in all pleasures,
And there is a vague longing still in our souls:
Why can this Goodness not heartily give us
What cannot be lost, and what fills up our peace?
And why does He grudge all at once to relieve us,
And bid fear and trouble and sorrow to cease?

Was it Goodness that fashioned the tiger? and hollowed
The fang of the cobra that bites in the dark?
And what was the fond line of thought which it followed
When it planted the teeth in the jaws of the shark?
Or the love that created those lizards and dragons,
And mail-clad the fishes, when earth was but slime!
It could wait through long æons for ploughshares and waggons,
But for carnage must not lose a moment of time!

We blame our fierce soldiery lusting for battle,
We number their slain with a horror aghast,
We mourn the waste land, without homestead or cattle,
Through which the fell march of their armies has past;

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Yet what have they done but what Nature is doing
On a yet grander scale all the days and the years,
For she either is battling, or else is renewing
Her strength for the war, with its woes and its tears.

Just look at the ants on their slave-stealing forays;
What goodness and mercy impel them to go?
Or gaze on the tender young lambs in the corries
As the ravens scoop out their meek eyes in the snow:
And perhaps it was love armed the midge and mosquito
That curse the bright warm summer day to us all,
And the wasp and the hornet are owing to it too,
And the centipede hid in the old mossy wall.

Nay, but Nature is fierce, sir, and false too, and cruel,
And all through her realm there is war to the knife,
All through her years runs the long deadly duel,
The constant unpitying battle for life.
And what is such life worth? and what of its donor?
When each creature takes what advantage he may
Of cunning or sickness, and no laws of honour
Can stay the fierce hunger, or shelter the prey?

Oh, it's not so with man, is it? He has a higher
And nobler law which he is bound to obey;
Though sprung from the brute, it is his to aspire
To a grander and happier life than they!
A happy life!—gout-racked or tossing in fever;
A noble life!—scrambling for pence in the mire;
Oh, you pity the poor Chartist cobbler or weaver,
But you leave him for all that to pine by the fire!

And then, sir, what need of our huge grated prisons,
Our gibbets and soldiers and batoned police,
And other the like most convincing of reasons
In the best of all possible worlds like this,
But that the stronger would keep down the weaker,
But that the cunning would outwit the fools,
But that the poorer of us and the meeker
Must needs be their victims, or else be their tools?

Well; but here is a manor-house, yonder a palace,
Or a lot of trim villas—sure God must be good!
Ay; but what of the millions in closes and alleys
Scant of all raiment and light, sir, and food,
And the babes that are suckled on whisky or fever,
And the girls that ne'er knew a maiden's pure thoughts,
And the pains and the aches that the Bountiful Giver
Dispenses as freely as dust and motes?

No, it is not worth living, this hard life of sorrow;
But there is no other, and we must bear on,

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Toiling to-day without hope of tomorrow,
Weary and dull till the light is gone.
I once held with you, sir; trying to dream on,
In spite of the facts, in a fool's paradise;
But if there's a deity, sure he's a demon
Who wrings us with anguish, or tempts us with vice.

Well spoke the wise Greek in his tragic elation,
As he pictured the brave heart Fate held in his mesh,
Hurling his scorn at the gods and salvation
With the spikes of the Caucasus piercing his flesh.
High-souled the Greek was, moral and fearless,
And his gods must do right: or his soul would rebel;
But we must be weak when our life is most cheerless,
With a lie in our mouth saying, It is all well.”

So they sat there—the two of them—talking and drinking,
And eyeing the ruby light-gleam of the wine,
Well pleased with their talk, for they thought they were thinking,
And each deemed that he did the secret divine;
And each took his bottle there, pleasant and merry,
And each with an easy mind then had his nod.
And which was the best judge of claret and sherry?
And who of the twain was the farthest from God?

Oh best of all worlds for the selfish and shifty,
Thou art not so good for the noble and true;
Oh life well rewarding the prudent and thrifty,
How shall the Christ-spirit travail with you?
Oh worst of all worlds to the proud heart and faithless!
And yet thou canst perfect the meek and the brave;
Strange, sorrowful life that in dying is deathless,
Glory and majesty, found in a grave.

Evil the world is; Life a long battle,
Wrestle with anguish, and warfare with sin,
Proving the heart of us, trying our mettle
By troubles without us and terrors within;
And yet 'tis worth living, to-day and to-morrow,
The life which God lived in the wealth of His love,
Life He made perfect in patience of sorrow,
God-life on earth like the God-life above.