 | Lucile |  |
X.
In the budding of youth, ere wild winds can deflower
The shut leaves of man's life, round the germ of man's power
Yet folded, his life had been earnest. Alas!
In that life one occasion, one moment, there was
When all that was earnest in him might have been
Unclosed into manhood's imperial, serene
Dominion of permanent power. But it found him
Too soon; ere the weight of the light life around him
Had been weigh'd at its worth; when his nature was still
The delicate toy of too pliant a will
The boisterous play of the world to resist,
Or the frost of the world's wintry wisdom.
The shut leaves of man's life, round the germ of man's power
Yet folded, his life had been earnest. Alas!
In that life one occasion, one moment, there was
When all that was earnest in him might have been
Unclosed into manhood's imperial, serene
Dominion of permanent power. But it found him
Too soon; ere the weight of the light life around him
Had been weigh'd at its worth; when his nature was still
The delicate toy of too pliant a will
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Or the frost of the world's wintry wisdom.
He miss'd
That occasion, too rathe in its advent.
That occasion, too rathe in its advent.
Since then,
He had made it a law, in his commerce with men,
That intensity in him which only left sore
The heart it disturb'd, to repel and ignore.
He had made it a law, in his commerce with men,
That intensity in him which only left sore
The heart it disturb'd, to repel and ignore.
And thus, as some Prince by his subjects deposed,
Whose strength he, by seeking to crush it, disclosed,
In resigning the power he lack'd power to support,
Turns his back upon courts, with a sneer at the court,
In his converse this man for self-comfort appeal'd
To a cynic denial of all he conceal'd
In the instincts and feelings belied by his words.
Words, however, are things: and the man who accords
To his language the licence to outrage his soul,
Is controll'd by the words he disdains to control.
And, therefore, he seem'd in the deeds of each day,
The light code proclaim'd on his lips to obey;
And, the slave of each whim, follow'd wilfully aught
That perchance fool'd the fancy, or flatter'd the thought
Yet, indeed, deep within him, the spirits of truth,
Vast, vague aspirations, the powers of his youth,
Lived and breathed, and made moan—stirr'd themselves—strove to start
Into deeds—tho' deposed, in that Hades, his heart.
Like those antique Theogonies ruin'd and hurl'd
Under clefts of the hills, which, convulsing the world,
Heav'd, in earthquake, their heads the rent caverns above,
To trouble at times in the light court of Jove
All its frivolous gods, with an undefined awe,
Of wrong'd rebel powers that own'd not their law.
Yes! still in his nature was more than enough
(Altho' self-disputed) of strong English stuff,
Which, had he been forced to some claim disallow'd
By the world, to push firmly his path thro' that crowd
Amidst which he now lounged, would have welded in one
Earnest purpose the powers now conscious of none,
Because squander'd on many. And therefore, if born
To lome lowlier rank (from the world's languid scorn
Secured by the world's stern resistance), where strife,
Strife and toil, and not pleasure, gave purpose to life,
He, no doubt before this, would have lived to attain
Not eminence only, but worth. So, again,
Had he been of his own house the first-born, each gift
Of a mind many-gifted had gone to uplift
A great name by a name's greatest uses.
Whose strength he, by seeking to crush it, disclosed,
In resigning the power he lack'd power to support,
Turns his back upon courts, with a sneer at the court,
In his converse this man for self-comfort appeal'd
To a cynic denial of all he conceal'd
In the instincts and feelings belied by his words.
Words, however, are things: and the man who accords
To his language the licence to outrage his soul,
Is controll'd by the words he disdains to control.
And, therefore, he seem'd in the deeds of each day,
The light code proclaim'd on his lips to obey;
And, the slave of each whim, follow'd wilfully aught
That perchance fool'd the fancy, or flatter'd the thought
Yet, indeed, deep within him, the spirits of truth,
Vast, vague aspirations, the powers of his youth,
Lived and breathed, and made moan—stirr'd themselves—strove to start
Into deeds—tho' deposed, in that Hades, his heart.
Like those antique Theogonies ruin'd and hurl'd
Under clefts of the hills, which, convulsing the world,
33
To trouble at times in the light court of Jove
All its frivolous gods, with an undefined awe,
Of wrong'd rebel powers that own'd not their law.
Yes! still in his nature was more than enough
(Altho' self-disputed) of strong English stuff,
Which, had he been forced to some claim disallow'd
By the world, to push firmly his path thro' that crowd
Amidst which he now lounged, would have welded in one
Earnest purpose the powers now conscious of none,
Because squander'd on many. And therefore, if born
To lome lowlier rank (from the world's languid scorn
Secured by the world's stern resistance), where strife,
Strife and toil, and not pleasure, gave purpose to life,
He, no doubt before this, would have lived to attain
Not eminence only, but worth. So, again,
Had he been of his own house the first-born, each gift
Of a mind many-gifted had gone to uplift
A great name by a name's greatest uses.
But there
He stood isolated, opposed, as it were,
To life's great realities; part of no plan;
And if ever a nobler and happier man
He might hope to become, that alone could be when
With all that is real in life and in men
What was real in him should have been reconciled;
When each influence now from his being exiled
Should have seized on his being, combined with his nature,
And form'd, as by fusion, a new human creature:
As when those airy elements viewless to sight
(The amalgam of which, if our science be right,
The germ of this populous planet doth fold)
Unite in the glass of the chemist, behold!
Where a void seem'd before, there a substance appears,
From the fusion of forces whence issued the spheres!
He stood isolated, opposed, as it were,
To life's great realities; part of no plan;
And if ever a nobler and happier man
He might hope to become, that alone could be when
With all that is real in life and in men
What was real in him should have been reconciled;
When each influence now from his being exiled
Should have seized on his being, combined with his nature,
And form'd, as by fusion, a new human creature:
34
(The amalgam of which, if our science be right,
The germ of this populous planet doth fold)
Unite in the glass of the chemist, behold!
Where a void seem'd before, there a substance appears,
From the fusion of forces whence issued the spheres!
| Lucile | |