Uncollected Poems of James Russell Lowell

That's pure digression, then, you think? Now, just to prove 'tis not,
I shall begin a bigger one upon this very spot:
At any rate, 'tis naught, you say; precisely, I admit it,
For, in convicting it of that, you virtually acquit it;
You have conjectured, I suppose,—(come, never look despondent!)
That I intend to offer as an OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT,
And by what method more direct could I avouch my fitness
Than by exhibiting such art as the above may witness?
I had one Nothing; and, by dint of turning and displaying it,
I've occupied the time thus far in seeming to be saying it,
And have it, good as new, till comes the moment for conveying it.
Each creature must get forward in his own peculiar sort;
The crab slants sideway to his end, and finds the way as short,
You'd make him go forth rightly, eh? pray try your hand, Sir dab,—
Well, you have bettered Providence, but Nature wants her crab;
Sir, in that awful Congress there, where sit th' assembled Fates,
Of which the unconscious newspapers report the slow debates,
Thank God, you can't be lobbying, log-rolling, and all that;—
A world that suited you, O Smith, might be a trifle flat.
Fate, Idiosyncrasy, or what is just the same thing, custom,
Leads every mortal by the ear, though he be strong as Rustem,
Makes him do quite impossible things,—then, with a spear of grass
Marks the thin line none else can see, but which he cannot pass;
That son of yours, so pale and slim, with whom the master fails,
What claps him in the fo'c'stle rude, and sends him after whales?
And Samson, there, your burly boy, what takes him by the nape
And sets him at the counter's back to measure thread and tape?
The servant-man you hired last year, who, for a paltry fee
Surrendered all his nature up, and would if he'd had three,
To suit your whimsies, and who seemed to find all drudgery sweet,
Left you in tears,—he could not take that bundle through the street;
Centripetal, centrifugal, these the conditions two,
Some cling like moss, and other some fling off, their whole lives through;
My style's centrifugal; mark plain the settled boundary-line,
And, till it gets on t'other side, 'twill fret and fume and pine:
Or call't the polypean style; each verse contains, at any rate,
A polypus that in its turn new polypi can generate,

And if I the temptation strong that lurks in any verse shun,
'Tis certain that the next will breed new centres of dispersion;
A brief attempt would shortly prove that I should be much worse if
I tried to curb my natural bent of being too discursive,
But I forbear, I spare you this experimentum crucis,
And shall, instead, proceed to show that Nonsense hath its uses;
I mean good nonsense, there are men enough who have a leaning to
Write nonsense in great solemn tomes, nor have the wit of meaning to—
Tomes, the hop-pillows of the mind, that vanquish readers stout,
And which no gentleman's library can be complete without,
Pernoctent nobis, bedward turned, take one and feel no doubt;
What a profound narcotic spell your fading senses greets,
'Tis just like getting into bed to look between their sheets;
[I mean to make a list of them, some rainy day, to be a
Fasciculus first to my complete librorum Pharmacopœia.]
And now, because so hard of faith, this omnibus and gas age,
From an old author I translate the following deep passage;
(See preface to the Moriæ Encomium of Erasmus,
Recensuit et præfationem addidit Gelasmus:
'Tis the easiest matter, in one sense,
To write very passable nonsense;
There are those who do naught but create your
Poor stuff from mere thinness of nature;
But to do it with art and intention,
To never let fancy or pen shun
Any kind of odd lurches, twists, waggeries,
Absurdities, quibbles, and vagaries;
To roll your Diogenes-puncheon
The vext reader's toes with a crunch on,
Making one quip the mere cotyledon
For the seed of another to feed on,
Is a matter—why, just reckon how many
Have fared well enough with Melpomene,
And how very few have come by a
Mere prosperous look from Thalia;
Who since has contrived to hit off an ease

That in hard work will match A---s?
Hath even great Swift in his shabby lays
Come near the hop-skip prose of R---s?
The deep-quibbling, sage-clown of S---e,
From among all the wits can you rake his peer?
Are they not, my dear sir, rari nantes
Who can jingle the bells with C---s?
How many great clerks in one turn could
Be both zany and wise man as S---e could?
And who could with such a wise knack array
Great Jeames's phonetics as T---y?
Your head is too small if it happen
That you can't keep the noble fool's-cap on.
So he goes maundering on and on, he's almost worse than I am,
And every line he writes begets as many sons as Priam;
All this, good Messieurs Editors, is simply introduction
To show how nothing could be said in endless reproduction;
I also wished to smooth the way for scribbling off some jolly
Good, topsy-turvy, head-o'er-heels, unmeaning, wholesome folly;
We're pretty nearly crazy here with change and go-ahead,
With flinging our caught bird away for two ne'er caught instead,
With butting 'gainst the wall which we declare shall be a portal,
And questioning Deeps that never yet have said a word to mortal;
We're growing pale and hollow-eyed, and out of all condition,
With mediums and prophetic chairs, and crickets with a mission,
(The most astounding oracles since Balaam's donkey spoke,
'T would seem our furniture was all of Dodonean oak).
Make but the public laugh, be sure, 'twill take you to be somebody;
'Twill wrench its button from your clutch, my densely-earnest, glum body;
'Tis good, this noble earnestness, good in its place, but why
Make great Achilles' shield the pan to bake a penny pie?
Why, when we have a kitchen-range, insist that we shall stop,
And bore clear down to central fires to broil our daily chop?
Excalibur and Durandart are swords of price, but then
Why draw them sternly when you wish to cut your nails or pen?

Small gulf between the ape and man; you bridge it with your staff;
But it will be impassable until the ape can laugh;—
No, no, be common now and then, be sensible, be funny,
And, as Siberians bait their traps for bears with pots of honey,
From which ere they'll withdraw their snouts, they'll suffer many a club-lick,
So bait your moral figure-of-fours to catch the Orson public.
Look how the dead leaves melt their way down through deep-drifted snow;
They take the sun-warmth down with them—pearls could not conquer so;
There is a moral here, you see; if you would preach, you must
Steep all your truths in sun that they may melt down through the crust;
Brave Jeremiah, you are grand and terrible, a sign
And wonder, but were never quite a popular divine;
Fancy the figure you would cut among the nuts and wine!
I, on occasion, too, could preach, but hold it wiser far
To give the public sermons it will take with its cigar,
And morals fugitive, and vague as are these smoke-wreaths light
In which. ... I trace ... a. ... let me see—bless me! 'tis out of sight.
When I my commentators have (who serve dead authors brave
As Turks do bodies that are sworn to stir within the grave,—
Unbury, make minced-meat of them, and bury them again),
They'll find deep meanings underneath each sputter of my pen,
Which I, a blissful shade (perhaps in teapoy pent, by process
Of these new moves in furniture, this wooden metempsychosis),
Accept for mine, unquestioning, as prudent Göthe choused
The critics out of all the thoughts they found for him in Fast.

“Nullitates scribere tam facile est quam bibere; sed scribere intelligenter quod sit inintelligibile; insanire perfrequenter, motu proprio, libenter; vertere in risibile quod plane impossible, sic ut titillat imum pectus,—hoc est summum intellectus,” et cætera. Praefatio Gelasmi pp. XCIX. et seqq.

To avoid all suspicion of personality, I have omitted the names here. Though dead for centuries, an enraged satirist might revenge himself on me, nowadays, through the columns of the Spiritual Telegraph, or the legs of some dithyrambic centre-table.

University of Virginia Library

DIGRESSION D