University of Virginia Library

—What is wrong, Paul? Nothing that I know of; all is right.
In this best of possible worlds, how should anything be wrong?
All is ordered, man, by perfect love and wisdom Infinite,
To go smooth as your machinery, and blithe as Milly's song.
As for me, I have been going up and down, and to and fro,
Like a personage you've read of in that queer old Book of Job,
With a tinker, given to drinking, and his company was low,
But he taught me one or two things that are happening on our globe;
And my old professor says nothing's worthy more of praise
Than an ardent thirst for knowledge in our curious youthful days.
We camped in woodland corners 'mong the oak scrub and the broom,
With a clear stream tinkling near us, and the pine-scents in the air,
And our beds were white and fragrant with the hawthorn's falling bloom,
And our caldron daily smoking with the coney and the hare:
These fellows have an eye for the picturesque and pleasant,
And a gentlemanly taste, too, for partridge, grouse, and pheasant.
And he taught me no small wisdom, which is good for human souls,
About the call of night-birds, about weasels, about moles,
About salmon in their season, and to track the honey-bee,
About stalking of the red-deer, and all bird economy,
About tinkering of kettles, and cookery of game,
About doctoring of horses, and transmuting of the same,
About spaeing people's fortunes, and breeding in and in,
And also a philosophy that quite gets rid of sin.
Yet we had to part; and also I hope never more to meet him,
He was such an arrant scoundrel, vermin worse than any rat;
And though I'm not particular, I really had to beat him,
And there's no gospel surer than that I was right in that.

Now, I want a job of work, Paul; I have thews and sinews strong,
And the arm that beat the gipsy might wheel a barrow 'long.
I cannot be a craftsman, I cannot ply a tool,
I cannot use the chisel and the hammer and the rule;
I know nothing of your art, lad; but I could bear a hod,
And handle pick and shovel, and carry earth and sod.
Will you find me work to do, then? I am tired of working brains,
Like a treadmill yielding nothing but my labour for my pains.

A strike among the workmen! That's unlucky, I confess:
I don't much wonder at it, but I'm soory none the less:
Sorry for myself, perhaps; for it rather mars my scheme;
But like other hopes I've cherished, it was maybe all a dream:
And I think I feel their troubles even keener than my own—
I have had so many lately it is not worth while to moan
For another more or less; one is stunned upon the wheel
By the first sharp wrench of agony; the rest you hardly feel:
They are but the after-pains of an anguish that is past,
Natural throbbings of the sorrow which your life has overcast.—
Yes, of course, you have the right to work or idle, as ye will,
To quench the blazing forges, and to stop the humming mill,
And all the other rights by which you hope to right your wrongs,
And by and by to turn the people's sorrows into songs.
Yet there are noblest rights which the noble only use
In fearfulness and trembling for the passions they let loose.
Nations have the right of battle—none more sacred that I know
Than the right to take your weapon, and to hurl it at your foe,
The right to kill a creature made in likeness of his God,
To trample a grand being underneath the reeking sod.
Yet the wanton use of battle is the shame of history,
Turning back the tide of progress, and of man's prosperity.
This is now your day of power—and I am glad that it is yours;
But shall workmen just repeat the sin of kings and conquerors?
As the nations cease from battle, shall the classes rouse the fray,
And scatter wanton sorrow for a shilling more a day?
And what, now, if your fellows, lounging near the pot-house, idle,
Get to loaf about, and like it, get to hate both spur and bridle?
Lose the habit of hard labour, with its manliness; and then
Comes the wreck of all you hope for in the wreck of noble men?
When you organise a strike, it is war you organise;
But to organise our labour were the labour of the wise,
To bind it all together in the bundle of one life,
Manifold in gift and service, linked as husband unto wife,
With a common fund of skill and thrift. That partly was my thought
When I came to you: I dreamt that, if I shared their weary lot,
If I got a fustian jacket, and a hammer, and a file,
Or wheeled the hodman's barrow, if for nothing better fit,
And ate the bread of labour, maybe sweetened with a smile,
And faced an earnest Universe as earnestly as It,
Then some day they might trust me; for I know that they are jealous
Of the patronage outside them, but will hearken to their fellows
Who have laboured at the bench with them, and handled the same tools,
And who know the hearts of workmen, that they are not rogues nor fools.
Ah! well; no matter now; I daresay that was all a dream;
But my way of life is changed, Paul; my sunshine was a gleam
Through storm-clouds darkly gathering, now the sky is overcast,
Like the day there, out of doors, where the rain is pelting fast;
And I somehow cannot hang on to the skirts of the genteel,
I would make the change as thorough as the change in heart I feel;
The more obscure my life is the fitter now for me,
The more mechanical its toil the happier I shall be;
Though I look not for much happiness, yet that may also come;
At least I will not whine; if I have grief I can be dumb.
Can you help me, Paul? I must have work, and yet some leisure too;
Some day I'll tell you more, perhaps—yet wherefore burden you?
Enough; I must have leisure, for I have a task to do.