The poems of Owen Meredith (Honble Robert Lytton.) Selected and revised by the author. Copyright edition. In two volumes |
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FORM. |
| II. |
 | The poems of Owen Meredith (Honble Robert Lytton.) |  |
225
FORM.
I
A man walks through a wood,Admiring what he sees there:
How blessèd if he could
Admire, and be at ease there!
But ah! his admiration he must utilize, or doubt of it.
So he lops off a branch, resolved to fashion something out of it.
II
As though the thing were not,Already ere he take it,
A something more than what
His utmost means can make it!
He knows not what he wants to make: this only who shall gainsay?
Something he must make out of it, since man's a maker, men say.
III
He chisels, chips, and chops,And carves, as he is able:
Now plans a chair, now stops
And meditates a table.
At length, grown somewhat weary, in the midst of all his toils, it
Strikes him that, the more he chips and chops, the more he spoils it.
226
IV
He pauses; wipes the sweat,Discouraged, from his forehead;
Casts down his eyes; and yet
The failure seems more horrid.
But lo you! in his workshop, having sidled through the door there,
A little child is playing with the shavings on the floor there.
V
And, as they fall self-roll'd,Each wooden ringlet nearing,
The child hath made, behold!
Out of each a pretty earring.
Friend, that child, to finest uses fitting chances, must appal you,
Turning accident to ornament,—your rubbish to his value.
VI
So we mend God's making,And so mar it for the most part:
So chance-comers, taking
From the dust what seem'd the lost part
Of our labour, suffer Fancy to sport with it: and the Muses,
That neglected our endeavour, turn its failure to her uses.
| The poems of Owen Meredith (Honble Robert Lytton.) | |