 | East and west : the discovery of America and other poems |  |
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4. PART IV.
The Present Meeting of East and West.
Let us mount! let us mount! 'T is the spur of the horn!
Let us leap like a lark in the face of the morn!
Let us vault over hedges or rank river-edges,
And annihilate space in the rage of our race!
Come, prince, like a varlet bedeck thee in scarlet;
Come, ply the great trade of this mad masquerade,
Like a harlequin's prance or a dervish's dance!
For we hunt, for we grope for the phantoms of hope,
And we blow a wild kiss to the scoffing abyss;—
Not for gold;—for we 're told that 's the curse of the bold!
Not for love;—she 's a fool that we read of in school!
Then for fame?—Not a bit! It 's as hollow as wit!
But we hunt, and we hunt all the same. It 's a game!
It 's for madness of blood that we ride on the flood.
And we would, if we could, leap the girdle
Of the infinite sea like a hurdle!
Let us leap like a lark in the face of the morn!
Let us vault over hedges or rank river-edges,
And annihilate space in the rage of our race!
Come, prince, like a varlet bedeck thee in scarlet;
Come, ply the great trade of this mad masquerade,
Like a harlequin's prance or a dervish's dance!
For we hunt, for we grope for the phantoms of hope,
And we blow a wild kiss to the scoffing abyss;—
Not for gold;—for we 're told that 's the curse of the bold!
Not for love;—she 's a fool that we read of in school!
Then for fame?—Not a bit! It 's as hollow as wit!
But we hunt, and we hunt all the same. It 's a game!
It 's for madness of blood that we ride on the flood.
And we would, if we could, leap the girdle
Of the infinite sea like a hurdle!
O you West in the East like the slime of a beast,
Why must you devour that exquisite flower?
Why poison the peace of the far Japanese?
Is there no one to tell of the birthright they sell?
Must they sweat at machines like a slave to the means,
And murder the ends at the beck of false friends?
As the heart of a cloud shall the meadow of Asia be ploughed
By the curse of your fire, and the glare of your selfish desire!
A fig for their artists and scholars!
We crave the dry-rot of their dollars.
We teach them to live in dark palaces.
We lend them the sting of our malices.
We preach them the practical Buddha of Self,
And civilization the deification of pelf,
The infinite snarl of sectarian watch-dogs religious,
And spiteful revenge, and the sword of a spirit litigious,
And a taste for the gaudy grotesque and the pompous prodigious.
O spirit of Genghis Khan
Come, whirl through the circus of debt with your runaway span!
See Tamerlane,
He lies in the corner unhorsed by the lance of champagne!
Beware, the Centaurian daughters of Tartars
May trip in their garters!
New navies in armor
Are forged from the blood-weight of rice;
And the food of the farmer
Is sold at the throw of the dice.
And decent despair in black coat stalks abroad through the land.
The devil, he prays in good English, and swears like a gentleman grand.
And here come art-students with honors!
They graduate strictly in marble madonnas.
No more shall their panels be carved with a lily grotesque.
They swear by the natural Raphaelesque arabesque;
Cut anchors for stencils,
And round up a portrait with Christian lead-pencils,
Improving the mighty Napoleon
With phrenology slightly Mongolian.
Child of some blind bewildered bard
Learning Sunday-school tunes by the yard!
Sons of earth's supplest dancers
To graduate in the Lancers!
Friends of idolatrous priests
Converted in time for strawberry feasts!
Confucius indeed!
A dried-up old seed!
They know of the prigs and the canting professors who came of that breed!
And Roshi who looks at the cracks
On terrapins' backs!
Why, they blush as they think of the foxes they used to avoid in the stacks!
And Buddha, with baubles and bubbles of principles easily blowable?—
No, thank you! Philosophers rightly prefer the Unknowable!
Why must you devour that exquisite flower?
Why poison the peace of the far Japanese?
Is there no one to tell of the birthright they sell?
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And murder the ends at the beck of false friends?
As the heart of a cloud shall the meadow of Asia be ploughed
By the curse of your fire, and the glare of your selfish desire!
A fig for their artists and scholars!
We crave the dry-rot of their dollars.
We teach them to live in dark palaces.
We lend them the sting of our malices.
We preach them the practical Buddha of Self,
And civilization the deification of pelf,
The infinite snarl of sectarian watch-dogs religious,
And spiteful revenge, and the sword of a spirit litigious,
And a taste for the gaudy grotesque and the pompous prodigious.
O spirit of Genghis Khan
It should be noted that the excesses of Western custom introduced into Tokio society previous to the year 1888 are now rapidly on the wane. The picture of contradictions which I witnessed is not overdrawn. We may be thankful that the era of confusion is already melting away into that of reconstruction.
Come, whirl through the circus of debt with your runaway span!
See Tamerlane,
He lies in the corner unhorsed by the lance of champagne!
Beware, the Centaurian daughters of Tartars
May trip in their garters!
New navies in armor
Are forged from the blood-weight of rice;
And the food of the farmer
Is sold at the throw of the dice.
And decent despair in black coat stalks abroad through the land.
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And here come art-students with honors!
For years in a government university, Japanese artists were taught the technique of Western painting, sculpture, and architecture by European professors. For the time, native “barbarian” arts were despised and neglected. The absurdities of the hybrid system of teaching drawing in Japanese public schools cannot be exaggerated. But these are now things of the past.
They graduate strictly in marble madonnas.
No more shall their panels be carved with a lily grotesque.
They swear by the natural Raphaelesque arabesque;
Cut anchors for stencils,
And round up a portrait with Christian lead-pencils,
Improving the mighty Napoleon
With phrenology slightly Mongolian.
Child of some blind bewildered bard
Learning Sunday-school tunes by the yard!
Sons of earth's supplest dancers
To graduate in the Lancers!
Friends of idolatrous priests
Converted in time for strawberry feasts!
Confucius indeed!
A dried-up old seed!
They know of the prigs and the canting professors who came of that breed!
And Roshi who looks at the cracks
On terrapins' backs!
Why, they blush as they think of the foxes they used to avoid in the stacks!
And Buddha, with baubles and bubbles of principles easily blowable?—
No, thank you! Philosophers rightly prefer the Unknowable!
[OMITTED]
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O you East in the West,
What is true? What is best?
You buzz with absurd speculation, and break up the pride of our rest.
We thought we had got to the bottom of evil, and sickness, and charity.
Don't speak of a Carpenter's Son! It reveals a too painful disparity!
What is true? What is best?
You buzz with absurd speculation, and break up the pride of our rest.
We thought we had got to the bottom of evil, and sickness, and charity.
Don't speak of a Carpenter's Son! It reveals a too painful disparity!
O civilization on the verge of salvation,
Exposed to perfection of nature's selection,
Let us thank men of money that the world is so funny!
Let us shout for the wings that are sprouting on kings!
Let us peep through the prism of their sly optimism,
Mark the self-evanescence of evil's excrescence,
Watch them feeding their mystics on juicy statistics,
Hear bliss roar through the craters of grain-elevators!
Exposed to perfection of nature's selection,
Let us thank men of money that the world is so funny!
Let us shout for the wings that are sprouting on kings!
Let us peep through the prism of their sly optimism,
Mark the self-evanescence of evil's excrescence,
Watch them feeding their mystics on juicy statistics,
Hear bliss roar through the craters of grain-elevators!
O this spirituality of pure externality!
Which can patch up disasters with arnica plasters,
Pipe the fountain of men's ills with cunning utensils,
Catch a shower of schisms in a cistern of isms!
Were the world one vast greenery of hot-house machinery,
Could you speed all creation with the spur of taxation,
Do you think that would muzzle the asp in the puzzle?
Would it snuff out the fire of the primal desire?
Which can patch up disasters with arnica plasters,
Pipe the fountain of men's ills with cunning utensils,
Catch a shower of schisms in a cistern of isms!
Were the world one vast greenery of hot-house machinery,
Could you speed all creation with the spur of taxation,
Do you think that would muzzle the asp in the puzzle?
Would it snuff out the fire of the primal desire?
O dance of the dishes! O pulse of the purses!
O whirlpool of wishes! O chaos of curses!
O hybrid hypocrisy of high-bred democracy!
O self-contradictions of pious convictions!
O mental congestions of insoluble questions!
Are there no panaceas for a glut of ideas?
Here 's a sweet little charmer who dotes upon karma!
Now why should it please her to worry and guess
Whether last she were Cæsar or merely Queen Bess?
We all came from Eve, and we 're bound to confess
That her first incarnation was not a success.
Or, horrible thought! 't was perhaps a baboon,
Or a small elemental who fell from the moon!
For you never can tell when your head starts to twitch
If it means a Mahatma, or only a witch:—
Which accounts for reliance on Psychical Science.
Nay, take the bread pills of your hypnotized wills,
Even antidotes sweeter than the Baghavad Gita!
You may ride upon tables that mount to the gables,
Or hum the doxology in terms of astrology,
Or prove a prime gabble-er concerning the Kabbala:—
You may play with the derrick of things esoteric,
Or hear from a ghost by a note through the post:—
But, you'll find slight relief in eschewing roast-beef,
Or the juice of the berry that sparkles in sherry;
For be sure that the devil can find out your level
Be you common-place people or a-perch on a steeple.
O whirlpool of wishes! O chaos of curses!
O hybrid hypocrisy of high-bred democracy!
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O mental congestions of insoluble questions!
Are there no panaceas for a glut of ideas?
Here 's a sweet little charmer who dotes upon karma!
Now why should it please her to worry and guess
Whether last she were Cæsar or merely Queen Bess?
We all came from Eve, and we 're bound to confess
That her first incarnation was not a success.
Or, horrible thought! 't was perhaps a baboon,
Or a small elemental who fell from the moon!
For you never can tell when your head starts to twitch
If it means a Mahatma, or only a witch:—
Which accounts for reliance on Psychical Science.
Nay, take the bread pills of your hypnotized wills,
Even antidotes sweeter than the Baghavad Gita!
You may ride upon tables that mount to the gables,
Or hum the doxology in terms of astrology,
Or prove a prime gabble-er concerning the Kabbala:—
You may play with the derrick of things esoteric,
Or hear from a ghost by a note through the post:—
But, you'll find slight relief in eschewing roast-beef,
Or the juice of the berry that sparkles in sherry;
For be sure that the devil can find out your level
Be you common-place people or a-perch on a steeple.
O you West in the East, O you East in the West,
Were it best that you ceased, best at least for your rest?
For you 're lost in endeavor, and tossed in commotion,
As the blood of a river on the flood of an ocean.
And you laugh like a bride in the season of June;
And you dance like a tide at the kiss of the moon.
For you leap like a pard from the rock-hidden throne of your pride;
And you plunge like a gull in the storm-ridden plumes of the main;
And you flash like a star from the sun-bidden voids of the spheres.—
But your plunging is vain,
And your leaping is wide,
And your flashing a moment of years.
For though in a whirl you pass by us
Like the rout of some fleeing Darius,
At length as of old you shall come
Out of this second pandemonium,
And kneel with the mild
Faith of a little child:—
Untangle the snarls of your skein,
Assort them and weave them again,
Massing all the reds
With appropriate threads,
The blues and the greens
In harmonious sheens,
Purples and yellows
At peace with their fellows.
Were it best that you ceased, best at least for your rest?
For you 're lost in endeavor, and tossed in commotion,
As the blood of a river on the flood of an ocean.
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And you dance like a tide at the kiss of the moon.
For you leap like a pard from the rock-hidden throne of your pride;
And you plunge like a gull in the storm-ridden plumes of the main;
And you flash like a star from the sun-bidden voids of the spheres.—
But your plunging is vain,
And your leaping is wide,
And your flashing a moment of years.
For though in a whirl you pass by us
Like the rout of some fleeing Darius,
At length as of old you shall come
Out of this second pandemonium,
And kneel with the mild
Faith of a little child:—
Untangle the snarls of your skein,
Assort them and weave them again,
Massing all the reds
With appropriate threads,
The blues and the greens
In harmonious sheens,
Purples and yellows
At peace with their fellows.
Yet such chromatic powers
E'en now are dimly ours;
Foretaste of human bliss
In tuneful synthesis!
Music, our fairest, latest daughter,
Diamond of perfect water,
Plead for the West before the throne of Truth,
Pledge of our unripe youth!
Who spaced the vibrant stars
Of self-taught orchestras,
Breath polyphonic
From heavens harmonic,
The sympathetic nodes
Of Orphic odes?
The spirit of Beethoven
With worlds of unseen spirit woven,
Melody white with glee
Like yachts upon a sea!
E'en now are dimly ours;
Foretaste of human bliss
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Music, our fairest, latest daughter,
Diamond of perfect water,
Plead for the West before the throne of Truth,
Pledge of our unripe youth!
Who spaced the vibrant stars
Of self-taught orchestras,
Breath polyphonic
From heavens harmonic,
The sympathetic nodes
Of Orphic odes?
The spirit of Beethoven
With worlds of unseen spirit woven,
Melody white with glee
Like yachts upon a sea!
Gemmed white with glee
Like yachts on a sea
When the blue waves sparkle to breezes free;
Or a-cool in calms
Of a pool of palms
In the sunset seas of the master, Brahms.
Like yachts on a sea
When the blue waves sparkle to breezes free;
Or a-cool in calms
Of a pool of palms
In the sunset seas of the master, Brahms.
What shall we say
At dawn of day
To the lark that leaps from the lilac spray?
Would it not suit
The note of a flute
Afloat on the tremulous waves of a lute?
At dawn of day
To the lark that leaps from the lilac spray?
Would it not suit
The note of a flute
Afloat on the tremulous waves of a lute?
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Or a murmur of breeze
Through the summering trees
Let the soft strings hum like the humming of bees;
Or a trumpet sweet,
Like a wing on the wheat,
As it flings ripe gold at the listener's feet.
Through the summering trees
Let the soft strings hum like the humming of bees;
Or a trumpet sweet,
Like a wing on the wheat,
As it flings ripe gold at the listener's feet.
In the first amaze
Of a West ablaze
The tone clouds glisten with scarlet rays,
While the inlaid whirls
Of roses and pearls
Are sweet as a chorus of laughing girls.
Of a West ablaze
The tone clouds glisten with scarlet rays,
While the inlaid whirls
Of roses and pearls
Are sweet as a chorus of laughing girls.
Like the crimson of plums
A long line comes
With the long-drawn sweep of the stirring drums,
And the answering rills
Of a thousand trills
Are filling the purple cups of the hills.
A long line comes
With the long-drawn sweep of the stirring drums,
And the answering rills
Of a thousand trills
Are filling the purple cups of the hills.
Now a rattle of hail
From the rising gale,
And the storm-clouds sweep like a world's torn sail!
And the piccolo's shriek
Is a lightning streak,
While the big bass booms as the thunders speak!
From the rising gale,
And the storm-clouds sweep like a world's torn sail!
And the piccolo's shriek
Is a lightning streak,
While the big bass booms as the thunders speak!
Now it sounds afar
Like the rush of a car,
And a moon caresses the evening star;
And a sweet smile lies
With a tear of surprise
On the quivering lash of the world's meek eyes.
Like the rush of a car,
And a moon caresses the evening star;
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With a tear of surprise
On the quivering lash of the world's meek eyes.
Like spirits blown
From an astral zone
Are drifting the wonderful mists of tone.
And the moments seem
To drift with the stream
Till I know not whether I die or dream.
From an astral zone
Are drifting the wonderful mists of tone.
And the moments seem
To drift with the stream
Till I know not whether I die or dream.
[OMITTED]
“Let us mount! let us mount! 'T is the spur of the horn!”—
Let us stay! let us pray! 'T is the peace of the morn.
Let us stay! let us pray! 'T is the peace of the morn.
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