University of Virginia Library

So many battles still unfought,
So many eager to be taught,
So many preachers prone to preach,
That mere plenitude of thought
Strikes poverty on speech?
Or tell me, fellow Interchangers,
Must we henceforth meet as strangers?
See with mutual resentment
Nothing mutual in our views?
Do you ‘grovel in contentment’?
Is there nothing to make better?
Is there nothing to abuse?
Is not the army ‘standing’?
Is not monarchy a sham?
Is not Beaconsfield in office?
Do not tin tacks in the jam
Arouse your indignation?
Nor the nauseating dram-
Drinking habits of the country
(Making bumpkins into brutes)?
Nor the age of Mrs. Grundy?
Nor the price of shoddy suits?
Does not a cry of ‘Woman's Rights’
Arouse a righteous ire
To rectify her wicked wrongs,
And wickeder attire?
While sermons may be preached that sticks
Have hammered out of stones,
Are ‘cruelty to animals,’
And pictures by Burne Jones,
And ‘universal suffrage’
(Including man and beast),
Iniquities in needlework,
And ‘horrors in the East’
Themes that can move no flexile quill
To quiver in the least?
While vice is rampant through the land,
And china lovers swear
That real old ‘Chelsea’ can't be had,
Nor true blue crockery ware,
That ‘Dresden's’ unreliable,
And ‘Wedgwood’ even rare,
Should any hand be idle
That might propel a quill?
Should any pulse be placid?
Should any tongue be still?
Till decency and order reign
Where drunkenness has been,
Till curious old mezzotints
On Morris-papered walls are seen
(Replacing noxious German prints
And poisoned arsenic green),
Till that far-distant, longed-for day
When savages shall think
That Christian creed, and Christian oaths,
And Christian stores of left-off clothes,
And Christian measles, Christian drink,
Are better than their heathen oaths,
Their meagre scantity of clothes,
Their unfermented drink.
Until, in short, some longed-for day
When, happy in success,
We've taught all men to clothe themselves,
And taught ourselves to dress.
Till all the nations feel as we
On English soil to-day
That 'tis ‘sinful’ to be worsted
In a ‘great and wicked’ fray:
But to spend a little money,
And waste a lot of life,
Is a ‘Noble undertaking’
In a small unrighteous strife.
Till Mr. Gaze, and Mr. Cook,
Have cleared the space betwixt us,
And every hungry soul may look
On the Madonna of ‘San Sixtus’
Until on all her eyes have dwelt
So loving, sweet, so sad-serene,
And each, assisted by their light,
His heart just once has seen
And felt—far better than before
Yet very very mean.—
Till Love is re-established
In Mrs. Grundy's rules,
Till bloodshed is abolished
And ‘young ladies’ boarding-schools,’
Till all who pine in woful want
May roll in wilful waste,
Till every one is very good
And everything in ‘taste.’—
Should any hand be idle
That might propel a quill?
Should any pulse be placid?
Should any tongue be still?