University of Virginia Library

DE MINIMIS CURAT DEUS.

You say—“I am nobody, nought, a thing
That can never tell in the total count
When the Creditor sums the grand amount,
Any more than a straw or bonnet string;
I am little and ugly and mean and fat,
With a face that has not one curve of comeliness
And a general look of squalid homeliness—
Not a touch of the true soft sweet Divinity
To redeem a life that is false and flat,
But the barren charm of a cheap virginity.”
And you add, “I would rather be a buckle
Or the crumpled tag of a creased rosette
On the harlot shoe of the fair Babette,
And have bastard sons at my breast to suckle
(Just the little accidents by the way)
With a score of gilded lovers gay
And a fuller past, and a bodice rounding
With the milk of joy and a lot abounding;
I would chance the priest and his musty morals,
And the prudes and their infant bells and corals,
Or risk the wrath of an outraged Deity
In a possible Heaven of impossible capers
Like a vestry lit with its prim wax tapers,
To be myself in all spontaneity.”
And you murmur—“I loathe the stays and starch,
The pitiful whole and wretched portion
Of a birth like mine, a mere abortion;
That must creep and crawl on the millround march
Of an unknown nameless and empty toiling,
And sneak and snivel for fear of soiling
The proper dress with improper attitudes
Or the tiniest trick of a semblance prurient,
And be choked with the husks and paltry platitudes
When the soul rebels in a rage esurient;
While the rich, the beautiful, and the luckier
May kick up their heels in a bean-fed coltishness
In the stews and palace brothels muckier,
And from every trammel of every code
Break free (if they sacrifice to the mode)
And rejoice in a wanton wild revoltishness.”
But you think—“The measures are not the same
For the poor and the wealthy, the plain and pretty;
And the form that is like imprisoned flame
With its ardent eyes and the lashes jetty,
May sin and repent and souse in the gutter
And emerge once more to the sheet and candle
With a cultured lisp and a dainty stutter,
For another bath in another scandal;
“Though I,” you moan, “may not taste a particle
Of the sweets forbidden to pauper stuff
And the yard-round waist and the doubtful cuff,
On the features without a bit of devil
And ruled to one dreary common level,
But must keep the law in its lightest article;
And life like this is not worth living
In its sordid ruts and the sober chances
And want of skittish nude skirt-dances,
When the legs at least are among wild oats
And may show with assurance of forgiving
Their womanly shape under petticoats.
And to put aside the mere pomps and vanities,”
You argue, “and social names and nods
And fashion's fooling and golden gods
Or the becks and bows of padded popinjays,
Like the dummies in town—if you only shop in Jay's,
I know nothing yet of the real humanities.
No, I have not truly lived a second,
Though I ate and drank and secreted matter
And excreted waste and grew out and fatter,
As a cabbage does in its garden row
Unseen in the vulgar shade below—
But life is by other standards reckoned.”
You conclude—“I would rather walk in the street
And drink of the darkness and the sweet,
Than live in the light and get salvation
By a process of nought but vegetation;
For I long to indulge my fling and fill,
Whatever the priest may brag and bellow
Who has grown with vice prematurely yellow
Though he now denies the smallest latitude,
Of the lusts for which I would gladly grill
In a brimstone fire and give up Beatitude.
I have never felt my pulses beat
In the madness of unlawful blisses,
With the rapture and the stolen kisses
When the blood was full at its fever heat;
I have never throbbed with the thrill of Nature,
Or yielded the palpitating flesh
To the lips that stamped their legislature
On the conquered mouth that asked afresh;
I have never loosed, what they want to hide in us
By the figleaf texts of a narrow quorum
And a starved and straightlaced dead decorum,
The wild free breath of the power libidinous.
I would rather be a depowdered trull,
Than the saint with the rouge inside her skull.”
I know—you are wrong in your facts and fancies,
And the gold-dust on the butterfly's wing
Has a place and part in the splendid whole;
As well as the sceptre of a king,
Or the presbyter decked in his painted stole—
And Truth is more than your gilt romances.
Not a useless thing, not a cypher rivet
In the grinding wheels of the grand machinery,
Not an idle spray in the hedge of privet
That is splashed about your home in greenery;
Not a speck of rust on the two-penny pannikin
That cooks the broth of the freeborn gipsy,
Not a stain of dirt on the booted mannikin
In the sleek of his sober groove or tipsy;
But each is an item with its weight,
And helps to the balance of all freight.
For you have a settled office if I can't
And not to be spared, in your quiet nook
No less than the sages with vast outlook,
And the veriest trifle is significant.
Why, if the least little screw or cog
In the awful sweep of the wide world's jog
As it grumbles round, were to get awry
And be lost in the cosmic swirl and sway,
Or but for a moment went astray,
It would unseat God in Eternity.
There is not a superfluous mite nor may be
In the supreme synthesis of totality,
And the molecule and the mightiest mount
Have each a place in the last account,
And every hair of the newborn baby
Must be reckoned too in the fair finality.
For each, if deducted, would be missed
By something or some one and by God
Who has never an atom more or less
Than He wants, and leaves not a mouth unkissed
Nor a pea without its enswathing pod,
In the width of His guardian watchfulness.
And were you away from the pensive corner
Where you sit and mope an unmated mourner,
Then the Universe would be so much lacking
And worse for the silent chord—you give
In your measure strength and beauty's backing
And proportion, whereby the Sum may live.
In the grand orchestra, absent Nicolo
Creates a blank, though it's but the piccolo.
I know—that our earth is sick with trouble,
And the poor and weak bear more than double
Because they are such, and the evil rises
Secure and crowned and above the curse—
If it only keeps the keys and purse;
But I will not own, that it has the prizes.
For to suffer is the highest blessing
And a fate Divine, that we drop with peril
To the soul thus left to a struggling sterile—
It is good, and the Father's fond caressing.
To be let alone is an Ephraim lot,
While you fool and flourish and heed no issue
And riot at ease in the pleasant places
With flattering lips and false embraces,
Regardless all of the canker spot
And gather more of the adipose tissue.
To romp in a round of elegant dresses
And a whirl of the sweetest eyes and hair
That to riches are always bright and fair,
While you ride on the flood tide of successes;
If you rake in the gold and never fail
To glut the passions howe'er importunate,
And lack the point of a single nail
Of a single care—you are the unfortunate.
If you hold your gun or stick to the station
Though it be but a barnacle's inch of rest,
And fulfil the end of your own creation—
By scrubbing a floor or washing a platter,
Or growing a grass blade out of a clod,
And planting a pulse of mind in matter—
You are dutiful, wise, and doing your best
And one with the inmost Heart of God.
For he aids, if but by the merest decimal,
Who falls in line with the marching orders
And steps to the tune by the piper played,
Whether all in rags or with silk arrayed,
But inside the fence of his nature's borders—
And we need both great and infinitesimal.
O the humblest beat of the human love,
Not a ripple upon the tidal river
Which rolls the earth on its wondrous way,
Has yet its mark and immortal ray;
It flings, to the Central Source above
And the uttermost orb, a vital quiver.
Would you be a discord or rusty screw,
In the onward journey to ripe perfection
Which is building the House of God anew?
Shall the dust rebel at its resurrection?