 | The White Pilgrim and Other Poems |  |
217
BOOK C, ODE I.
It was t'other day that I chanced to range
Somewhere about the old Exchange,
As worthy old Horace erewhile would stray
By accident down the Sacred Way,
For no worse reason than this—because,
With nothing to do, it his custom was.
Bored with Earnest, and dazed with Light,
I was doing nothing with all my might,
With scarcely a thought in my idle head
But the outside number of hours in bed
Which a man brought up on Solomon's lore
Can spend at a stretch—ten hours, or more—
Blessing, with all my power to bless,
The gift of a random idleness;
Not Hyde Park idleness, blank and bland—
Time-killed, not time-killing, hand o'er hand,
And the listless misery Boredom brings
To the Crutch-and-Toothpick crown of things—
But the happy rest of a grateful brain,
Whose pulse means pleasure, whose rack means pain,
In the calm conclusion that here for us
The truth is the truth of Democritus,
And in mazes of error he least must err
Who strays with the laughing philosopher:
By the old Exchange—but, oh, what a pen this is,
Whose beginning is such a long parenthesis!
Somewhere about the old Exchange,
As worthy old Horace erewhile would stray
By accident down the Sacred Way,
For no worse reason than this—because,
With nothing to do, it his custom was.
Bored with Earnest, and dazed with Light,
I was doing nothing with all my might,
With scarcely a thought in my idle head
But the outside number of hours in bed
Which a man brought up on Solomon's lore
Can spend at a stretch—ten hours, or more—
Blessing, with all my power to bless,
The gift of a random idleness;
Not Hyde Park idleness, blank and bland—
Time-killed, not time-killing, hand o'er hand,
And the listless misery Boredom brings
To the Crutch-and-Toothpick crown of things—
But the happy rest of a grateful brain,
Whose pulse means pleasure, whose rack means pain,
218
The truth is the truth of Democritus,
And in mazes of error he least must err
Who strays with the laughing philosopher:
By the old Exchange—but, oh, what a pen this is,
Whose beginning is such a long parenthesis!
O'er the old Exchange, when you go there next,
You may see up-written an old-world text,
With a claim of property quite outworn,
And a very proper source of scorn
To all who, nursed on the prose of Time,
Hold it food but fit for the trifler's rhyme.
The great first Alpha's day has fled,
And our alphabet starts with the new “Y Z;”
(Good Lord! that a punster should dare to come
Where angels, small blame to them, are dumb!)
For Man is so great, if you rightly take him,
That none but himself ever dared to make him.
How else shall he prove, when his proofs prevail,
That his pointed moral adorned a tail?
When Tories, compact of faith and bad law,
Use God as a boot for kicking Br*dl*gh,
What text more meet for the sage's scoff,
Than “The Earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof”?
You may see up-written an old-world text,
With a claim of property quite outworn,
And a very proper source of scorn
To all who, nursed on the prose of Time,
Hold it food but fit for the trifler's rhyme.
The great first Alpha's day has fled,
And our alphabet starts with the new “Y Z;”
(Good Lord! that a punster should dare to come
Where angels, small blame to them, are dumb!)
For Man is so great, if you rightly take him,
That none but himself ever dared to make him.
How else shall he prove, when his proofs prevail,
That his pointed moral adorned a tail?
When Tories, compact of faith and bad law,
Use God as a boot for kicking Br*dl*gh,
What text more meet for the sage's scoff,
Than “The Earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof”?
Oh sure, thought I, as I pondered o'er
The wondrous wisdom of D*n*ghm*re
(And no feeling just now the land has on her more
Than merely this—Who the deuce is D*n*ghm*re?),
And searched in vain in my catechism
For the duties we owe to landlordism,
Whose private decalogue's chief defence is
The “fabulæ Salisburienses”—
Oh sure, thought I, we shall learn, ere long,
That here's another good stop gone wrong,
And know, for our proper admonition,
From S*l*sb*ry's own “revised edition,”
That a newer reading must be preferred;
An apostrophe slipped in that same fifth word,
And never a soul need be perplexed
To read the sense of the poor old text:
To our Gessler's pole our caps we doff,
For “The Earth is the Lords', and the fulness thereof.”
The wondrous wisdom of D*n*ghm*re
(And no feeling just now the land has on her more
Than merely this—Who the deuce is D*n*ghm*re?),
219
For the duties we owe to landlordism,
Whose private decalogue's chief defence is
The “fabulæ Salisburienses”—
Oh sure, thought I, we shall learn, ere long,
That here's another good stop gone wrong,
And know, for our proper admonition,
From S*l*sb*ry's own “revised edition,”
That a newer reading must be preferred;
An apostrophe slipped in that same fifth word,
And never a soul need be perplexed
To read the sense of the poor old text:
To our Gessler's pole our caps we doff,
For “The Earth is the Lords', and the fulness thereof.”
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