University of Virginia Library

No ethical system, no contemplation or action,
No reason'd attitude of mind nor principle of faith,
Neither Socratical wisdom nor saintly devotion,
Buildeth a fortress against heart-ache & compassionate grief,
Nor responds to desire, nor with true mastery yieldeth
Easy repose to the mind; And since all our study endeth
Emptily in full doubt,—fathoming the divine intention
In this one thing alone, that, howsoe'er it affect us,
'Twas never intended for mortal fancy to compass,—
I have concluded that from first purposes unknown
None should seek to deduce ideal laws to be liv'd by;
And, loving art, am true to the Muse, & poetry extol:
Therefore 'twas that afore I prais'd & heartily enjoy'd
Your human verses, Fraser, when nobody bought them,
More than again I praise those serious exhortations,
Wherewith you wu'd amend the degraded people about you.
Nay tho' like a prophet with heav'n-sent dignity inspir'd,
With ready convincement and stern example assuring,
Mightily you proclaim your love-messag' in the assembly,
Exhibiting panaceas of ancient ill, propagating
Out of a Scotch cerebrum the reforming zeal of a Tolstoi,
I listen all unmov'd, as a sceptic among the believers.
Yet what a charm has an earnest soul, whom sympathy uncheckt
For human suffering has strengthen'd and dedicated
Bravely to serve his kind, to renounce his natural instinct,
And liv' apart, indulging in acts of mercy, delighted
In wisdom's rock-hewn citadel her law to illustrate,
Embodying the pattern of self-integrity complete.
Yea, what a charm pervades discourse, that loftily reason'd
Points the narrow pathway throu' this world's ugly disorder;
How very fair wil appear any gate of cleanliness, open
From the city's tumult, its rank impurity, its dread
Vulgarity's triumph: Nay sure & bounteous as Truth,
Beautiful in confusion appeareth Simplicity's way.
—‘Simple it is, (you say) God is good,—Nature is ample,—
‘Earth yields plenty for all,—and all might share in abundance,
‘Were profit and labour but fairly divided among them.
‘Scarce any laws are needed in our Utopia but these,—
‘No fruitless labour to provide mere useless adornment,
‘No money encouraging man's sloth & slavery, no rents
‘Of titeld landlords, no pamper'd luxury breeding
‘Fleshly disease, worst fiend & foe of mind body and soul;
‘All should work, and only produce life's only requirements:
‘So with days all halfholidays, toil healthfully enjoy'd,
‘Each might, throu' leisure hours of amusement piety and peace,
‘In the domestic joys & holy community partake.—’
—This wer' a downleveling, my friend; you need, to assure me,
Fix a limit to the folk; else, as their number is increas't,
Their happiness may dwindle away, & what was at outset
Goal & prize, the provoker of all your wise revolution,
Will by subdivision disappear in course of atainment.
When goods are increas'd, mouths are increas'd to devour them:
If the famine be reliev'd this season in India, next dearth
Will be a worse. You know how one day Herschel acosted
Such a philanthropical Save-all, who claimed to acomplish
Some greatest happiness for a greatest number; ‘Attend, man;
(Said-he) Resolve me anon one query: Suppose Adam and Eve
First created on Earth but twice ten centuries ere Christ,
That they gat four children in all, who liv'd, getting also
Four to the pair: Had thus mankind ever equaly increast
By moderate families but doubling in each generation,
How many souls would now be alive to revise the conundrum
Of greatest happiness? No answer? Well, 'tis a long sum.
Say if on earth such a crowd could stand. No? Pray then imagine
All earth's land as a plain, & all this company thereon,
Piled together like peas in a pintpot: How many layers?
No guess? Then how high the column? How far wu'd it extend
Into the sky?—To the moon?—Further—To the sun?—To the sun! Pshaw!
That column of happy men would reach up, as I fathom its height,
Million diameters of Neptune's infinit' orbit.’

My objection annoys your kindly philanthropy?—‘It proves
‘Too much.’—Yes nature shows in that scrutiny bankrupt;
Mere matter in deposit gives out. You wish to determine
No limit of future polities: your actual object
Is to relieve suffering, to repeal injustice acruing
From monied inheritance, which makes a nonentity potent
For public mischief, who might, if usefully harness'd
In common employment, have assisted social order.
Why should Law give fifty talents where Nature alloys one?
For money is the talent of supreme empery: Gold, Gold
Envieth all, getteth all, absorbeth, mastereth all things:
It pusheth out & thrusteth away pitilessly the weak ones,
Those ill-fated, opprest, unfortun'd needy: Beneath them
Yawns the abyss. Down down they fall, as a stream on a mountain,
With ceaseless cataract. None hearkeneth; only the silent
Grave, that darkly devours their cry of desperate anguish.
Spare me the story; believe more feel this grief than avow it:
'Tis put aside from thought with death's incurable evil;
Left for them, that assume mankind as cause, to lament it.
And what if all Nature ratify this merciless outrage?
If her wonder of arch-wonders, her fair animal life,
Her generate creatures, her motion'd warmblooded offspring,
Haunters of the forest & royal country, her antler'd
Mild-gazers, that keep silvan sabbath idly without end;
Her herded galopers, sleeksided stately careerers
Of trembling nostril; her coy unapproachable estrays,
Stealthy treaders, climbers; her leapers furry, lissom-limb'd;
Her timorous burrowers, and grangers thrifty, the sandy
Playmates of the warren; her clumsy-footed, shaggy roamers;
Her soarers, the feather'd fast-fliers, loftily floating
Sky-sailers, exiles of high solitudinous eyries;
Her perching carolers, twitterers, & sweetly singing birds:
All ocean's finny clans, mute-mouthers, watery breathers,
Furtive arrow-darters, and fan-tail'd easy balancers,
Silvery-scale, gilt-head, thorn-back, frill'd harlequinading
Globe and slimy ribbon: Shell-builders of many-chamber'd
Pearly dwellings, soft shapes mosslike or starry, adorning
With rich floral fancy the gay rock-garden of ebb-tide:
All life, from the massive-bulkt, ivory-tusht, elephantine
Centenarian, acknowledging with crouching obeisance
Man's will, ev'n to the least petty whiffling ephemeral insect,
Which in a hot sunbeam engend'ring, when summer is high,
Vaunteth an hour his speck of tinsely gaudiness and dies:
Ah! what if all & each of Nature's favorite offspring,
'Mong many distinctions, have this portentous agreement,
Mouth, Stomach, Intestine? Question that brute apparatus,
So manifoldly devis'd, set alert with furious instinct:
What doth it interpret but this, that Life Liveth on Life?
That the select creatures, who inherit earth's domination,
Whose happy existence is Nature's intelligent smile,
Are bloody survivors of a mortal combat, a-tweenwhiles
Chanting a brief pæan for victory on the battlefield?
Since that of all their kinds most owe their prosperous estate
Unto the art, whereby they more successfully destroy'd
Their weaker brethren, more insatiably devour'd them;
And all fine qualities, their forms pictorial, admired,
Their symmetries, their grace, & beauty, the loveliness of them,
Were by Murder evolv'd, to 'scape from it or to effect it.

‘Surely again (you say) too much is proven, it argues
‘Mere horror & despair; unless persuasion avail us
‘That the moral virtues are man's idea, awaken'd
‘By the spirit's motions; & therefore not to be conceiv'd
‘In Nature's outward & mainly material aspect,
‘As that is understood. You, since you hold that opinion,
‘Run your own ship aground invoking Nature against me.’—

Then withdraw the appeal, my friend, to her active aliance;
Be pessimist Nature with a pitchfork manfully expell'd,
Not to return. Yet soul in hand, with brutal alegiance,
Hunters & warriors do not forget the comandment.
See how lively the old animal continueth in them:
Of what trifling account they hold life, yet what a practis'd
Art pursue to preserve it: if I should rightly define sport
Slaughter with danger, what were more serious and brave?
Their love of air, of strength, of wildness, afford us an inkling
Of the delight of beasts, with whom they might innocently
Boast a fellow-feeling, summoning them forth to the combat.
Nay dream not so quickly to see her ladyship expell'd.
Those prowling Lions of stony Kabylia, whose roar
Frights from sleep the huddled herdsmen, soon as the sudden night
Falls on Mount Atlas, those grave uxorious outlaws
Wandering in the Somali desert or waste Kalahari,
Sound a challenge that amid summer-idling London is answer'd
Haply in Old Bond Street, where some fashionably attired youth
Daintily stands poising the weapon foredoom'd to appay them:
Or he mentally sighteth a tiger of India, that low
Crouches among the river jungles, or hunts desolating
Grassy Tarai, 'neath lofty Himalya, or far southward
Outacamund, Mysore's residency, the Nilgherry mountains
By Malabar; yea, and ere-long shall sight him in earnest,
Stalked as a deer, surprised where he lay slumbering at noon
Under a rock full-gorged, or deep in reedy covert hid
By the trackers disturbed: Two grand eyes shall for a moment
Glare upon either side the muzzle. Woe then to the hunter,
If he blench! That fury beclouded in invisible speed
What marksman could arrest? what mortal abide his arrachement?
Standing above the immense carcase he gratefully praiseth
God for a man-eater so fine, so worthy the slaying.

See him again; 'tis war: one hill-rock strongly defended
Checks advance, to be stormed at cost of half the assailants.
Gaily away they go, Highlanders, English, or Irish,
Or swart Ghoorkas against the leaden hail, climbing, ascending,
Lost in a smoke, scattering, creeping, here there, ever upwards:
Till some change cometh o'er confusion. Who winneth? ah! see!
Ours have arrived, and he who led their bravery is there.
None that heard will ever forget that far-echoing cheer:
Such heard Nelson, above the crashings & thundering of guns:
At Marathon 'twas heard and all time's story remembers.

See him again, when at home visiting his episcopal uncle:
That good priest contrast with this good captain, assay them:
Find a common-measure equating their rival emotions;
Evaporate the rubbish, the degrading pestiferous fuss
Of stuck-up importance, the palatial coterie, weigh out
Then the solids: whose life would claim the award of an umpire
For greatest happiness? High-priest or soldier? Adjudge it
By their books: Let a child give sentence. Ev'n as a magnet
Turns and points to the north, so children's obstinate insight
Flies to the tale of war, hairbreadth scapes, daring achievements,
Discoveries, conquests, the romance of history: these things
Win them away from play to devour with greedy attention
Till they long to be men; while all that clerkly palaver
Tastes like wormwood.—‘Avast! (I hear you calling) Avast there!
‘I forbid the appeal.’—Well, style my humour atrocious;
Granted a child cannot understand; yet see what a huge growth
Stands to be extermin'd, ere you can set dibble in ground.
Nay, more yet; that mighty forest, whose wildness offends you,
And silences appal, where earth-life self-suffocating
Seethes, lavish as sun-life in a red star's fi'ry corona;
That waste magnificence, and vain fecundity, breeding
Giants & parasites embrac'd in flowery tangle,
Interwoven alive and dead, where one tyrannous tree
Blights desolating around it a swamp of rank vegetation;
Where Reason yet dreams unawakt, & throu' the solemn day
Only the monkey chatters, & discordant the parrot screams:
All this is in man's heart with dateless sympathy worshipt,
With filial reverence, & awful pieties involv'd;
While that other picture, your formal fancy, the garden
Of your stingy promise, must that not quench his imagin'd
Ideals of beauty, his angel hope of attainment?
What to him are the level'd borders, the symmetric allotments,
Where nothing exceedeth, nothing encroacheth, nor assaileth;
Where Reason now drudgeth a sad monomaniac, all day
Watering & weeding, digging & diligently manuring
Her label'd families, starch-makers, nitrogen-extract-
Purveyors, classified potherbs & empty pretenders
Of medical virtues; nay ev'n and their little impulse
T'ward liberal fruiting disallow'd by stern regulation;
So many beans to a pod, with so many pods to a beanstalk;
Prun'd, pincht, economiz'd miserly til' all is abortion,
Save in such specimens as, but for an extravagant care,
Had miserably perish'd. What madness works to delude you,
Being a man, that you see not mankind's predilection
Is for Magnificence, Force, Freedom, Bounty; his inborn
Love for Beauty, his aim to possess, his pride to devise it:
And from everlasting his heart is fixt with affections
Preengag'd to a few sovranly determinate objects,
Toys of an eternal distraction. Beautiful is Gold,
Clear as a trumpet-call, stirring where'er it appeareth
All high pow'rs to battle; with magisterial ardour
Glowing among the metals, elemental drops of a fire-god's
Life-blood of old outpour'd in Chaos: Magical also
Ev'ry recondite jewel of Earth, with their seraphim-names,
Ruby, Jacynth, Emerald, Amethyst, Sapphire; amaranthine
Starry essences, elect emblems of purity, heirlooms
Of deathless glories, most like to divine imanences.
Then that heart-gladdening highpriz'd ambrosia, blending
Their dissolute purples & golds with sparkling aroma,
That ruddy juice exprest from favour'd vintages, infus'd
With cosmic laughter, when upon some secular epact
Blandly the sun's old heart is stirr'd to a septennial smile,
Causing strangefortun'd comfort to melancholy mortals:
Friend to the flesh, if mind be fatigued; rallying to the sound mind,
When succour is needed 'gainst fainting weariness of flesh;
Shall Wine not be belov'd? Or now let Aristotle answer
What goods are,—Time leaves the scholar's inventory unchang'd;—
All Virtues & Pow'rs, Honour & Pleasure, all that in our life
Makes us self-sufficient, Friends, Riches, Comeliness, and Strength;
They that have these things in plenty desire to retain them,
And win more; while they that lack are pleas'd to desire them.
Nay and since possession will leave the desire unappeased,
Save in mere appetites that vary with our physical state,
Surely delight in goods is an ecstasy rather attendant
On their mental image, than on experienc'd operation.
So the shepherd envies the monarch, the monarch the shepherd's lot,—
‘O what a life were this, How sweet, how lovely!’ the king cries.
Whence, I say, as a man feels brave who reads of Achilles,
One looking on riches may learn some kindred elation,
And whatever notions of fortune, luxury, comfort,
Genius or virtue, are shown to him, only as aspects
Of possible being, 'tis so much gain to desire them;
Learning Magnificence in mean obscurity, tasting
Something of all those goods which Fate outwardly denies him.
But say none shall again be king or prosperous or great,—
Arguing ‘all eminence is unequal, unequal is unjust’,—
Should that once come about, then alas for this merry England,
Sunk in a grey monotone of drudgery, dreamily poring
O'er her illumin'd page of history, faln to regretful
Worship of ancestors, with nought now left to delight her,
Nought to attain, save one nurst hope, one ambition only
Red Revolution, a wild Reawakening, & a Renaissance.

Impatiently enough you hear me, longing to refute me,
While I in privileg'd pulpit my period expand.
Who could allow such a list of strange miscellaneous items,
So-call'd goods, Strength, Riches, Honour, Gold, Genius, and Wine?
Is not Wisdom above Rubies? more than Coral or Pearl?
Yours is a scheme deep-laid on true distinctive asortment,
Parting use or good from useless or evil asunder;
Dismissing accessories, while half my heathenish invoice
Are Vanity's vanities. Well; truly, as old Solomon said,
So they be: What is excepted? What scapes his araignment?
Is't Pleasure or Wisdom? Nay ask Theologia: Goodworks,
Saith-she, offend her nostril. If I distinguish, asserting,
Say, that if I enjoyed my neighbour's excessive income
I would hire me a string-quartett not an automaton car,
You blame equally both our tastes for luxury, indeed
His shows more of a use. If man's propensity is vain,
Vulgar, inane, unworthy; 'tis also vain to bewail it:
Think you to change his skin? 'Twere scale by scale to regraft it
With purer traditions; and who shall amend the amenders?
Nay let be the bubbles, till man grow more solid in mind,
Condemn not the follies: My neighbour's foolery were worse,
Sat he agape listening to Mozart, intently desiring
All that time to be rattling along on a furious engine
In caoutchouc carapace, with a trail of damnable oilstench.
Yea, blame not the pleasures; they are not enough; pleasure only
Makes this life liveable: nor scout that doctrine as unsound:
Consider if mankind from puling birth to bitter death
Knew nought but the sorrows, endured unrespited always
Those agonizing assaults which no flesh wholly can escape;
Were his hunger a pang like his starvation, alievement
Thereof a worse torture, like that which full many die with;
Did love burn his soul as fire his skin; did affections
Rend his will, as Turks rend men with horses asunder;
Were his labour a breathless effort; his slumber occasion
For visiting Furies to repair his temple of anguish;
Were thoughts all mockeries; slow intelligence a deception;
His mind's far ventures, her voyages into the unseen
But horror & terrified nightmare; None then had ever heard
Praise of a Creator, nor seen any Deity worshipped.
'Twas for heav'nly Pleasure that God did first fashion all thing,
Nor with other benefit would holy Religion attract us
Picturing of Paradise. Consult our Lady's Evangel,
Where Saint Luke,—colouring (was it unconsciously, suppose you?)
Fact and fable alike,—contrasts a beggar with a rich man,
And from holding a fool's happiness too greatly in esteem
Makes pleasure eternal the balance of temporal evil,
And the reverse; nor shrinks, ascribing thus to the next world
Vaster inequalities, harsher perversity than this.
You have a soul's paradise, its entry the loop of a needle,
Come hither & prithy tell me what I must do to be saved,
I, that feeding on Ideals in temperat' estate
Seem so wealthy to poor Lazarus, so needy to Dives:
What from my heav'n-bound schooner's dispensable outfit
Has to be cast o'erboard? What see you here that offends you?
These myriad volumes, these tons of music:—allow them
Or disallow? Fiddle and trichord?—Must all be relinquished?
Such toys have not a place in your society; you say
Nobody shall make them, nor made may justly acquire them.
Yet, should a plea be alleged for life's most gracious adornment,
For contemplative art's last transcendental achievement,
Grief's almighty solace, frolicking Mirth's Purification,
For Man's unparagon'd High-poetess, inseparate Muse
Companion, the belov'd most dearly among her sisters,
Revivifier of age, fairest instructor of all grace,
His peacemaker alert with varied sympathy, whose speech
Not to arede and love is wholly to miss the celestial
Consolatries, the divine interpreting of physical life,—
You wince? make exception? allow things musical? admit
So many faked viols, penny trumpets, and amateurish
Performers? Nay, nay! stand firm, for concession is vain.
Music is outmeasurably a barefaced luxury, her plea
Will cover art, (—almost to atone art's vile imitations—)
My Japanese paintings, my fair blue Cheney, Hellenic
Statues and Caroline silver, my beautiful Aldines,
Prized more highly because so few, so fondly familiar,
Need no tongue to defend them against rude hands, that assail them
Only because their name is Rarity; hands insensate,
Rending away pitilessly the fair embroideries of life,
That close-clust'ring man, his comfort pared to the outskirts
Of his discomfort, may share in meanness unenvied.
But what if I unveil the figure that closely beside you
Half hides his Hell-charred skeleton with mysteries obscene,
That foul one, that Moloch of all Utopias, ancient
Poisoner & destroyer-elect of innumerous unborn?

Know you the story of our hive-bees, the yellow honey-makers,
Whose images from of old have haunted Poetry, settling
On the blossoms of man's dream-garden, as on the summer-flow'rs,
Pictures of happy toil, sunny glances, gendering always
Such sweet thoughts, as be by slumbrous music awaken'd?
How all their outward happiness,—that fairy demeanour
Of busy contentment, singing at their work,—is an inborn
Empty habit, the relics of a time when considerate joy
Truly possest their tiny bodies; when golden abundance
Was not a State-kept hoard; when feasts were plentiful indulg'd
With wine well-fermented, or old-stored spicy metheglin:
For they died not then miserably within the second moon
Forgotten, unrespected of all; but slept many winters,
Saw many springs, liv'd, lov'd like men, consciously rejoicing
In Nature's promises, with like hopes and recollections.
Intelligence had brought them Science, Genius enter'd;
Seers and sages arose, great Bees, perfecting among them
Copious inventions, with man's art worthily compared.
Then was a time when that, which haps not in ages of ages,
Strangely befel: they stole from Nature's secresy one key,
Found the hidden motive which works to variety of kind;
And thus came wondrously possest of pow'r to determine
Their children's qualities, habitudes, yea their specialized form
Masculine or feminine to produce, or asexual offspring
Redow'rd and differenced with such alternative organs
As they chose, to whate'er preferential function adapted,
Wax-pocket or honey-bag, with an instinct rightly acordant.

We know well the result, but not what causes effected
Their decision to prefer so blindly the race to the unit,
As to renounce happiness for a problem, a vain abstraction;
Making home and kingdom a vast egg-factory, wherein
Food and life are stor'd up alike, and strictly proportion'd
In loveless labour with mean anxiety. Wondrous
Their reason'd motive, their altruistic obedience
Unto a self-impos'd life-sentence of prison or toil.
Wonder wisely! then ask if these ingenious insects,
(Who made Natur' against her will their activ' acomplice,
And, methodizing anew her heartless system, averted
From their house the torrent of whelming natural increase,)
Are blood-guiltless among their own-born progeny: What skill
Keeps their peace, or what price buys it? Alack! 'tis murder,
Murder again. No worst Oriental despot, assuring
'Gainst birthright or faction or envy his ill-gotten empire,
So decimates his kin, as do these rown-bodied egg-queens
Surprise competitors, and stab their slumbering infants,
Into the wax-cradles replunging their double-edged stings.
Or what a deed of blood some high-day, when the summer hath
Their clammy cells o'erbrim'd, and already ripening orchards
And late flow'rs proclaim that starving winter approacheth,
Nor will again any queen lead forth her swarm, dispeopling
Their strawbuilt citadel; then watch how these busy workers
Cease for awhile from toil; how crowding upon the devoted
Drones they fall; those easy fellows gave some provocation;
Yet 'tis a foul massacre, cold murder of unsuspecting
Life-long companions; and done bloodthirstily:—is not
Exercise of pow'r a delight? have you not a doctrine
That calls duty pleasure? What an if they make merry, saying
‘Lazy-livers, runagates, evil beasts, greedy devourers,
‘Too happy and too long ye've liv'd, unashamed to have outliv'd
‘Your breeders, feeders, warmers and toiling attendants;
‘Had-ye ever been worthy a public good to accomplish,
‘Each had nobly perish'd long-ago. Unneeded, obese ones,
‘Impious encumbrance, whose hope of service is over,
‘Who did not, now can not, assist the community, Ye die!’

My parable may serve. What wisdom man hath attain'd to
Came to him of Nature's goodwill throu' tardy selection:
Should her teaching accuse herself and her method impugn,
I may share with her the reproach of approving as artist
Far other ideals than what seem needful in action.
This difficulty besets our time. If you have an answer,
Write me it, as you keep your salt in savour; or if toil
Grant you an indulgence, here lies fair country, direct then
Your Sabbath excursion westward, and spend a summer-day
Preaching among the lilies what you have preached to the chimneys.