Reverberations :: :: University of Virginia Library

Nothing know I of forms of chivalry,
And nothing heed the sarcenet rhetoric
Of lady-love, of tourney, bower and hall.
To me, a man hewn out of solid rock,
And very meet to brave the buffeting
Of the strong winds and waves of salt abuse,
Such honey-dainty thoughts are of no worth.
The worn-out poetry of antique times
I fling aside, as gladly as the rock
Throws off the flowering herb it cherished once,
In favour of a new and larger growth.
Landlords of gentle birth and noble race,
Stars, ribands, coronets, and pedigrees,
Have had their life-blood drained, and ought to die.
Who wisely treats the land shall be to me
True landlord, holding heavenly title-deeds,

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Who makes his life a life of gentleness,
True gentleman I own: who compasses
The secret of the sun and flying cloud,
Or sends the amber-spirit with lightning feet,
Our modern Mercury, quivering round the world,
Is nobler than the noblest nobleman.
I speak as one who has been sent by Heaven
To forge on the rough anvil of the Time
A thought and turn it into golden fact,
So making thought a thing. For 'tis my faith
That he whose presence glorified the world,
Gave us the law of Progress as of Love.
I therefore take my stand on either law,
And, in the name of Progress and of Love,
Would claim the emancipation of all trade.
The winds, the waves, the sunbeams, and the soils,
Should all be free to minister to all.
Nations, like stars, harmoniously disposed,
Should balance one another, seeking still
Their centre through the eternal law of Love.
Only by commerce, free as the great space,
Can all the nations be bound up in one,
Each giving what the others need. I see
The fairest issues in enfranchised trade,
War dispossessed of the wise heart of man,
Virtue above all virtue practised now,
Law likest Nature's ancient ordinance,
Art over and beyond all art now known.
Labour shall then be privilege and joy,
Worship shall utter free and festive speech,

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While, like a slave released, the earth shall yield
The grateful nations lavish interchange
Of all the fruits that love the sun and breeze,
In glorious Orient lands or Western climes
Of mellower radiance. In those happy days,
Men shall live starry lives, yet not forsake
Material fact, on which all life is built;
And from the ancient hills of the universe,
As from earth's lowlier heights, when day goes down
In the grey evening of the world, shall fall
Beautiful shadows on the souls of men,
To prophecy of the large light that shines
Freely where all free souls are free to Go

II. (SARTOR RESARTUS.)

I do not know that there was ever yet
Such year as this eventful one of ours;
In all time past I cannot find its like,
And with uplifted hand athwart mine eyes,
And brow contracted, gazing steadfastly
Through vistaed centuries, I can see no year
Co-featured or conformable therewith.
For first we have undeified all life,
Have banished God from his own universe,
Have, in old dialect, forgotten God.
And secondly, we have made gods for us

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Of them that are no gods—a twofold ill,
Bringing a twofold curse—Idolatry
And Irreligion, with despair and death.
Look round, and ask the Heaven and ask the Earth
If ever they beheld the like before?
There is no earnestness in any man,
No simple bearing and no true discourse
In social life; no prayer, no prophet's speech,
No fellowship, no friendship, and no love;
No faith in Nature's strong regalities,
No graceful deeds and no fair sanctitudes.
For chivalry we have silk-soldiership,
For kingliness we have mock-royalty,
For Church we have a palsied Christendom,
For people a loud-braying populace.
My brothers! this is fearful verity.
We must awake from sleep and see the light,
Must quit this trembling supersoil of lies,
To stand upon the mother-earth of fact.
For this huge body we must get a soul,
A true informing soul, a heavenly soul;
Workers and craftsmen must we be of God,
Must out of this dull earth—this common dust—
Create a paradise, and mould a man
Who shall become a living soul. Good stint
Of labour is there for the brave to do:—
To build and consecrate a life to God,
Reared like a temple on the holy ground
And on the everlasting hills of truth,
Wherein there shall be offered sacrifice

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Of Godlike deeds, and thoughts like thoughts of Christ,
Wherein there shall be justice had for love,
Be chieftaincy of coroneted hearts,
And sceptred souls, the royal blood of Heaven,
Writing their names and titles in their deeds,
Divine puissances, heroic shapes,
True representatives of the Most High,
With sunward front and bold articulate speech,
Under whose guidance shall the sons of men
Go forth to war with violence and fraud,
And conquer them by love and gentleness.
Meanwhile till they shall come whom we predict,
With patient heart, calm will, and active brain,
Will I in silence and in solitude
Kneel in the catholic church of earth and heaven,
And think of Time and of Eternity,
And Him whose home it is, and love mankind,
And love each gentle heart, and love the stars,
And the huge ocean shouting to the moon.

III. (WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.)

A lover of the hills and lakes am I,
And of the Spirit that made them and me;
And therefore do I love my brother-man,
Striving with oracles from Rydal Mount,
And prophecies from grave Winandermere,

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To lead him so to link his days and years,
That life continuous and integral
Might flow, as John, in the Apocalypse,
Beheld the river flow from God's white throne.
Reverence, Humility, Religion, Love,
And Kingliness ecclesiastical,
With natural sanctities of time and place,
I preach and I uphold. Alone I stand,
Survivor soul of my companions dear,
On Life's high mountain-top, whence I behold
Suns yet unrisen, manifest in clouds
Of purple light and light incarnadine,
Light golden, and blood-radiant, sprinkling space.
As Moses on the hill of Pisgah saw
Broad lands, though disinherited of them;
So, underneath the morning red, I see
The splendours that shall come, and die content.