 | The Poetry of Real Life |  |
COMMON SENSE.
On every side we hear of “common sense,”
But find it not, or little understood;
If a false estimate of Human Good:
The valueing of things by pounds and pence,
E'en Man's affections and intelligence:
If living not for Life, but Life's mere food,
Be want of common sense, how many would
Be said to want it, who make most pretence!
The poet, whom these men laugh at, hath most
True common sense—a daisy's not worth less,
In his wise view, because it naught hath cost;
He thinks of all the truth and loveliness
Therein, what it cost God, and God doth bless,
That he Life's unbought grace hath not yet lost!
But find it not, or little understood;
If a false estimate of Human Good:
The valueing of things by pounds and pence,
E'en Man's affections and intelligence:
If living not for Life, but Life's mere food,
Be want of common sense, how many would
Be said to want it, who make most pretence!
The poet, whom these men laugh at, hath most
True common sense—a daisy's not worth less,
In his wise view, because it naught hath cost;
He thinks of all the truth and loveliness
Therein, what it cost God, and God doth bless,
That he Life's unbought grace hath not yet lost!
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His ways are ways of pleasantness: for him
The clouds are painted by a hand divine:
For him the sunbeams do not merely shine:
The meagre, cloddy earth, to others dim,
They gild, beyond the pictures painters limn,
In gilded frames, the halls of kings to line,
Till this poor, week-day world seems as a shrine
For God, and he one of the Seraphim!
He hath not “common-sense,” poor fool! and yet
The million leaves that rustle in the wind,
To him are tongues, to God's high praises set!
And glorious sights he sees, where some are blind;
Splendours and triumphs, and not counterfeit,
With trails of light before, and God behind!
The clouds are painted by a hand divine:
For him the sunbeams do not merely shine:
The meagre, cloddy earth, to others dim,
They gild, beyond the pictures painters limn,
In gilded frames, the halls of kings to line,
Till this poor, week-day world seems as a shrine
For God, and he one of the Seraphim!
He hath not “common-sense,” poor fool! and yet
The million leaves that rustle in the wind,
To him are tongues, to God's high praises set!
And glorious sights he sees, where some are blind;
Splendours and triumphs, and not counterfeit,
With trails of light before, and God behind!
Aye, splendours sees he, splendours, not like those
Of earthly triumphs, or the courts of kings:
And treasures, not those which make themselves wings,
To flee away: but treasures which he knows
Alone, who at sight of a flower glows
And thrills, whose heart is set on divine things,
To whom earth's streams are all Castalian springs,
And all its week-day sights high-days and shows!
And think ye, if he wanted “common sense,”
That the great God would give him all this bliss,
Oh, ye, whose souls are set on pounds and pence?
No! he hath common sense—yea! his sense is
God's common sense—divine intelligence
Of Him and of his works, and all that's His
Of earthly triumphs, or the courts of kings:
And treasures, not those which make themselves wings,
To flee away: but treasures which he knows
Alone, who at sight of a flower glows
And thrills, whose heart is set on divine things,
To whom earth's streams are all Castalian springs,
And all its week-day sights high-days and shows!
And think ye, if he wanted “common sense,”
That the great God would give him all this bliss,
Oh, ye, whose souls are set on pounds and pence?
No! he hath common sense—yea! his sense is
God's common sense—divine intelligence
Of Him and of his works, and all that's His
| The Poetry of Real Life | |