 | Poems (1867) |  |
340
THE SATURDAY REVIEW.
“Learn to live, and live and learn,”
In the days when I used to go to school,
Would always pass for an excellent rule;
But now it's grown a serious concern
The number of things I've had to unlearn
Since first I began the page to turn
Of The Saturday Review.
For once (I believe) I believed in truth
And love, and the hundred foolish things
One sees in one's dreams and believes in one's youth—
In Angels with curls, and in Angels with wings,
In Saints, and Heroes, and Shepherds too;
The pictures that David and Virgil drew
So sweetly, I thought were taken
From very life, but now I find
A Shepherd is but an uncouth Hind,
Songless, soulless, from time out of mind,
Who has cared for nothing but bacon.
In the days when I used to go to school,
Would always pass for an excellent rule;
But now it's grown a serious concern
The number of things I've had to unlearn
Since first I began the page to turn
Of The Saturday Review.
For once (I believe) I believed in truth
And love, and the hundred foolish things
One sees in one's dreams and believes in one's youth—
In Angels with curls, and in Angels with wings,
In Saints, and Heroes, and Shepherds too;
The pictures that David and Virgil drew
So sweetly, I thought were taken
341
A Shepherd is but an uncouth Hind,
Songless, soulless, from time out of mind,
Who has cared for nothing but bacon.
And though to confess it may well seem strange,
When I had them by scores and dozens
(I was young, to be sure, and all things change),
I really have liked my cousins,
And schoolfellows too, and can bring to mind
Some uncles of mine who were truly kind,
And aunts who were far from crusty;
And even my country neighbours too
Didn't seem by half such a tedious crew
As now I find they must be.
When I had them by scores and dozens
(I was young, to be sure, and all things change),
I really have liked my cousins,
And schoolfellows too, and can bring to mind
Some uncles of mine who were truly kind,
And aunts who were far from crusty;
And even my country neighbours too
Didn't seem by half such a tedious crew
As now I find they must be.
And I used to think it might be kind,
In the world's great marching order,
To help the poor stragglers left behind,
Halt and maimed, and broken and blind,
On their way to a distant border;
Not to speak of the virtuous poor, I thought
There was here and there a sinner
Might be mended a little, though not of the sort
One would think of asking to dinner.
But now I find that no one believes
In Ragged Children, or Penitent Thieves,
Or Homeless Homes, but a few Old Maids
Who have tried and failed at all other trades,
And who take to these things for recreation
In their aimless life's dull Long Vacation.
In the world's great marching order,
To help the poor stragglers left behind,
Halt and maimed, and broken and blind,
On their way to a distant border;
Not to speak of the virtuous poor, I thought
There was here and there a sinner
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One would think of asking to dinner.
But now I find that no one believes
In Ragged Children, or Penitent Thieves,
Or Homeless Homes, but a few Old Maids
Who have tried and failed at all other trades,
And who take to these things for recreation
In their aimless life's dull Long Vacation.
And so as we're going along with the Priest
And Levite (the roads are more dry in the East)
We need have no hesitation,
When the mud is lying about so thick,
To scatter a little and let it stick
To the coat of the Good Samaritan, used
To be spattered, battered, blackened, and bruised;
These sort of people don't mind it the least—
Why, bless you, it's their vocation!
And Levite (the roads are more dry in the East)
We need have no hesitation,
When the mud is lying about so thick,
To scatter a little and let it stick
To the coat of the Good Samaritan, used
To be spattered, battered, blackened, and bruised;
These sort of people don't mind it the least—
Why, bless you, it's their vocation!
Yet sometimes I've thought it a little strange,—
When good people get such very hard change,
In return for their kindly halfpence,
When the few who are grieved for sorrows and sins
Are bowled to the earth like wooden pins,
When to care for the heathen, or pity the slave,
Sets a man down for fool or knave,
With The Saturday in its sapience,—
Things that are mean and base and low
Are checked by never a word or blow;
The gaping crowds that go in hope
To see Blondin slip from the cruel rope
Tightened or slack, and come away
In trust of more luck another day,
Meet never a line's reproving;
Heenan and Sayers may pound and thwack
Each other blue and yellow and black,
And only get a pat on the back
From the power that keeps all moving.
When good people get such very hard change,
In return for their kindly halfpence,
When the few who are grieved for sorrows and sins
Are bowled to the earth like wooden pins,
343
Sets a man down for fool or knave,
With The Saturday in its sapience,—
Things that are mean and base and low
Are checked by never a word or blow;
The gaping crowds that go in hope
To see Blondin slip from the cruel rope
Tightened or slack, and come away
In trust of more luck another day,
Meet never a line's reproving;
Heenan and Sayers may pound and thwack
Each other blue and yellow and black,
And only get a pat on the back
From the power that keeps all moving.
And I sometimes think, if this same Review,
And the world a little longer too
Should last, will the violets come out blue?
Will the rose be red, and will lovers woo
In the foolish way that they used to do?
Will doves in the summer woodlands coo,
And the nightingales mourn without asking leave?
Will the lark have an instinct left to cleave
The sunny air with her song and her wing?—
Perhaps we may move to abolish spring;
And now that we've grown so hard to please,
We may think that we're bored by the grass and the trees;
The moon may be proved a piece of cheese,
Or an operatic delusion.
Fathers and Mothers may have to go,
Brothers and Sisters be voted slow,
Christmas a tax that one's forced to pay,
And Heaven itself but an out-of-the-way
Old-fashioned place that has had its day,
That one wouldn't a residence choose in.
And the world a little longer too
Should last, will the violets come out blue?
Will the rose be red, and will lovers woo
In the foolish way that they used to do?
Will doves in the summer woodlands coo,
And the nightingales mourn without asking leave?
Will the lark have an instinct left to cleave
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Perhaps we may move to abolish spring;
And now that we've grown so hard to please,
We may think that we're bored by the grass and the trees;
The moon may be proved a piece of cheese,
Or an operatic delusion.
Fathers and Mothers may have to go,
Brothers and Sisters be voted slow,
Christmas a tax that one's forced to pay,
And Heaven itself but an out-of-the-way
Old-fashioned place that has had its day,
That one wouldn't a residence choose in.
And though so easily learnt, and brief
Is the form our new faith's put in,
When we've said, “I believe in a Round of Beef,
And live by a Leg of Mutton,”
We come to another region of facts,
That are met quite as well by the Gospel and Acts
As by any teaching that's newer—
Life has its problems hard to clear,
And its knots too stiff to be cut by the sneer
Of the sharpest, smartest Reviewer.
Is the form our new faith's put in,
When we've said, “I believe in a Round of Beef,
And live by a Leg of Mutton,”
We come to another region of facts,
That are met quite as well by the Gospel and Acts
As by any teaching that's newer—
Life has its problems hard to clear,
And its knots too stiff to be cut by the sneer
Of the sharpest, smartest Reviewer.
October, 1863.
| Poems (1867) | |