Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Two striplings in the ancient time
Between themselves agreed to climb
The Holy Mount; perchance they'd see
Something of life's great mystery,
Through the smoke or through the fires
That hill's Tartarean throat respires.
Forthwith they fixed with leathern thong
Their brazen sandals high and strong,
And bent their knees to the ascent
A league or two, when overspent
And breathless, one of them cried out,
‘Comrade, hold! I'm not so stout
As thus to urge for long; I'll call
The sun to stay awhile his fall,
And give us time to rest us here!’
So with a self-complacent peer
Adown the slope, he stretched himself
Like one who would give all his pelf
For a snug retreat and a full wine-cup,

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And would say to himself, I shall drink it up,
I deserve it all, I have done enough,
Labour without a fee's all stuff!
The other adventurer looked up still,
Scanning and measuring all the hill;
Lost he seem'd in expectation,
Living on hope's immaterial ration;
But now, while nursing his left foot
As if it were sick, cried the first, ‘Let's put
A great stone here to mark the spot
Before we start again; why not?’
His comrade half indignant rose
And clipt a snail by its shrinking nose
Between his finger and his thumb,
And with a grand flourish derisive and dumb,
Placed it for the monument,
Then set himself to the ascent.
So now again for an hour or so
Abreast like loving friends they go;
Wading scoria, vaulting creeks
Where the sluggish lava reeks,
When suddenly he who before had stopt,
In a fainting fit of laughter dropt.
‘Ha! my comrade bold,’ quoth he,
‘I have been thinking, ha, ha, he!
I have been thinking, that a cat,
Or a squirrel, a weasel, or even a rat,
Could climb this hill much better than we!

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What fools we are one drop of sweat
To lose in such a monstrous fret,
Making a toil of a pleasure. No!
Let's lie down here an hour or so,
Until the sun gets round the hill.’
‘Nay!’ cries his companion, ‘if you will
Rest here, you shall rest alone, not I,
And long enough before you spy
The top, I'm there.' With that he left
The weak one seeking a shady cleft.

Onward sped he through the glare,
With naked breast and loosened hair;
Onward still he won his way
And touched the sky ere close of day.

Next morn a rabble with horn-books, beads,
Bells, drums, masks, and other small needs
For mumming and make-believe, descried
The laggard slumbering on his side.
He was not half-way up the hill,
And yet a great way above them still;
Something they wanted to gabble about,
And there was he! so they raised a shout,
Wonderful!—a mere boy! oh,
Such love of science and such a flow
Of perseverance, courage, all
Supposable virtues great and small!

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Doubtless he hath toiled all night
Without either supper or lantern-light,
And now returns in time to greet
Our wise-heads with the hill's last feat.
Mighty traveller! They shout,
Till he starts and wakes and looks about,
Rubbing his eyes and wondering why
They stare at him so, stare and cry,
Mighty traveller! But soon
He saw it was indeed full moon,
Full tide I rather ought to say
For him and his affairs that day.
—'Tis true he had been outstripped far,
But why should that be the smallest bar;
His comrade, the true conqueror, he
Is just too high for them to see,—
Down steps Sir Magnanimity
With air coquettish, pleased and shy,
The mummers raise him shoulder high,
And with their awkward backs round bent,
The youth of genius smiles content.
On to the temple where all stuff
Useless elsewhere shares the puff
Of incense now they carry him,
With damnable clatter and chant of hymn;
Cobbler, patcher, quidnunc, drone,
‘Idea-less girl,’ and long-tongued crone,
Running together, a quack never lacks

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Bolstering from bolstered quacks,
‘Claw me—claw thee,’ suits both the backs!
But it is, good sooth, a stint of labour
To dance and leap, with pipe and tabor
Stunning the wide-mouthed beholders,
With a false god on one's shoulders;
So they seat him on the shrine
And aver he looks divine,
Although at first he feels but queer,
And now and then begins to fear
His honours may be overdone,
Even if he be Apollo's son;
When lo, like Moses from Sinai,
The other traveller stands close by!
He had seen the moon's eclipse
Through the fire from Etna's lips,
With Orion had he spoken,
His fast with honey-dew had broken,
Seen the nether world unveiled,
Nor had fainted nor had quailed:
And here he stands amidst the throng,
On his tongue a wise sweet song,
In his hand a laurel fair,
An opal rainbow round his hair,
Truth reigning from his great mild eye,
And in his heart humility.
Cease their din the rabble-rout,
And mutter and whisper all about,

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‘What's his name, and whence comes he?
What may here his business be?
Do you understand his speech?
He seems at once to sing and preach!’
The cobblers, patchers, quidnuncs, drones,
‘Idea-less girls’ and long-tongued crones,
Nod and wink and say, ‘So, so,
We've chosen our Genius, and want no mo’,
One like ourselves we've chosen, one
Who has not with such haste begun,
One who can sing and who can preach,
Who can whistle as well as teach,
But one who is not such a dunce
As to addle our heads by them all at once!’
With that they drive him from the place,
They raise their hands against his face,
They will not suffer his eyes' sharp light,
They mock him and drive him into night.
O saddest sight of all, they steal
The laurel when his senses reel,
And give it to their favourite!

But whether the history endeth here,
Doth not certainly appear:
Time bears a wallet at his back,
And very willingly ‘gives the sack’

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To much that glitters proud and fine;
While the shoots that nature loves ne'er tine,
But grow and grow, and the birds of the air
Find nourishment and harbour there.