University of Virginia Library

VI. VARIA.

OUR DEAD.

WORK.

OFT have I marvelled, in my sadder mood,
At reading, in the Scriptures of the Jew,
—The race that never yet set hand to do
That which of others done procure they could,
Drawers of water hewers nor of wood,
—Work worst set down of all that makes us rue,
For primal curse that men is born unto
Branded, for chiefest ill life's chiefest good.
Yet that the dictum of the Therapeut,
Of Paul, the Essenian doctor and adépt,
Whose speech for Christ, professing, we accept,
In these our days of vain hysteric heat,
I marvel more, hath borne such scanty fruit,
“Who will not labour, neither let him eat!”

IN MEMORIAM “ROVER”, OB. JULY 2, 1902.

MY little gentle cat, whose eyes no dove
Might ever match for truth and tenderness,
Whose life was one long effort to express,
In thy mute speech, an overflowing love,
The wavering love of women far above,
I cannot think that death thy gentilesse
Hath ended all or that thy fond excess
In this thy ten years' span found scope enough.
I cannot credit that no soul in bond,
No thought there was behind those wistful eyes,
That pleaded for thy dumbness, as one cries
Out from Life's dusk into the dark beyond,
Nor doubt somewhen beyond the stars to find
The soul that lay those looks of thine behind.

MARTYRS OF HISTORY.

WO GÖTTER SIND NICHT ------

“WHEREAS no Gods are, phantasms hold sway”.
Thus he who sang of how the Fates did fill
To Wallenstein the cup of good and ill:
And so say I, in this our meaner day,
When all men worshipped once is passed away
Into oblivion and the idol Will
On our Olympus sole abideth still,
The one base God to whom we bend and pray.
Here, where, in darkness indisseverable,
Love, honour, faith are sunken and no light
Is left to guide us 'midst the utter gloom,
Save that of levins hurtling through the night,
The ways of phantasms of coming doom
Are full; our lives the larvæ haunt of hell.

MENS ANGLICA.

“YOU English have the passion of fair play”,
Quoth France's daintiest living novelist.
How oft hath England what with armoured fist
From the embattled world she rent away
For conscience' sake back given again and aye
Bare thanks for magnanimity hath missed,
Foul thanklessness and hate, that might not list
But wax with benefits, but had to pay!
Yet she forbeareth; for forbearance still
The token is of the superior race
And magnanimity the mark of grace.
Like the Third Henry of the Valois line,
Betrayed she may be, often is, in fine,
But deceived never, rendering good for ill.

TO MAX EBERSTADT IN WILLESDEN CEMETERY.

MY thought to that sad January day
Goes back of half a score of years ago,
When underneath the newly melted snow
The last of that bright wit was laid away,
That eager thought, that with its sunny play
Of love and humour held our hearts aglow,
And we the last sad homage, here below
That loved thee, standing by thy grave, must pay.
Max, shall I never talk with thee again
Of all we loved and none enough but we,
Of Dickens, Dumas, Gautier, (peerless three!)
Liszt, Wagner, Schopenhauer? Woe is me!
How many a part of this sad heart and brain
Of mine is buried in thy grave with thee!

ON THE LIMPOPO. 1900.

“WE, that are Englishmen”, he cried, “shall we
“Run from these dirty Dutchland dogs?” Scarce might
The little band that battled for the right
Against the ambushed foemen, one to three,
Make head, and some began to yield and flee;
When, with these words, into the middle fight
Rushed valiant little Plumer and the flight
Retrieving, of defeat made victory.
Three years have past since this brave deed befell;
Yet, trumpet-like, my heart the tale doth stir
With the assurance that, though heaven and hell
Combine against her, all with England well
Shall be, whilst yet such sons to succour her
She hath as Plumer, Powell, Kitchener.

TRANS ASTRA.

BEYOND the stars! What is beyond the stars?
We question still,—beyond those lamps of gold,
That all things mortal, whether new or old,
Shakspeare as Hafiz, England even as Fars,
Ruin as happiness and peace as wars,
With the like loveless constancy behold,
Each as the other pensive, pale and cold,
Venus as Mercury and Jove as Mars?
No more, grown sadly wise for clearer sight,
We look to find new heavens beyond the blue,
New Paradisal worlds of love and light;
Ourselves resign yet cannot plain on plain
But past the stars to seek of Space inane,
Through Time and Silence stretching still anew.

HERCULIS COLUMNÆ.

BEYOND Gibraltar strait, the narrow seas
'Twixt Spain and Africa, on either hand,
Guarding as 'twere, two mounds heaven-pointing stand
Of stone o'erweathered of the briny breeze,
The Pillars erst so-called of Hercules.
Hither the hero won and having scanned
Waters and skies nor sign of farther strand
Perceiving, for world's end erected these.
We of the Viking breed, for bound nowise
Content illimitable seas and skies,
As Hercules, to take, the world have gone
About, from set of sun to break of dawn,
And for new worlds to conquer still a-strive,
Are like to die of wistfulness, like Clive.

ΠΕΡΙΛΕΙΜ(ΜΑ ΕΘΝΙΚΟΝ.

HOW long shall we the pregnant words o'erhear,
Unheeding, in the Hebrew Writ that stand,
“The poor shall never cease out of the land”?
How long silk purse to fashion of sow's ear
Strive and to cause the dregs of race run clear?
How long with dulcet speech and usance bland
Seek to tame rat and wolf, that understand
No law but force, that know no faith but fear?
When shall we learn that kindness cruelty
Sheer is to him that is his passions' slave,
That from himself there's nothing him can save,
From Death's red furnace-mouth and ruin's maw,
But discipline, enforcing Truth's decree,
And stern fulfilment of an equal law?

LOVE AND REASON.

“A woman, at some time of year, 'tis true,
“Is necessary; but no business make
“Of her.” Thus Fletcher's stout old soldier spake,
In those plain times when all of what all do
Were not ashamed to speak, nor that, from view
By hiding, thought to quell, for prudery's sake,
Which from the very source its root doth take
Of natural life in all things old and new.
Could we but live by sage Leontius' saw
And in our loves unto attemperance hold
And reason keep and understanding's law,
What states had thriven, that fell to ruin red,
What hearts were warm, that long ago are cold,
What faiths and hopes were live, that now are dead!

“SPORT”.

“BUT for amusements, life were tolerable”,
So said the sage; and certes, what in court
And hall and street “amusement” men report
Is weariness for those, past words to tell,
To whom true pleasure is delectable
And highest, noble work; whilst, what for “sport”
Alas! is holden of the baser sort,
What for the nobler sense were direr hell
Than our dumb fellows' pain to see, to hear
The rabbit's scream, the hare's despairing cry,
To meet the dying bird's fast-glazing eye,
Reproachful for its life of harmless cheer
Crushed out by fools, who nothing better know
Than to find pleasure in another's woe?

SPES CRUDELIOR.

EXCEPT for hope, our lives at peace might be.
Worst gift of the sardonic Gods to men,
That of the Nine Beatitudes mak'st ten,
For that of all creation blest is he
Who nought expects, we should not, but for thee,
NOW possible neglect for hopeless THEN;
We should not wallow in the worldly fen,
When with desire despair off-cast might we.
Excepting thou into the fruitless fight
Urgedst us back, we long aside had laid
The hopeless stress toward the mocking light,
That still, the more we follow, more doth fade,
And an eternal harbour for the spright
In Resignation's sanctuaries had made.

FALSE SLAVERY AND TRUE.

MUCH in these prating times of ours hath been
Of slavery discoursed and sung and writ,
But mostly, as meseems, with little wit.
For if (as surely), slavery service mean,
Who is there here but serveth? king and queen,
Peasant and noble, all in service knit
Each unto other, as is well and fit,
So but the wage do to the work convene.
One slavery but there is, of all that be,
Intolerable, making Gods to weep,
The slavery of the wise and passion-free
To those that serve their lusts, of good to ill,
Noble to base. From such a slavery still
God of His grace our kindly England keep!

CATKIND AND HUMANKIND.

MY cat, that sits and sleeps upon my knee,
For sheer intelligence, with men I know
Not only can compare, but, high or low,
Few reach his standard of morality.
That which I do for him he renders me
With love and faith such as few humans show,
Rejoices when I come and when I go,
Cries at my door nor comforted will be.
His spreading ruff, his bushy tail and hair
For vanity sufficing him content:
He does not pine the power with me to share
Nor on the delegation is he bent,
—To harass me who pay for him and care,—
Of representatives to Parliament.

THE CREATION OF WOMAN.

WHEN God an end of making man had wrought,
Flesh of His flesh and blood of His own blood,
He looked upon His work and deemed it good;
Then, overcasting in His pregnant thought
That which in time yet unaccomplished brought
To pass should be, how that His handwork should
Himself defy and in his upstart mood,
Vie with his maker, sighed and knew it naught:
Yet that His glorious work might not undo;
But, casting round for a device whereby
He might forefend Him from His creature new,
Bethought Him to his strivings to apply
A check and woman made, to clog his wings
And hinder him from over-venturings.

RIGHTS AND DUTIES.

LONG of their rights alone have we to men
Enough discoursed; yea, overlong about
To stir their souls to discontent and doubt
Have gone, till all our world is as a fen,
With exhalations foul and meteors vain
Of wish and will fulfilled, a rabble-rout
Of sensual dreams wherein no grass will sprout,
No flowers will blow, fruit ripen neither grain.
Them of their duties, surely, to bespeak
High time it is, of duty,—moon and sun
Which holdeth in their course of day and night,
Which is the star of life for strong and weak,—
And that high prophet's speech, who said, “No right
“Is but ariseth from a duty done.”

NATURA NATURANS.

NATURE concerns herself not much with man.
So but the stream of race run full and free,
All's well for her; the individual she
Leaves for himself to shift as best he can.
“Sleek men, that sleep o' nights”, best fit her plan,
(As Caesar's), such as unconflictingly,
Bound to the car-wheels of the Will-to-Be,
Eat, drink and slumber out their little span.
Of this it is that she, from birth to death,
The human animal still pampereth,
—Those, in whom soul place over body claims,
Rebating,—and that women, who the tools
Immediate are, by which she shapes her aims,
Do for the most part love and tender fools.

ON THE SOUTH AFRICAN HORSE-HOLOCAUST.

OF all these grim three years of grief and gore,
There's nought so stirs the source of tears in me
As the sad myriads from oversea
Of horses brought, to perish without store.
Ah, England of my love, my heart is sore
To think what load of penance laid on thee
In the grim Future, what calamity,
Dearth, famine, pestilence, intestine war,
Must for the wrongs of the true horse atone,
Man's patient, loving slave, for faith inbred
And native virtue worth a world of Boers,
Forsaken on the arid Afric moors,
Offcast to die, despairing and alone,
With the vile vultures hovering round his head.

HILLFOOT AND SUMMIT.

IF there's a good on earth, it is content.
“I never was content, i'faith, not I!
“No hillside was too steep, no peak too high,
“But I must buckle to for the ascent.
“So hath Fate fooled me to my topmost bent;
“For Life is like an Alp; one peak past by,
“Another towers higher 'gainst the sky,
“Between the climber still and his intent.”
How better far to tarry in the vale
And from the base the mountain-top to view!
There, at the least, the sky's not gray, but blue;
The sun is warm and bright, not chill and pale,
As in the summit's over-subtle air;
And one is spared the swink of getting there.

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE.

HERE have we but the Present: with the Past
Nor with the Future our concernments are.
Past is the Past, the Future overfar.
Since that which now is with us will not last,
Why leave unjoyed the life that flits so fast,
Why from the sight of sun and moon and star
Hide in the dark, when all before us are
The deserts of Eternity the vast?
Why with the Past concern us, since Time's plough,
Present and past, the selfsame soil doth ear
And the same fruits of joy and pain doth rear?
Why with the Future? Since foregoing men
Were no wise happier when the Now was Then,
How were we happier, if the Then were Now?

OIGNEZ VILAIN, IL VOUS POINDRA ------

“CARESS a churl”, the ancient adage says,
“And he will cuff you. Cuff him till he yell,
“And he'll caress you”. If you've wit to spell
The meaning of these words, in Life's wild ways
Safe shall you walk and easance have and praise.
But, if you use not as the saw doth tell
And with the vulgar seek by doing well
And love to commerce, you will reap amaze;
Yea, for repentance cause you shall enough
Have and your life long feed on bitter food
Of hatred and contempt; for everywhen
Of one consent 'twas holden of wise men
That everywhere the base unthankful chuff
Ill offices returneth still for good.

JUNE 11, 1903.

SERVIA, thou name-devoted, sorry LAND
OF SERFS to their own lusts, how long with thee,
In the sad name of lawless Liberty,
Shall Gods and men endure? How long, unbanned,
Unblasted of His thunders, shalt thou stand,
In the sheer sight of heaven and earth and sea,
Outraging all that right and truth decree,
With ravin-reddened brows and bloody hand?
Since men forbear thee, since the avenging flame
Of heaven yet laggeth, I, that see and hear
Midmost my dream and shudder, in the name
Of all whose hearts with love and pity stir,
Ban such as thou, thou woman-murderer,
Back to that nether hell from which they came.

ENGLAND'S GOD.

LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY.

TWO WAYS OF LOVE.

MOST love is like a stormy Summer day,
That roars and blusters through the hours of light;
Then, when the slackening sun brings on the night,
Without word spoken, falls and dies away;
Nor is there aught of all its tyrant sway,
Save some few lopped-off boughs, that meets the sight,
And haply some stray bird, struck down in flight;
But all 'tis gone, as if it were not aye.
Yet Love, that's worth the name, is othergate:
Like an October day, more gently fair
And less unstable than the Summer's glare,
It till the night prolongs its sober state;
And when with evening needs it must abate,
Affection's sunset glorifies its air.

CONSCRIPT AND VOLUNTEER.

BE mindful, England, of thy heroes dead,
Who on the sun-dried deserts oversea
Lie, slain of cunning or of treachery.
In all thine isle of mists and manlihead
Scarce was a household but one darling head,
Heedless of aught but truth and loyalty,
Gave unrepining up for love of thee,
Thy wounds to med'cine with its best blood shed.
Be mindful, over all, that these were none
Who by the iron rod of ruthless law
Were driven as sheep into the red blind maw
Of ravening war; nay, each, clerk, peasant, peer,
Of his free will left all that makes life dear,
To die for thee beneath the Afric sun.

“A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS!”

THIS world a cage is (old Bandello says)
Full of an infinite variety
Of fools. Since God made heaven and earth and sea
And setting folly in the place of praise,
The world's brows with a fool's cap bound for bays,
Was ever such a rabble-rout to see
As that which squeaks and gibbers, fancy-free,
In these our Will-intoxicated days?
Midas of old was fain his asses' ears
To hide nor bared his blame for all to know:
But now each coxcomb, when the maggot spurs,
In hall and highway, mart and street and school,
Goes glorying in his shame and crying, “Lo!
“With what a peerless grace I play the fool!”

LUX IN ANIMÂ.

THE sage, sole-sitting in the forest hoar,
Moveless and mute, beneath the banyan-tree,
The world forsworn and all its vanity,
Fixeth his thought upon the unknown shore
Whereto our lives, returning evermore,
Are merged again in the unbottomed sea,
The shoreless ocean of Eternity,
That round our little day doth plash and roar.
Still through the years he sitteth, stark and dumb,
Till there a light ariseth in his soul,
Which, waxing aye, as in a flaming scroll
Graven, discov'reth him Life's secret sum,
Concentred in this word ineffable,
“In thee alone are Gods and Heaven and Hell.”

MY LADY DEAD.

VEDANTASARA.

THE END OF THE ÆON.

THE end of the old order draweth nigh;
The air is thick with signs of coming change;
Forebodings vague through all men's fancies range,
Dim clouds of doubt, that overcast the sky,
And mists of fear, that darken every eye.
In hut and hall, in town and tower and grange,
Men's souls are sick with visions void and strange,
Delirious dreams of those about to die.
No faith there is but is a phantom grown
Of its old self; the Gods by doubt and Fate
Are frozen back to shapes of senseless stone.
All eyes are fixed upon the Future's gate,
For that which is to be, and all things wait
To hail the coming of the Gods unknown.

THE RETURN OF THE GODS.

METHINKETH, yet, our time of toil and pain
Shall pass and all the clouds of care and spleen,
That, since the coming of the Nazarene,
Over the blighted earth have brooding lain,
Shall melt away and life grow glad again.
The sun shall have its primal Pagan sheen
And in a world new-ransomed and serene,
The old frank friendly Gods return to reign.
Back to Time's limbos heaven shall fare and hell;
Zeus shall smile down on us from sapphire skies
And joy have leave once more with men to dwell:
Phoebus shall cheer us with his cloudless sight
And Cytherea with her starry eyes,
And Eros have again his ancient right.

THE RETURN TO BARBARISM.

IN the world's youth, men rule by count of head;
The ignoble many crush the finer few
And all confusion is 'twixt false and true,
Till certain of the wise, the state nigh dead
Reviving, with much toil and much blood shed,
Law's checks impose upon the unruly crew,
And wholesome governance and order due
Grow with the rule of those to ruling bred.
But, in its second childhood, children like,
Authority and discipline that spurn
And in their appetites uncurbed will be,
The world descends again into the dyke
And wallows, swine-like, in the lewd return
To barbarism of democracy.

EDUCATION TRUE AND FALSE.

THE cry in this our dear quack-ridden day
For popular education is, and we,
Whose backs already overburthened be,
Must needs, to educate the castaway
In French and Greek and freehand drawing, pay,
And that each liege his leisures may at gree
Charm with cat-consternating harmony,
Banjo and mandoline must teach him play.
Meanwhile, some minor matters, which of yore
Not without weight and import holden were,
Omitted are from our arbitrament,
Nor to the commons teach we any more
Such toys as reverence for good and fair,
Truth, honour, manners, modesty, content.

THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.

SMALL is our age for better and for worse:
Small in its good, as in its wickedness;
Small in its aim, in its performance less:
Small is its benison and small its curse;
Its art is small and smaller yet its verse.
Small are its men and women, strife and stress,
And small its thoughts, hopes, fears, wish, carefulness;
Nought hath it great, save vanity and purse.
So, with its little sweets, its little strife,
Its little goods and ills, its little spell
Shall it outfool; and when the term assigned
Accomplished is, of this its paper life,
Once flared away in Time's unpitying wind,
Leave but a little ash and an ill smell.

THE NEW INVASION OF THE BARBARIANS.

WHEN I consider this our modern whirl,
Where all the links of life are rent apart
And all things holy, honour, faith, love, art,
Cower at the mercy of the invading churl,
Meseems, the Huns once more I see unfurl
Their banners on the heights, ere to the heart
Of the old world they surge and town and mart
And temple swamp with their resistless swirl;
Save that, to day, no saving streams there come,
Fresh from Life's fountain-head, the world's repair
To work; but from the abysses of Time's sea
The rotting wrecks of race, the ages' scum,
Float up upon the flood and fill the air
With the miasmas of putrescency.

SUPERSTITION.

THOSE who at superstition use to rail
Are blind and deaf to all that is of yore
Recorded of the unrelenting war
Waged by the ruthless Fates against the frail
Sad sons of man,—who, that they might not fail,
Must from sheer sufferance learn the spells that o'er
Their foes unseen prevail;—nor know, this lore
Obscure, they scoff at as an idle tale,
The sum, upon experience's page
Deep-charactered, of thought, in many an age,
Concentred on the endeavour is to find
The natural magic which propitiates
And of their dreadful purpose baulks the blind,
Deaf Gods, the eyeless and the earless Fates.

PROGRESS ------ OVER THE CLIFF.

MESEEMS,—in this our democratic day,
When every wholesome check against abuse,
All lawful reverence and kindly use,
From wiser times inherited, away
Are swept, to give men's lusts the freer play,
When open stands Will's Revolution-sluice
And every dunce full freedom to the deuce
(None other!) has of going his own way,—
The world is like to one that stands, blindfold,
On a cliff-edge, above a raging deep,
What while his fellows hearten him be bold
Nor back a step for sake of safety go,
But, in the name of Progress, o'er the steep
Push on and plunge into the abyss below.

TURK AND SLAV.

NE'ER could I deem the Turk “unspeakable”,
For treason foul he did in blood repress,
Nor wherefore “Slav” should “angel” spell might guess.
Here a folk have we, sober, honourable,
True, clean, brave, honest, all that's fair and well,
And there a race name-doomed, for drunkenness
Theft, sloth, filth, treachery branded and no less
Stained with a soil of lust indelible.
Dark are the days and all the dim To-be
With murk of doubt o'ermisted is for me:
Natheless, I hope to see the conquering Turk,
Regenerate, yet the dregs of Slavdom bring
Back to the one sole necessary thing,
Duty in quiet done and wholesome work.

THE LAST OF THE GODS.

OF all the Gods, for Love my heart is sore,
For Love, that was so frank and fair a thing,
That had so vague and sweet a voice to sing
To our tired sense. Since to the unknown shore,
With all his glamours, he is gone before,
How shall the world again be glad in Spring,
How shall the earth again with blossoming
Be clad or have delight of Summer more?
And yet, and yet, sad heart, be comforted:
Love, of a truth, is not for ever dead;
He sleepeth but for weariness of woe
And sheer despite of this our world of show
And yet will lift again his lovesome head
And take again his arrows and his bow.

THOUGHT AND TRUTH.

FEW for themselves there are who think and fewer
Who an abstráct idea can receive
And follow, unconditioned, who can cleave,
For their life's guidance, unto duty pure
And natural truth, unqualified by lure
Of heaven or threat of hell, but, to believe,
Must clutch at some God's garments nor to leave
Their mythologic crutches can endure.
To harbour on the snow-clad heights of Truth,
Alone with the bare soul, and in the thought
To delve for knowledge of the Must and Ought,
This is the portion of the few, forsooth,
Who in those lands of light can breathe and bear
The coldness of that interstellar air.

PERSONALITY.

MOST of all things which threaten in Death's Must,
We dread the loss of personality.
Though, in our own despite, we know that we,
Once dead, like all things else, must rot and rust
And mingle with the everlasting dust,
That is the stuff of earth and heaven and sea,
Nor evermore return ourselves to be
What once we were, the just as the unjust;
Yet, to the thought of some vague power we cleave,
Beyond the clouds, at will that can unweave
The warp and weft of Nature and of Fate,
Nor can our selves abandon nor forswear
The meeting at the Morning's golden gate
With those who here of us belovéd were.

THE GOD OF THE PAST.

A tyrant slave bound to the wheels of Fate,
Forever forced to be all creatures' bane,
The eternal spring of grief and woe and pain,
The minister of universal hate
And terror, still 'twixt man and man breedbate
And brute and brute to be, for ever fain
His own and all things' misery to ordain,
In His immortal self reduplicate;
The Maker, at whose will the world He made
Was doomed in hell, for faults of Him foresaid,
To burn, Himself self-doomed, in chains self-cast,
With all things' curses heaped, a baleful life
To lead, with all as with Himself at strife;
Such was the God whose power is of the Past.

THE GOD OF THE FUTURE.