Poems. Volume 3

TO THE COMIC SPIRIT

Sword of Common Sense!—Our surest gift: the sacred chainOf man to man: firm earth for trustIn structures vowed to permanence:—Thou guardian issue of the harvest brain!Implacable perforce of just;With that good treasure in defence,Which is our gold crushed out of joy and painSince first men planted foot and hand was king:Bright, nimble of the marrow-nerveTo wield thy double edge, retortOr hold the deadlier reserve,And through thy victim’s weapon sting:Thine is the service, thine the sportThis shifty heart of ours to huntAcross its webs and round the many a ringWhere fox it is, or snake, or mingled seedsOccasion heats to shape, or the poor smokeStruck from a puff-ball, or the troughster’s grunt;—Once lion of our desert’s trodden weeds;And but for thy straight finger at the yoke,Again to be the lordly paw,Naming his appetites his needs,Behind a decorative cloak:Thou, of the highest, the unwritten LawWe read upon that building’s architraveIn the mind’s firmament, by men upraisedWith sweat of blood when they had quitted caveFor fellowship, and rearward looked amazed,Where the prime motive gapes a lurid jaw,Thou, soul of wakened heads, art armed to warn,Restrain, lest we backslide on whence we sprang,Scarce better than our dwarf beginning shoot,Of every gathered pearl and blossom shorn;Through thee, in novel wiles to win disguise,Seen are the pits of the disruptor, seenHis rebel agitation at our root:Thou hast him out of hawking eyes;Nor ever morning of the clangYoung Echo sped on hill from hornIn forest blown when scent was keenOff earthy dews besprinkling bladesOf covert grass more merrily rangThe yelp of chase down alleys green,Forth of the headlong-pouring glades,Over the dappled fallows wild away,Than thy fine unaccented scornAt sight of man’s old secret brute,Devout for pasture on his prey,Advancing, yawning to devour;With step of deer, with voice of flute,Haply with visage of the lily flower.Let the cock crow and ruddy mornHis handmaiden appear!  Youth claims his hour.The generously ludicrousEspouses it.  But see we sons of day,Off whom Life leans for guidance in our fight,Accept the throb for lord of us;For lord, for the main central lightThat gives direction, not the eclipse;Or dost thou look where niggard Age,Demanding reverence for wrinkles, whipsA tumbled top to grind a wolf’s worn tooth;—Hoar despot on our final stage,In dotage of a stunted Youth;—Or it may be some venerable sage,Not having thee awake in him, compactOf wisdom else, the breast’s old tempter trips;Or see we ceremonial state,Robing the gilded beast, exactAbjection, while the crackskull name of FateIs used to stamp and hallow printed fact;A cruel corner lengthens up thy lips;These are thy game wherever men engage:These and, majestic in a borrowed shape,The major and the minor potentate,Creative of their various ape;—The tiptoe mortals triumphing to writeUpon a perishable pageAn inch above their fellows’ height;—The criers of foregone wisdom, who imposeIts slough on live conditions, much for the greedOf our first hungry figure wide agape;—Call up thy hounds of laughter to their run.These, that would have men still of men be foes,Eternal fox to prowl and pike to feed;Would keep our life the whirly poolOf turbid stuff dishonouring History;The herd the drover’s herd, the fool the fool,Ourself our slavish self’s infernal sun:These are the children of the heart untaughtBy thy quick founts to beat abroad, by theeUntamed to tone its passions under thought,The rich humaneness reading in thy fun.Of them a world of coltish heels for schoolWe have; a world with driving wrecks bestrewn.’Tis written of the Gods of human mould,Those Nectar Gods, of glorious stature hewnTo quicken hymns, that they did hear, incensed,Satiric comments overbold,From one whose part was by decreeThe jester’s; but they boiled to feel him bite.Better for them had they with Reason fencedOr smiled corrected!  They in the great Gods’ mightTheir prober crushed, as fingers flea.Crumbled Olympus when the sovereign sireHis fatal kick to Momus gave, albeitMen could behold the sacred Mount aspire,The Satirist pass by on limping feet.Those Gods who saw the ejected laugh alightBelow had then their last of airy glee;They in the cup sought Laughter’s drownèd sprite,Fed to dire fatness off uncurbed conceit.Eyes under saw them waddle on their Mount,And drew them down; to flattest earth they rolled.This know we veritable.  O Sage of Mirth!Can it be true, the story men recountOf the fall’n plight of the great Gods on earth?How they being deathless, though of human mould,With human cravings, undecaying frames,Must labour for subsistence; are a bandWhom a loose-cheeked, wide-lipped gay cripple leadsAt haunts of holiday on summer sand:And lightly he will hint to one that heedsNames in pained designation of them, namesEnsphered on blue skies and on black, which twirlOur hearing madly from our seeing dazed,Add Bacchus unto both; and he entreats(His baby dimples in maternal chapsRunning wild labyrinths of line and curl)Compassion for his masterful Trombone,Whose thunder is the brass of how he blazedOf old: for him of the mountain-muscle feats,Who guts a drum to fetch a snappish groan:For his fierce bugler horning onset, whomA truncheon-battered helmet caps . . .The creature is of earnest mienTo plead a sorrow darker than the tomb.His Harp and Triangle, in tone subdued,He names; they are a rayless red and white;The dawn-hued libertine, the gibbous prude.And, if we recognize his Tambourine,He asks; exhausted names her: she has becomeA globe in cupolas; the blowziest queenOf overflowing dome on dome;Redundancy contending with the tight,Leaping the dam!  He fondly calls, his girl,The buxom tripper with the goblet-smile,Refreshful.  O but now his brows are dun,Bunched are his lips, as when distilling guile,To drop his venomous: the Dame of dames,Flower of the world, that honey one,She of the earthly rose in the sea-pearl,To whom the world ran ocean for her kiss;He names her, as a worshipper he names,And indicates with a contemptuous thumb.The lady meanwhile lures the mob, alikeOgles the bursters of the horn and drum.Curtain her close! her open armsHave suckers for beholders: she to this?For that she could not, save in fury, hearA sharp corrective utterance flickHer idle manners, for the laugh to strikeBeauty so breeding beauty, without peerAbove the snows, among the flowers?  She reapsThis mouldy garner of the fatal kick?Gross with the sacrifice of Circe-swarms,Astarte of vile sweets that slay, malign,From Greek resplendent to Phoenician foul,The trader in attractions sinks, all brineTo thoughts of taste; is ’t love?—bark, dog! hoot, owl!And she is blushless: ancient worship weeps.Suicide Graces dangle down the charmsSprawling like gourds on outer garden-heaps.She stands in her unholy oily leerA statue losing feature, weather-sickMid draggled creepers of twined ivy sere.The curtain cried for magnifies to see!—We cannot quench our one corrupting glance:The vision of the rumour will not flee.Doth the Boy own such Mother?—shoot his dartTo bring her, countless as the crested deeps,Her subjects of the uncorrected heart?False is that vision, shrieks the devotee;Incredible, we echo; and anewLike a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps.Low humourist this leader seems; perchancePitched from his University career,Adept at classic fooling.  Yet of mouldHuman those Gods were: deathless too:On high they not as meditatives paced:Prodigiously they did the deeds of flesh:Descending, they would touch the lowest here:And she, that lighted form of blue and gold,Whom the seas gave, all earth, all earth embraced;Exulting in the great hauls of her mesh;Desired and hated, desperately dear;Most human of them was.  No more pursue!Enough that the black story can be told.It preaches to the eminently placed:For whom disastrous wreckage is nigh due,Paints omen.  Truly they our throbber had;The passions plumping, passions playing leech,Cunning to trick us for the day’s good cheer.Our uncorrected human heart will swellTo notions monstrous, doings madAs billows on a foam-lashed beach;Borne on the tides of alternating heats,Will drug the brain, will doom the soul as well;Call the closed mouth of that harsh final PowerTo speak in judgement: Nemesis, the fell:Of those bright Gods assembled, offspring sour;The last surviving on the upper seats;As with men Reason when their hearts rebel.Ah, what a fruitless breeder is this heart,Full of the mingled seeds, each eating each.Not wiser of our mark than at the start,It surges like the wrath-faced father SeaTo countering winds; a force blind-eyed,On endless rounds of aimless reach;Emotion for the source of pride,The grounds of faith in fixityAbove our flesh; its cravings urging speech,Inspiring prayer; by turns a lumpSwung on a time-piece, and by turnsA quivering energy to jumpFor seats angelical: it shrinks, it yearns,Loves, loathes; is flame or cinders; lastly cloudCapping a sullen crater: and mankindWe see cloud-capped, an army of the dark,Because of thy straight leadership declined;At heels of this or that delusive spark:Now when the multitudinous races pressElbow to elbow hourly more,A thickened host; when now we hear aloudLife for the very life imploreA signal of a visioned mark;Light of the mind, the mind’s discourse,The rational in graciousness,Thee by acknowledgement enthroned,To tame and lead that blind-eyed forceIn harmony of harness with the crowd,For payment of their dues; as yet disowned,Save where some dutiful lone creature, vowedTo holy work, deems it the heart’s intent;Or where a silken circle views it cowled,The seeming figure of concordance, bentOn satiating tyrant lustOr barren fits of sentiment.Thou wilt not have our paths befouledBy simulation; are we vile to view,The heavens shall see us clean of our own dust,Beneath thy breezy flitting wing:They make their mirror upon faces true;And where they win reflection, lucid heaveThe under tides of this hot heart seen through.Beneficently wilt thou clipAll oversteppings of the plumed,The puffed, and bid the masker strip,And into the crowned windbag thrust,Tearing the mortal from the vital thing,A lightning o’er the half-illumed,Who to base brute-dominion cleave,Yet mark effects, and shun the flash,Till their drowsed wits a beam conceive,

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