Assuredly a lively scene
SCENE II
(Venice: The Public Garden )
DIPSYCHUS
Assuredly a lively scene:
And ah, how pleasant, something green,
With circling heavens, one perfect rose,
Each smoother patch of water glows
Hence to where, o'er the full tide's face,
We see the Palace and the Place
And the white dome. Beauteous but hot.
Where in the meantime is the spot,
My favourite, where by masses blue
And white cloud-folds, I follow true
The great Alps, rounding grandly o'er,
Huge arc, to the Dalmatian shore?
SPIRIT
This rather stupid place today,
'Tis true, is most extremely gay,
And rightly — the Assunzione
Was always a gran' funzione .
DIPSYCHUS
What is this persecuting voice that haunts me?
What, whence, of whom? How am I to discover?
Myself or not myself? My own bad thoughts
Or some external agency at work
To lead me who knows whither?
SPIRIT
What lots of boats beside us plying,
What lots of pretty girls, too, hieing
Hither and thither; coming, going;
And with what satisfaction showing
To our male eyes unveiled and bare
The exuberant blackness of their hair,
Dark eyes, rich tints, and sundry graces
Of classic pure Italian faces.
DIPSYCHUS
Off, off; oh heaven, depart, depart, depart.
Oh heaven! the toad that whispered in Eve's ear
Whispered no dream so dangerous as this.
SPIRIT
A perfect show of girls I see it is;
Ah, what a charming leg; ye deities!
In that attraction as one fancies
Italy's not so rich as France is;
In Paris —
DIPSYCHUS
Cease, cease, cease,
I will not hear this. Go. —
SPIRIT
Eh?
What do the pretty verses say?
Ah comme je regrette
mon bras si dodu,
Ma jambe bien faite
et le temps perdu
et le temps perdu.
'Tis here, I see, the practice too
For damsels eager to be lovered
To go about with arms uncovered.
And doubtless there's a special charm
In the full round voluptuous arm.
At Paris, I was saying —
DIPSYCHUS
Ah me, me,
Clear stars above, thou roseate westward sky,
Take up my being into yours; assume
My sense to know you only; steep my brain
In your essential purity; or, great Alps
That wrapping round your heads in solemn clouds
Seem sternly to sweep past our vanities,
Lead me with you — take me away, preserve me.
— Ah, if it must be, look then, foolish eyes;
Listen, fond ears; but oh poor mind stand fast!
SPIRIT
At Paris, at the Opera, —
In the Coulisses — but ah, aha!
There was a glance: — I saw you spy it —
So! shall we follow suit and try it?
Pooh! what a goose you are! quick, quick.
This hesitation makes me sick.
You simpleton! what's your alarm?
She'd merely thank you for your arm.
DIPSYCHUS
Sweet thing! ah well! but yet I am not sure.
Ah no. I think she did not mean it. No.
SPIRIT
Plainly, unless I much mistake,
She likes a something in your make:
She turned her head, another glance;
She really gives you every chance.
DIPSYCHUS
Ah pretty thing — well well. Yet should I go?
Alas, I cannot say! What should I do?
SPIRIT
What should you do? well, that is funny!
I think you are supplied with money.
DIPSYCHUS
No, no; it may not be. I could, I would
And yet I would not, cannot. To what end?
SPIRIT
Trust her for teaching — go but you,
She'll quickly show you what to do.
Well, well! it's too late now — they're gone;
Some wiser youth is coming on.
Really I could be in a passion
To see you treat in that odd fashion,
As sweet a little thing as e'er
I saw since first I learnt to stare.
DIPSYCHUS
Ah me —
O hateful, hateful, hateful! to the Hotel!
SCENE III
(The Quays )
DIPSYCHUS
O hateful, hateful, hateful! to the Hotel.
SPIRIT
Pooh, what the devil! what's the harm?
I only bid you take her arm.
DIPSYCHUS
And I half yielded! O unthinking I!
O weak weak fool! O God how quietly
Out of our better into our worse selves
Out of a true world which our reason knew
Into a false world which our fancy makes
We pass and never know — O weak weak fool.
SPIRIT
Well, if you don't wish, why, you don't.
Leave it! but that's just what you won't.
There is nothing that your fancy tickles so
As this at which your conscience stickles so;
Come now! How many times per diem
Are you not hankering to try 'em?
How often are you not pursuing
The thought of how 'twould feel in doing?
DIPSYCHUS
O moon and stars forgive! And thou clear heaven
Look pureness back into me. Oh great God,
Why, why in wisdom and in grace's name,
And in the name of saints and saintly thoughts
Of mothers and of sisters and chaste wives,
And angel woman-faces we have seen
And angel woman-spirits we have guessed,
And innocent sweet children, and pure love,
Why did I ever one brief moment's space
To this insidious lewdness lend chaste ears
Or parley with this filthy Belial?
O were it that vile questioner that loves
To thrust his fingers into right and wrong
And before proof knows nothing — or the fear
Of being behind the world — which is, the wicked.
SPIRIT
Oh yes, mere ignorance must mis-state it
Now this, now that way overrate it,
First canonise, then reprobate it,
And in all kinds exaggerate it.
Yes! dream of raptures whelmed in shame
Voluptuous joys, whose very name
Is curst by after keen self-blame. —
O yes, you dream of sin and shame —
Trust me — it leaves one much the same.
— 'Tisn't Elysium any more
Than what comes after or before:
But heavens! as innocent a thing
As picking strawberries in spring.
You think I'm anxious to allure you —
My object is much more to cure you.
With the high amatory-poetic
My temper's no way sympathetic;
To play your pretty woman's fool
I hold but fit for boys from school.
Come now it's mainly your temptation
To think the thing a revelation,
A mystic mouthful that will give
Knowledge and death, — none know and live;
I tell you plainly that it brings
Some ease, but the emptiness of things
(That one old sermon Earth still preaches
Until we practise what she teaches)
Is the sole lesson that you'll learn by it —
Still you undoubtedly should try it.
" Try all things", bad and good, no matter,
You can't till then hold fast the latter.
If not, this itch will stick and vex you
Your live-long days till death unsex you —
Hide in your bones for aught I know
And with you to the next world go:
Briefly — you cannot rest, I'm certain,
Until your hand has drawn the curtain:
Once known the little lies behind it,
You'll go your way, and never mind it.
Ill's only cure is, never doubt it,
To do — and think no more about it. —
DIPSYCHUS
Strange talk, strange words. Ah me, I cannot say.
Could I believe it even of us men
That once the young exuberance drawn off
The liquor would run clear; that once appeased
The vile inquisitive wish, brute appetite fed,
The very void that ebbing flood had left
From purer sources would be now refilled;
That to rank weeds of rainy spring mowed off
Would a green wholesome aftermath succeed;
That the empty garnished tenement of the soul
Would not behold the seven replace the one:
Could I indeed as of some men I might
Think this of maidens also. But I know;
Not as the male is, is the female, Eve
Was moulded not as Adam.
SPIRIT
Stuff!
The women like it; that's enough:
The pretty creatures come and proffer
The treasures of their privy coffer
And I refuse not a good offer.
Sold in the shambles without question.
I eat, and vex not my digestion. —
O, yes, a pretty height, par bleu
Your chivalry you've brought to
You'd have 'em like not what they do
But what you think they ought to.
DIPSYCHUS
Could I believe, as of a man I might,
So a good girl from weary workday hours
And from the long monotony of toil
Might safely purchase these wild intervals,
And from that banquet rise refreshed, and wake
And shake her locks and as before go forth
Invigorated, unvitiate to the task —
But no, it is not so.
SPIRIT
That may be true;
It is uncommon, though some do.
The temperaments of women vary
And Jane is not the same as Mary
Yet single women, ah, mon Dieu
Being women, must have much ado
Not to o'erstep the juste milieu .
In married life you sometimes find
Proceedings something of the kind.
DIPSYCHUS
No no, apart from pressure of the world
And yearning sensibilities of Soul,
The swallowed dram entails the drunkard's curse
Of burnings ever new; and the coy girl
Turns to the flagrant woman of the street,
Ogling for hirers, horrible to see.
SPIRIT
That is the high moral way of talking;
I'm well aware about street-walking.
DIPSYCHUS
Hungering but without appetite; athirst
From impotence; no humblest feeling left
Of all that once too rank exuberance.
No kindly longing, no sly coyness now
Not e'en the elastic appetence of lust
No not a poor petal hanging to that stalk
Where thousands once were redolent and rich.
Look, she would fain allure; but she is cold,
The ripe lips paled, the frolick pulses stilled,
The quick eye dead, the once fair flushing cheek
Flaccid under its paint; the once heaving bosom —
Ask not! — for oh, the sweet bloom of desire
In hot fruition's pawey fingers turns
To dullness and the deadly spreading spot
Of rottenness inevitably soon
That while we hold, we hate — Sweet Peace! no more!
SPIRIT
Fiddle di diddle, fal lal lal!
By candlelight they are pas mal ;
Better and worse of course there are;
Star differs (with the price) from star.
I found it hard I must confess
To a small Frenchman to say yes
Who told me, in a steamer talking,
That one can pick up in one's walking
In the Strand Street in London town
Something quite nice for half-a-crown.
But — in the dark what comes amiss
Except bad breath and syphilis?
DIPSYCHUS
Could I believe that any child of Eve
Were formed and fashioned, raised and reared for nought
But to be swilled with animal delight
And yield five minutes' pleasure to the male,
Could I think cherry lips and chubby cheeks
That seem to exist express for such fond play,
Hold in suppression nought to come; o'ershell
No lurking virtuality of more —
Could I think this, I could, perhaps, join in it.
SPIRIT
It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey and a ho, and a hey nonino!
Betwixt the acres of the rye,
With a hey and a ho, and a hey nonino!
These pretty country folks would lie —
In the spring time, the pretty spring time.
DIPSYCHUS
And could I think I owed it not to her,
In virtue of our manhood's stronger sight,
Ever against entreaty to forbear —
SPIRIT
O Joseph and Don Quixote! This
A chivalry of chasteness is,
That turns to nothing all that story
Has made out of your ancient glory!
Still I must urge, that though 'tis sad
'Tis sure, once gone, for good or bad
The prize whose loss we are deploring
Is physically past restoring:
C'en est fait . Nor can God's own self,
As Coleridge on the dusty shelf
Says in his wicked Omniana ,
Renew to Ina frail or Ana
Her once rent hymenis membrana.
So that it needs consideration
By what more moral occupation
To support this vast population?
DIPSYCHUS
Could I believe that purity were not
Lodged somewhere, precious pearl, e'en underneath
The hardest coarsest outside: could I think
That any heart in woman's bosom set
By tenderness o'ermastering mean desire,
Faithfulness, love, were unredeemable,
Or could I think it sufferable in me
For my poor pleasure's sake to superadd
One possible finger's pressure to the weight
That turns, and grinds as in a fierce machine
This hapless kind, these pariahs of the sex —
SPIRIT
Well; people talk — their sentimentality.
Meantime, as by some sad fatality
Mortality is still mortality,
Nor has corruption, spite of facility,
And doctrines of perfectibility
Yet put on incorruptibility,
As women are and the world goes
They're not so badly off — who knows?
They die, as we do in the end;
They marry; or they — superintend :
Or Sidney Herberts sometimes rise,
And send them out to colonise.
DIPSYCHUS
Or could I think that it had been for nought,
That from my boyhood until now, in spite
Of most misguiding theories, at the moment
Somewhat has ever stepped in to arrest
My ingress at the fatal-closing door,
That many and many a time my foolish foot
O'ertreading the dim sill, spite of itself
And spite of me, instinctively fell back.
SPIRIT
Like Balaam's ass, in spite of thwacking,
Against the wall his master backing,
Because of something hazy stalking
Just in the way they should be walking;
Soon after too he took to talking!
DIPSYCHUS
Backed, and refused my bidding — Could I think,
In spite of carnal understanding's sneers,
All this fortuitous only — all a chance?
SPIRIT
Ah, just what I was going to say;
An Angel met you in the way.
Cry mercy of his heavenly highness,
I took him for that cunning shyness.
DIPSYCHUS
Shyness. 'Tis but another word for Shame;
And that for Sacred Instinct. Off ill thoughts!
'Tis holy ground your foot has stepped upon.
SPIRIT
Ho, Virtue quotha! trust who knows;
There's not a girl that by us goes
But mightn't have you if she chose:
No doubt but you would give her trouble;
But then you'd pay her for it double.
By Jove — if I were but a lass,
I'd soon see what I'd bring to pass.
DIPSYCHUS
O welcome then, the sweet domestic bonds,
The matrimonial sanctities; the hopes
And cares of wedded life; parental thoughts,
The prattle of young children, the good word
Of fellow men, the sanction of the law,
And permanence and habit, that transmute
Grossness itself to crystal. O why why
Why ever let this speculating brain
Rest upon other objects than on this?
SPIRIT
Well well — if you must stick perforce
Unto the ancient holy course,
And map your life out on the plan
Of the connubial puritan,
For God's sake carry out your creed,
Go home, and marry and be d — d;
I'll help you.
DIPSYCHUS
You!
SPIRIT
O never scout me;
I know you'll ne'er propose without me.
DIPSYCHUS
I have talked o'ermuch. The Spirit passes from me.
O folly folly, what have I done? Ah me!
SPIRIT
You'd like another turn, I see.
Yes yes, a little quiet turn.
By all means let us live and learn.
Here's many a lady still waylaying,
And sundry gentlemen purveying.
And if 'twere only just to see
The room of an Italian fille ,
'Twere worth the trouble and the money.
You'll like to find — I found it funny —
The chamber o u vous faites v├┤tre affaire
Stand nicely fitted up for prayer;
While dim you trace along one end
The Sacred Supper's length extend,
The calm Madonna o'er your head
Smiles, col bambino , on the bed
Where — but your chaste ears I must spare —
Where, as we said, vous faites v├┤tre affaire .
They'll suit you, these Venetian pets,
So natural, not the least coquettes,
Really at times one quite forgets —
DIPSYCHUS
Oh heaven, to yield a treasured innocence
To frosty fondlings and a forced caress,
To heavy kisses and the plastery speech
Of a would-be but can't-be sentiment —
SPIRIT
You don't like sentiment? he he!
'T should have been you instead of me,
When t'other day just after noon
Having got up a little soon
Tiring of cafes, quays, and barks
I turned for shade into St Mark's.
I sit a while — studying mosaics
Which we untheorising laics
Have leave to like — a girl slips by,
And gives the signal with her eye.
She takes the door; I follow out:
Curious, amused, but scarce in doubt
While street on street she winds about,
Heedful at corners, but du reste
Assured, and grandly self-possessed,
Trips up a stair at last, and lands me;
Up with her petticoats, and hands me
Much as one might a pot de chambre
The vessel that relieves le membre .
No would-be-pretty hesitation
No farce of female expectation
Most business-like in her vocation
She but the brief half instant lingers
That strikes her bargain with five fingers.
'Twas well enough — I do not mean
Voluptuous, but plain and clean;
Doctors perhaps might recommend it,
You step and do the thing and end it.
DIPSYCHUS
Ah well, I like a mild infusion
Of something bordering on illusion,
To dream and dreaming know one knows
That as the dream comes, so it goes —
You know that feeling, I suppose.
Foolish it may be, but it serves
One's purpose better for one's nerves.
SPIRIT
Well! the Piazza? mio carino
A better place than the Giardino,
Or would you like perhaps to arrive at
A pretty creature's home in private?
We can look in, just say goodnight,
And, if you like to stay, all right.
Just as you fancy — is it well?
DIPSYCHUS
O folly folly folly! To the Hotel.
SCENE IV
(The Hotel )
DIPSYCHUS
O hateful, hateful — let me shudder it off.
Thank God, thank God we are here — that's well at least.
SPIRIT
Well it is somewhat coarse it's true
For such a modest youth as you
To couple here in public view.
Well, well — I may have been a little strong;
Of course, I wouldn't have you do what's wrong.
But we who've lived much in the World, you know,
Don't see these little things precisely so.
You feel yourself, to loathe and yet be fain,
And still to move and still draw back again,
Is a proceeding wholly without end.
So if you really hate the street, my friend,
Why one must try the drawing room, one fancies:
Say, will you run to concerts and to dances
And with my help go into good society?
The World don't love, 'tis true, this peevish piety:
E'en they with whom it thinks to be securest —
Your most religious, delicatest, purest —
Discern, and show as well-bred people can,
Their feeling that you are not quite a man.
Still the thing has its place; and with sagacity,
Much might be done by one of your capacity.
A virtuous attachment formed judiciously
Would come, one sees, uncommonly propitiously:
Turn you but your affections the right way,
And what mayn't happen none of us can say;
For in despite of devils and of mothers,
Your good young men make catches, too, like others.
Oh yes; into society we go:
At worst, 'twill teach you much you ought to know.
DIPSYCHUS
To herd with people one can feel no care for,
To drain the heart with empty complaisance,
To warp the unfashioned diction on the lips,
And twist one's mouth to counterfeit; enforce
The laggard cheeks to falsehood; base-alloy
The ingenuous golden frankness of the past;
To calculate, to plot; be rough and smooth,
Forward and silent; deferential, cool,
Not by one's humour, which is the true truth,
But on consideration —
SPIRIT
That is, act
On a dispassionate judgement of the fact;
Look all the data fairly in the face
And rule your conduct simply by the case.
DIPSYCHUS
On vile consideration. At the best
With pallid hotbed courtesies to forestall
One's native vernal spontaneities
And waste the priceless moments of the man
In softening down grimace to grace. Whether these things
Be right, I do not know; I only know 'tis
To lose one's youth too early. Oh not yet,
Not yet I make this sacrifice!
SPIRIT
Du tout!
To give up nature's just what wouldn't do.
By all means keep your sweet ingenuous graces
And bring them in at proper times and places!
For work, for play, for business, talk, and love,
I own as wisdom truly from above
That scripture of the serpent and the dove;
Nor's aught so perfect for the world's affairs
As the old parable of wheat and tares;
What we all love is good touched up with evil —
Religion's self must have a spice of devil.
DIPSYCHUS
Let it be enough
That in our needful mixture with the world,
On each new morning with the rising sun
Our rising heart, fresh from the seas of sleep,
Scarce o'er the level lifts his purer orb
Ere lost and mingled with polluting smoke,
At noon a coppery disk. Lo, scarce come forth,
Some vagrant miscreant meets, and with a look
Transmutes me his, and for a whole sick day
Lepers me.
SPIRIT
Just the one thing, I assure you,
From which good company can't but secure you.
About the individuals 't'ain't so clear,
But who can doubt the general atmosphere?
DIPSYCHUS
Aye truly, who? at first. But in a while —
SPIRIT
O dear, this o'er-discernment makes me smile —
You don't pretend to tell me you can see
Without one touch of melting sympathy
Those lovely, stately flowers, that fill with bloom
The brilliant season's gay parterre-like room,
Moving serene yet swiftly through the dances,
Those graceful forms and perfect countenances,
Whose every fold and line in all their dresses
Something refined and exquisite expresses?
To see them smile and hear them talk so sweetly
In me destroys all grosser thoughts completely.
I really seem without exaggeration
To experience the True Regeneration;
One's own dress too, one's manner, what one's doing
And saying, all assist to one's renewing.
I love to see in these their fitting places
The bows and forms and all you call grimaces.
I heartily could wish we'd kept some more of them,
However much they talk about the bore of them.
Fact is, your awkward parvenus are shy at it,
Afraid to look like waiters if they try at it.
'Tis sad, to what democracy is leading;
Give me your Eighteenth Century for high breeding.
Though I can put up gladly with the present,
And quite can think our modern parties pleasant.
One shouldn't analyse the thing too nearly;
The main effect is admirable clearly.
Good manners, said our great aunts, next to piety;
And so, my friend, hurrah for good society.
For, mind you, if you don't do this, you still
Have got to tell me what it is you will.
SCENE V
(In a Gondola )
SPIRIT
Per ora . To the Grand Canal.
And after that as fancy shall.
DIPSYCHUS
Afloat; we move. Delicious. Ah,
What else is like the gondola?
This level floor of liquid glass
Begins beneath us swift to pass.
It goes as though it went alone
By some impulsion of its own.
How light it moves, how softly. Ah,
Were all things like the gondola!
How light it moves, how softly. Ah,
Could life, as does our gondola,
Unvexed with quarrels, aims and cares
And moral duties and affairs,
Unswaying noiseless swift and strong
For ever thus, thus glide along!
How light we move, how softly! Ah,
Were life but as the gondola.
With no more motion than should bear
A freshness to the languid air;
With no more effort than exprest
The need and naturalness of rest,
Which we beneath a grateful shade
Should take on peaceful pillows laid; —
How light we move, how softly! Ah,
Were life but as the gondola! —
In one unbroken passage borne
To closing night from opening morn,
Uplift at whiles slow eyes to mark
Some palace front, some passing bark;
Through windows catch the varying shore,
And hear the soft turns of the oar —
How light we move, how softly! Ah,
Were life but as the gondola!
So live, nor need to call to mind
Our slaving brother set behind!
SPIRIT
Pooh, Nature meant him for nothing better
Than our most humble menial debtor.
He thanks us for his day's employment,
As we our purse for our enjoyment.
DIPSYCHUS
To make one's fellow man an instrument —
SPIRIT
Is just the thing that makes him most content.
See: he is wedded to his trade;
He loves, he all but is his blade.
His life is in his function! look,
How perfectly that turn he took:
His sum has found without one fraction
Its integer in this small action.
A pleasant day — a lovely day
Come sing your sweet songs and be gay!
DIPSYCHUS
Yes, it is beautiful ever, let foolish men rail at it never;
Life it is beautiful truly, my brothers, I grant it you duly,
Wise are ye others that choose it, and happy are all that can use it.
Life it is beautiful wholly, and could we eliminate only
This interfering, enslaving, o'ermastering demon of craving,
This wicked tempter inside us to ruin still eager to guide us,
Life were beatitude, Action a possible pure satisfaction.
Ah but it will not, it may not, its nature and law is to stay not,
This semi-vision enchanting with but actuality wanting,
And as a picture or book at, this life that is lovely to look at,
When that it comes as we go on to th'eating and drinking and so on
Is not beatitude, Action in no way a pure satisfaction.
SPIRIT
Hexameters, by all that's odious,
Beshod with rhyme to run melodious.
DIPSYCHUS
All as I go on my way I behold them consorting and coupling;
Faithful it seemeth and fond, very fond, very possibly faithful;
All as I go on my way with a pleasure sincere and unmingled.
Life it is beautiful truly, my brothers, I grant it you duly.
But for perfection attaining is one method only, abstaining;
Let us abstain, for we should so, if only we thought that we could so.
SPIRIT
Bravo, bravissimo! — this time, though,
You rather were run short for rhyme though;
Not that on that account your verse
Could be much better — or much worse.
This world is bad enough, maybe;
We little comprehend it;
But in one fact can all agree,
God won't and we can't mend it.
Being common sense it can't be sin
To take it as we find it,
The pleasure to take pleasure in,
The pain, try not to mind it.
DIPSYCHUS
Yet it is noble I doubt not the slaving and striving and straining;
Earning and spending; and seeking and finding; and losing and gaining;
Weeping and laughing and scolding, consulting, exulting, complaining,
Angers, relentings, repentings, fond pleading, and lofty disdaining —
Ah — for perfection attaining, alack, there is only abstaining!
Let us abstain; for we should so, we could so, if only we would so.
Better it were, thou sayest, to consent,
Feast while we may, and live ere life be spent;
Close up clear eyes, and call the unstable sure,
The unlovely lovely and the filthy pure;
In self-belyings, self-deceivings roll,
And lose in Action, Passion, Talk, the soul.
Ah better far to mark off so much air
And call it heaven, place bliss and glory there,
Fix perfect homes in the unsubstantial sky
And say what is not shall be by and by,
What here exists not, must exist elsewhere.
Play thou not tricks upon thyself, O man;
Let fact be fact, and life the thing it can.
SPIRIT
So! stand you up, my friend, for fact?
And I am for confusion?
Bare thought is common sense; an act
The acme of illusion?
Worthy of Malebranche or Berkeley,
So philosophical and clerkly.
I trust it won't be thought a sin
Should I too " answer with grin".
These juicy meats, this flashing wine
May be an unreal mere appearance;
Only — for my inside, in fine,
They have a singular coherence.
This lovely creature's glowing charms
Are gross illusion, I don't doubt that,
But folded in each other's arms
We didn't somehow think about that.
Oh yes, my pensive youth, abstain:
And any empty sick sensation,
Remember, anything like pain
Is only your imagination.
Trust me, I've read your German sage
To far more purpose e'er than you did;
You find it in his wisest page,
Whom God deludes is well deluded.
St Giorgio and the Redemptore!
This Gothic is a worn-out story;
No building, trivial, gay or solemn
Can spare the shapely Grecian column:
'Tis not these centuries four for nought
Our European world of thought
Has made familiar to its home
The Classic mind of Greece and Rome;
In all new work that dare look forth
To more than antiquarian worth
Palladio's pediments and bases
Or something such will find their places:
Maturer optics don't delight
In childish dim religious light,
In evanescent vague effects
That shirk, not face, one's intellects;
They love not fancies fast betrayed,
And artful tricks of light and shade,
But pure form nakedly displayed,
And all things absolutely made.
The Doge's palace, though, from hence,
In spite of Ruskin's d — d pretence,
The tide now level with the quay,
Is certainly a thing to see.
We'll turn to the Rialto soon;
They say it looks well by the moon.
DIPSYCHUS
Where are the great whom thou would'st wish should praise thee?
Where are the pure whom thou would'st choose to love thee?
Where are the brave to stand supreme above thee,
Whose high commands would cheer, whose chiding raise thee?
Seek, seeker, in thyself; submit to find
In the stones bread, and life in the blank mind.
(Written in London, standing in the Park,
An evening last June, just before dark.)
SPIRIT
As I sat at the cafe, I thought to myself
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,
They may jeer if they like about eating and drinking,
But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
How pleasant it is to have money.
I sit at my table en grand seigneur ,
And when I have done, toss a crust to the poor;
Not only the pleasure, oneself, of good living,
But also the pleasure of now and then giving.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
The horses are brought, and the horses they stay,
I haven't quite settled on riding today,
The servants they wait, and they mustn't look sour,
Though we change our intention ten times in an hour
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
I drive through the streets, and I care not a d-mn,
The people they stare, and inquire who I am,
And if I should chance to run over a cad,
I can pay for the damage, if ever so bad.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
We stroll to our box, and look down on the pit,
If it weren't rather low should be tempted to spit;
We loll and we talk until people look up,
And when it's half over we go out and sup.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
The best of the rooms and best of the fare,
And as for all others, the devil may care;
It isn't our fault, if they dare not afford
To sup like a prince and be drunk as a lord.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
We sit at our table, and tipple champagne,
Ere one bottle goes, comes another again;
The waiters they skip and they scuttle about,
And the landlord attends us so civilly out.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
It was but last Winter I came up to town,
But I'm getting already a little renown;
I get to good houses without much ado,
Am beginning to see the nobility too,
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
O dear! what a pity they ever should lose it,
For they are the gentry that know how to use it,
So grand and so graceful, such manners, such dinners,
But yet, after all, it is we shall be winners.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
So I sat at my table en grand seigneur ,
And when I had done threw a crust to the poor;
Not only the pleasure, oneself, of good eating,
But also the pleasure of now and then treating.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,
Declare one ought never to think of oneself,
Say that pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking;
My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
How pleasant it is to have money.
Written in Venice, somewhere about two;
'Twas not a crust I gave him, but a sou.
And now it is time I think, my men
We try the Grand Canal again.
A gondola here and a gondola there,
'Tis the pleasantest fashion of taking the air.
To right and to left; stop, turn, and go yonder,
And let us repeat o'er the tide as we wander,
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
How pleasant it is to have money.
DIPSYCHUS
Nor ever think to call to mind
Our brother slaving hard behind
Nor ever need, so light we go,
Whether he lives or not, to know.
How light we go, how soft we skim,
And all in moonlight seem to swim.
The south side rises o'er our bark,
A wall impenetrably dark;
The north is seen profusely bright;
The water — is it shade or light?
Say gentle moon, which conquers now,
The flood, those bulky hulls, or thou?
How light we go, how softly! Ah
Were life but as the gondola!
How light we go, how soft we skim
And all in moonlight seem to swim.
In moonlight is it now or shade?
In planes of clear division made
By angles sharp of palace walls
The clear light and the shadow falls:
O sight of glory, sight of wonder,
Seen, a pictorial portent under,
O great Rialto, the clear round
Of thy vast solid arch profound.
How light we go, how softly! Ah
Life should be as the gondola!
How light we go, how softly —
SPIRIT
Stay,
Enough, I think of that today.
I'm deadly weary of your tune,
And half-ennuye with the moon;
The shadows lie, the glories fall,
And are but moonshine after all;
It goes against my conscience really
To let myself feel so ideally:
Make me repose no power of man shall
In things so deuced unsubstantial.
Come, to the Piazzetta steer,
'Tis nine by this, or very near.
These airy blisses, skiey joys
Of vague romantic girls and boys,
Which melt the heart (and the brain soften)
When not affected, as too often
They are, remind me I protest
Of nothing better at the best
Than Timon's feast to his ancient lovers,
Warm water under silver covers;
" Lap, dogs", I think I hear him say,
And lap who will, so I'm away.
DIPSYCHUS
How light we go, how soft we skim,
And all in open moonlight swim:
Bright clouds against, reclined I mark
The white dome now projected dark,
And by o'er-brilliant lamps displayed,
The Doge's columns and arcade;
Over smooth waters mildly come
The distant laughter and the hum.
How light we go, how softly! ah,
Life should be as the gondola!
SPIRIT
By Jove we've had enough of you,
Quote us a little Wordsworth, do;
Those lines which are so true, they say:
" A something far more deeply" eh?
" Interfused" — what is it they tell us?
Which and the sunset are bedfellows.
DIPSYCHUS
How light we go, how soft we skim,
And all in open moonlight swim.
Oh, gondolier, slow, slow, more slow!
We go; but wherefore thus should go?
O let not muscles all too strong
Beguile, betray thee to our wrong.
On to the landing, onward. Nay,
Sweet dream, a little longer stay!
On to the landing. Here. And, ah,
Life is not as the gondola.
SPIRIT
Tre ore . So. The Parthenone,
Is it, you haunt for your limone ?
Let me induce you to join me
In gramolata persici .
(Venice: The Public Garden )
DIPSYCHUS
Assuredly a lively scene:
And ah, how pleasant, something green,
With circling heavens, one perfect rose,
Each smoother patch of water glows
Hence to where, o'er the full tide's face,
We see the Palace and the Place
And the white dome. Beauteous but hot.
Where in the meantime is the spot,
My favourite, where by masses blue
And white cloud-folds, I follow true
The great Alps, rounding grandly o'er,
Huge arc, to the Dalmatian shore?
SPIRIT
This rather stupid place today,
'Tis true, is most extremely gay,
And rightly — the Assunzione
Was always a gran' funzione .
DIPSYCHUS
What is this persecuting voice that haunts me?
What, whence, of whom? How am I to discover?
Myself or not myself? My own bad thoughts
Or some external agency at work
To lead me who knows whither?
SPIRIT
What lots of boats beside us plying,
What lots of pretty girls, too, hieing
Hither and thither; coming, going;
And with what satisfaction showing
To our male eyes unveiled and bare
The exuberant blackness of their hair,
Dark eyes, rich tints, and sundry graces
Of classic pure Italian faces.
DIPSYCHUS
Off, off; oh heaven, depart, depart, depart.
Oh heaven! the toad that whispered in Eve's ear
Whispered no dream so dangerous as this.
SPIRIT
A perfect show of girls I see it is;
Ah, what a charming leg; ye deities!
In that attraction as one fancies
Italy's not so rich as France is;
In Paris —
DIPSYCHUS
Cease, cease, cease,
I will not hear this. Go. —
SPIRIT
Eh?
What do the pretty verses say?
Ah comme je regrette
mon bras si dodu,
Ma jambe bien faite
et le temps perdu
et le temps perdu.
'Tis here, I see, the practice too
For damsels eager to be lovered
To go about with arms uncovered.
And doubtless there's a special charm
In the full round voluptuous arm.
At Paris, I was saying —
DIPSYCHUS
Ah me, me,
Clear stars above, thou roseate westward sky,
Take up my being into yours; assume
My sense to know you only; steep my brain
In your essential purity; or, great Alps
That wrapping round your heads in solemn clouds
Seem sternly to sweep past our vanities,
Lead me with you — take me away, preserve me.
— Ah, if it must be, look then, foolish eyes;
Listen, fond ears; but oh poor mind stand fast!
SPIRIT
At Paris, at the Opera, —
In the Coulisses — but ah, aha!
There was a glance: — I saw you spy it —
So! shall we follow suit and try it?
Pooh! what a goose you are! quick, quick.
This hesitation makes me sick.
You simpleton! what's your alarm?
She'd merely thank you for your arm.
DIPSYCHUS
Sweet thing! ah well! but yet I am not sure.
Ah no. I think she did not mean it. No.
SPIRIT
Plainly, unless I much mistake,
She likes a something in your make:
She turned her head, another glance;
She really gives you every chance.
DIPSYCHUS
Ah pretty thing — well well. Yet should I go?
Alas, I cannot say! What should I do?
SPIRIT
What should you do? well, that is funny!
I think you are supplied with money.
DIPSYCHUS
No, no; it may not be. I could, I would
And yet I would not, cannot. To what end?
SPIRIT
Trust her for teaching — go but you,
She'll quickly show you what to do.
Well, well! it's too late now — they're gone;
Some wiser youth is coming on.
Really I could be in a passion
To see you treat in that odd fashion,
As sweet a little thing as e'er
I saw since first I learnt to stare.
DIPSYCHUS
Ah me —
O hateful, hateful, hateful! to the Hotel!
SCENE III
(The Quays )
DIPSYCHUS
O hateful, hateful, hateful! to the Hotel.
SPIRIT
Pooh, what the devil! what's the harm?
I only bid you take her arm.
DIPSYCHUS
And I half yielded! O unthinking I!
O weak weak fool! O God how quietly
Out of our better into our worse selves
Out of a true world which our reason knew
Into a false world which our fancy makes
We pass and never know — O weak weak fool.
SPIRIT
Well, if you don't wish, why, you don't.
Leave it! but that's just what you won't.
There is nothing that your fancy tickles so
As this at which your conscience stickles so;
Come now! How many times per diem
Are you not hankering to try 'em?
How often are you not pursuing
The thought of how 'twould feel in doing?
DIPSYCHUS
O moon and stars forgive! And thou clear heaven
Look pureness back into me. Oh great God,
Why, why in wisdom and in grace's name,
And in the name of saints and saintly thoughts
Of mothers and of sisters and chaste wives,
And angel woman-faces we have seen
And angel woman-spirits we have guessed,
And innocent sweet children, and pure love,
Why did I ever one brief moment's space
To this insidious lewdness lend chaste ears
Or parley with this filthy Belial?
O were it that vile questioner that loves
To thrust his fingers into right and wrong
And before proof knows nothing — or the fear
Of being behind the world — which is, the wicked.
SPIRIT
Oh yes, mere ignorance must mis-state it
Now this, now that way overrate it,
First canonise, then reprobate it,
And in all kinds exaggerate it.
Yes! dream of raptures whelmed in shame
Voluptuous joys, whose very name
Is curst by after keen self-blame. —
O yes, you dream of sin and shame —
Trust me — it leaves one much the same.
— 'Tisn't Elysium any more
Than what comes after or before:
But heavens! as innocent a thing
As picking strawberries in spring.
You think I'm anxious to allure you —
My object is much more to cure you.
With the high amatory-poetic
My temper's no way sympathetic;
To play your pretty woman's fool
I hold but fit for boys from school.
Come now it's mainly your temptation
To think the thing a revelation,
A mystic mouthful that will give
Knowledge and death, — none know and live;
I tell you plainly that it brings
Some ease, but the emptiness of things
(That one old sermon Earth still preaches
Until we practise what she teaches)
Is the sole lesson that you'll learn by it —
Still you undoubtedly should try it.
" Try all things", bad and good, no matter,
You can't till then hold fast the latter.
If not, this itch will stick and vex you
Your live-long days till death unsex you —
Hide in your bones for aught I know
And with you to the next world go:
Briefly — you cannot rest, I'm certain,
Until your hand has drawn the curtain:
Once known the little lies behind it,
You'll go your way, and never mind it.
Ill's only cure is, never doubt it,
To do — and think no more about it. —
DIPSYCHUS
Strange talk, strange words. Ah me, I cannot say.
Could I believe it even of us men
That once the young exuberance drawn off
The liquor would run clear; that once appeased
The vile inquisitive wish, brute appetite fed,
The very void that ebbing flood had left
From purer sources would be now refilled;
That to rank weeds of rainy spring mowed off
Would a green wholesome aftermath succeed;
That the empty garnished tenement of the soul
Would not behold the seven replace the one:
Could I indeed as of some men I might
Think this of maidens also. But I know;
Not as the male is, is the female, Eve
Was moulded not as Adam.
SPIRIT
Stuff!
The women like it; that's enough:
The pretty creatures come and proffer
The treasures of their privy coffer
And I refuse not a good offer.
Sold in the shambles without question.
I eat, and vex not my digestion. —
O, yes, a pretty height, par bleu
Your chivalry you've brought to
You'd have 'em like not what they do
But what you think they ought to.
DIPSYCHUS
Could I believe, as of a man I might,
So a good girl from weary workday hours
And from the long monotony of toil
Might safely purchase these wild intervals,
And from that banquet rise refreshed, and wake
And shake her locks and as before go forth
Invigorated, unvitiate to the task —
But no, it is not so.
SPIRIT
That may be true;
It is uncommon, though some do.
The temperaments of women vary
And Jane is not the same as Mary
Yet single women, ah, mon Dieu
Being women, must have much ado
Not to o'erstep the juste milieu .
In married life you sometimes find
Proceedings something of the kind.
DIPSYCHUS
No no, apart from pressure of the world
And yearning sensibilities of Soul,
The swallowed dram entails the drunkard's curse
Of burnings ever new; and the coy girl
Turns to the flagrant woman of the street,
Ogling for hirers, horrible to see.
SPIRIT
That is the high moral way of talking;
I'm well aware about street-walking.
DIPSYCHUS
Hungering but without appetite; athirst
From impotence; no humblest feeling left
Of all that once too rank exuberance.
No kindly longing, no sly coyness now
Not e'en the elastic appetence of lust
No not a poor petal hanging to that stalk
Where thousands once were redolent and rich.
Look, she would fain allure; but she is cold,
The ripe lips paled, the frolick pulses stilled,
The quick eye dead, the once fair flushing cheek
Flaccid under its paint; the once heaving bosom —
Ask not! — for oh, the sweet bloom of desire
In hot fruition's pawey fingers turns
To dullness and the deadly spreading spot
Of rottenness inevitably soon
That while we hold, we hate — Sweet Peace! no more!
SPIRIT
Fiddle di diddle, fal lal lal!
By candlelight they are pas mal ;
Better and worse of course there are;
Star differs (with the price) from star.
I found it hard I must confess
To a small Frenchman to say yes
Who told me, in a steamer talking,
That one can pick up in one's walking
In the Strand Street in London town
Something quite nice for half-a-crown.
But — in the dark what comes amiss
Except bad breath and syphilis?
DIPSYCHUS
Could I believe that any child of Eve
Were formed and fashioned, raised and reared for nought
But to be swilled with animal delight
And yield five minutes' pleasure to the male,
Could I think cherry lips and chubby cheeks
That seem to exist express for such fond play,
Hold in suppression nought to come; o'ershell
No lurking virtuality of more —
Could I think this, I could, perhaps, join in it.
SPIRIT
It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey and a ho, and a hey nonino!
Betwixt the acres of the rye,
With a hey and a ho, and a hey nonino!
These pretty country folks would lie —
In the spring time, the pretty spring time.
DIPSYCHUS
And could I think I owed it not to her,
In virtue of our manhood's stronger sight,
Ever against entreaty to forbear —
SPIRIT
O Joseph and Don Quixote! This
A chivalry of chasteness is,
That turns to nothing all that story
Has made out of your ancient glory!
Still I must urge, that though 'tis sad
'Tis sure, once gone, for good or bad
The prize whose loss we are deploring
Is physically past restoring:
C'en est fait . Nor can God's own self,
As Coleridge on the dusty shelf
Says in his wicked Omniana ,
Renew to Ina frail or Ana
Her once rent hymenis membrana.
So that it needs consideration
By what more moral occupation
To support this vast population?
DIPSYCHUS
Could I believe that purity were not
Lodged somewhere, precious pearl, e'en underneath
The hardest coarsest outside: could I think
That any heart in woman's bosom set
By tenderness o'ermastering mean desire,
Faithfulness, love, were unredeemable,
Or could I think it sufferable in me
For my poor pleasure's sake to superadd
One possible finger's pressure to the weight
That turns, and grinds as in a fierce machine
This hapless kind, these pariahs of the sex —
SPIRIT
Well; people talk — their sentimentality.
Meantime, as by some sad fatality
Mortality is still mortality,
Nor has corruption, spite of facility,
And doctrines of perfectibility
Yet put on incorruptibility,
As women are and the world goes
They're not so badly off — who knows?
They die, as we do in the end;
They marry; or they — superintend :
Or Sidney Herberts sometimes rise,
And send them out to colonise.
DIPSYCHUS
Or could I think that it had been for nought,
That from my boyhood until now, in spite
Of most misguiding theories, at the moment
Somewhat has ever stepped in to arrest
My ingress at the fatal-closing door,
That many and many a time my foolish foot
O'ertreading the dim sill, spite of itself
And spite of me, instinctively fell back.
SPIRIT
Like Balaam's ass, in spite of thwacking,
Against the wall his master backing,
Because of something hazy stalking
Just in the way they should be walking;
Soon after too he took to talking!
DIPSYCHUS
Backed, and refused my bidding — Could I think,
In spite of carnal understanding's sneers,
All this fortuitous only — all a chance?
SPIRIT
Ah, just what I was going to say;
An Angel met you in the way.
Cry mercy of his heavenly highness,
I took him for that cunning shyness.
DIPSYCHUS
Shyness. 'Tis but another word for Shame;
And that for Sacred Instinct. Off ill thoughts!
'Tis holy ground your foot has stepped upon.
SPIRIT
Ho, Virtue quotha! trust who knows;
There's not a girl that by us goes
But mightn't have you if she chose:
No doubt but you would give her trouble;
But then you'd pay her for it double.
By Jove — if I were but a lass,
I'd soon see what I'd bring to pass.
DIPSYCHUS
O welcome then, the sweet domestic bonds,
The matrimonial sanctities; the hopes
And cares of wedded life; parental thoughts,
The prattle of young children, the good word
Of fellow men, the sanction of the law,
And permanence and habit, that transmute
Grossness itself to crystal. O why why
Why ever let this speculating brain
Rest upon other objects than on this?
SPIRIT
Well well — if you must stick perforce
Unto the ancient holy course,
And map your life out on the plan
Of the connubial puritan,
For God's sake carry out your creed,
Go home, and marry and be d — d;
I'll help you.
DIPSYCHUS
You!
SPIRIT
O never scout me;
I know you'll ne'er propose without me.
DIPSYCHUS
I have talked o'ermuch. The Spirit passes from me.
O folly folly, what have I done? Ah me!
SPIRIT
You'd like another turn, I see.
Yes yes, a little quiet turn.
By all means let us live and learn.
Here's many a lady still waylaying,
And sundry gentlemen purveying.
And if 'twere only just to see
The room of an Italian fille ,
'Twere worth the trouble and the money.
You'll like to find — I found it funny —
The chamber o u vous faites v├┤tre affaire
Stand nicely fitted up for prayer;
While dim you trace along one end
The Sacred Supper's length extend,
The calm Madonna o'er your head
Smiles, col bambino , on the bed
Where — but your chaste ears I must spare —
Where, as we said, vous faites v├┤tre affaire .
They'll suit you, these Venetian pets,
So natural, not the least coquettes,
Really at times one quite forgets —
DIPSYCHUS
Oh heaven, to yield a treasured innocence
To frosty fondlings and a forced caress,
To heavy kisses and the plastery speech
Of a would-be but can't-be sentiment —
SPIRIT
You don't like sentiment? he he!
'T should have been you instead of me,
When t'other day just after noon
Having got up a little soon
Tiring of cafes, quays, and barks
I turned for shade into St Mark's.
I sit a while — studying mosaics
Which we untheorising laics
Have leave to like — a girl slips by,
And gives the signal with her eye.
She takes the door; I follow out:
Curious, amused, but scarce in doubt
While street on street she winds about,
Heedful at corners, but du reste
Assured, and grandly self-possessed,
Trips up a stair at last, and lands me;
Up with her petticoats, and hands me
Much as one might a pot de chambre
The vessel that relieves le membre .
No would-be-pretty hesitation
No farce of female expectation
Most business-like in her vocation
She but the brief half instant lingers
That strikes her bargain with five fingers.
'Twas well enough — I do not mean
Voluptuous, but plain and clean;
Doctors perhaps might recommend it,
You step and do the thing and end it.
DIPSYCHUS
Ah well, I like a mild infusion
Of something bordering on illusion,
To dream and dreaming know one knows
That as the dream comes, so it goes —
You know that feeling, I suppose.
Foolish it may be, but it serves
One's purpose better for one's nerves.
SPIRIT
Well! the Piazza? mio carino
A better place than the Giardino,
Or would you like perhaps to arrive at
A pretty creature's home in private?
We can look in, just say goodnight,
And, if you like to stay, all right.
Just as you fancy — is it well?
DIPSYCHUS
O folly folly folly! To the Hotel.
SCENE IV
(The Hotel )
DIPSYCHUS
O hateful, hateful — let me shudder it off.
Thank God, thank God we are here — that's well at least.
SPIRIT
Well it is somewhat coarse it's true
For such a modest youth as you
To couple here in public view.
Well, well — I may have been a little strong;
Of course, I wouldn't have you do what's wrong.
But we who've lived much in the World, you know,
Don't see these little things precisely so.
You feel yourself, to loathe and yet be fain,
And still to move and still draw back again,
Is a proceeding wholly without end.
So if you really hate the street, my friend,
Why one must try the drawing room, one fancies:
Say, will you run to concerts and to dances
And with my help go into good society?
The World don't love, 'tis true, this peevish piety:
E'en they with whom it thinks to be securest —
Your most religious, delicatest, purest —
Discern, and show as well-bred people can,
Their feeling that you are not quite a man.
Still the thing has its place; and with sagacity,
Much might be done by one of your capacity.
A virtuous attachment formed judiciously
Would come, one sees, uncommonly propitiously:
Turn you but your affections the right way,
And what mayn't happen none of us can say;
For in despite of devils and of mothers,
Your good young men make catches, too, like others.
Oh yes; into society we go:
At worst, 'twill teach you much you ought to know.
DIPSYCHUS
To herd with people one can feel no care for,
To drain the heart with empty complaisance,
To warp the unfashioned diction on the lips,
And twist one's mouth to counterfeit; enforce
The laggard cheeks to falsehood; base-alloy
The ingenuous golden frankness of the past;
To calculate, to plot; be rough and smooth,
Forward and silent; deferential, cool,
Not by one's humour, which is the true truth,
But on consideration —
SPIRIT
That is, act
On a dispassionate judgement of the fact;
Look all the data fairly in the face
And rule your conduct simply by the case.
DIPSYCHUS
On vile consideration. At the best
With pallid hotbed courtesies to forestall
One's native vernal spontaneities
And waste the priceless moments of the man
In softening down grimace to grace. Whether these things
Be right, I do not know; I only know 'tis
To lose one's youth too early. Oh not yet,
Not yet I make this sacrifice!
SPIRIT
Du tout!
To give up nature's just what wouldn't do.
By all means keep your sweet ingenuous graces
And bring them in at proper times and places!
For work, for play, for business, talk, and love,
I own as wisdom truly from above
That scripture of the serpent and the dove;
Nor's aught so perfect for the world's affairs
As the old parable of wheat and tares;
What we all love is good touched up with evil —
Religion's self must have a spice of devil.
DIPSYCHUS
Let it be enough
That in our needful mixture with the world,
On each new morning with the rising sun
Our rising heart, fresh from the seas of sleep,
Scarce o'er the level lifts his purer orb
Ere lost and mingled with polluting smoke,
At noon a coppery disk. Lo, scarce come forth,
Some vagrant miscreant meets, and with a look
Transmutes me his, and for a whole sick day
Lepers me.
SPIRIT
Just the one thing, I assure you,
From which good company can't but secure you.
About the individuals 't'ain't so clear,
But who can doubt the general atmosphere?
DIPSYCHUS
Aye truly, who? at first. But in a while —
SPIRIT
O dear, this o'er-discernment makes me smile —
You don't pretend to tell me you can see
Without one touch of melting sympathy
Those lovely, stately flowers, that fill with bloom
The brilliant season's gay parterre-like room,
Moving serene yet swiftly through the dances,
Those graceful forms and perfect countenances,
Whose every fold and line in all their dresses
Something refined and exquisite expresses?
To see them smile and hear them talk so sweetly
In me destroys all grosser thoughts completely.
I really seem without exaggeration
To experience the True Regeneration;
One's own dress too, one's manner, what one's doing
And saying, all assist to one's renewing.
I love to see in these their fitting places
The bows and forms and all you call grimaces.
I heartily could wish we'd kept some more of them,
However much they talk about the bore of them.
Fact is, your awkward parvenus are shy at it,
Afraid to look like waiters if they try at it.
'Tis sad, to what democracy is leading;
Give me your Eighteenth Century for high breeding.
Though I can put up gladly with the present,
And quite can think our modern parties pleasant.
One shouldn't analyse the thing too nearly;
The main effect is admirable clearly.
Good manners, said our great aunts, next to piety;
And so, my friend, hurrah for good society.
For, mind you, if you don't do this, you still
Have got to tell me what it is you will.
SCENE V
(In a Gondola )
SPIRIT
Per ora . To the Grand Canal.
And after that as fancy shall.
DIPSYCHUS
Afloat; we move. Delicious. Ah,
What else is like the gondola?
This level floor of liquid glass
Begins beneath us swift to pass.
It goes as though it went alone
By some impulsion of its own.
How light it moves, how softly. Ah,
Were all things like the gondola!
How light it moves, how softly. Ah,
Could life, as does our gondola,
Unvexed with quarrels, aims and cares
And moral duties and affairs,
Unswaying noiseless swift and strong
For ever thus, thus glide along!
How light we move, how softly! Ah,
Were life but as the gondola.
With no more motion than should bear
A freshness to the languid air;
With no more effort than exprest
The need and naturalness of rest,
Which we beneath a grateful shade
Should take on peaceful pillows laid; —
How light we move, how softly! Ah,
Were life but as the gondola! —
In one unbroken passage borne
To closing night from opening morn,
Uplift at whiles slow eyes to mark
Some palace front, some passing bark;
Through windows catch the varying shore,
And hear the soft turns of the oar —
How light we move, how softly! Ah,
Were life but as the gondola!
So live, nor need to call to mind
Our slaving brother set behind!
SPIRIT
Pooh, Nature meant him for nothing better
Than our most humble menial debtor.
He thanks us for his day's employment,
As we our purse for our enjoyment.
DIPSYCHUS
To make one's fellow man an instrument —
SPIRIT
Is just the thing that makes him most content.
See: he is wedded to his trade;
He loves, he all but is his blade.
His life is in his function! look,
How perfectly that turn he took:
His sum has found without one fraction
Its integer in this small action.
A pleasant day — a lovely day
Come sing your sweet songs and be gay!
DIPSYCHUS
Yes, it is beautiful ever, let foolish men rail at it never;
Life it is beautiful truly, my brothers, I grant it you duly,
Wise are ye others that choose it, and happy are all that can use it.
Life it is beautiful wholly, and could we eliminate only
This interfering, enslaving, o'ermastering demon of craving,
This wicked tempter inside us to ruin still eager to guide us,
Life were beatitude, Action a possible pure satisfaction.
Ah but it will not, it may not, its nature and law is to stay not,
This semi-vision enchanting with but actuality wanting,
And as a picture or book at, this life that is lovely to look at,
When that it comes as we go on to th'eating and drinking and so on
Is not beatitude, Action in no way a pure satisfaction.
SPIRIT
Hexameters, by all that's odious,
Beshod with rhyme to run melodious.
DIPSYCHUS
All as I go on my way I behold them consorting and coupling;
Faithful it seemeth and fond, very fond, very possibly faithful;
All as I go on my way with a pleasure sincere and unmingled.
Life it is beautiful truly, my brothers, I grant it you duly.
But for perfection attaining is one method only, abstaining;
Let us abstain, for we should so, if only we thought that we could so.
SPIRIT
Bravo, bravissimo! — this time, though,
You rather were run short for rhyme though;
Not that on that account your verse
Could be much better — or much worse.
This world is bad enough, maybe;
We little comprehend it;
But in one fact can all agree,
God won't and we can't mend it.
Being common sense it can't be sin
To take it as we find it,
The pleasure to take pleasure in,
The pain, try not to mind it.
DIPSYCHUS
Yet it is noble I doubt not the slaving and striving and straining;
Earning and spending; and seeking and finding; and losing and gaining;
Weeping and laughing and scolding, consulting, exulting, complaining,
Angers, relentings, repentings, fond pleading, and lofty disdaining —
Ah — for perfection attaining, alack, there is only abstaining!
Let us abstain; for we should so, we could so, if only we would so.
Better it were, thou sayest, to consent,
Feast while we may, and live ere life be spent;
Close up clear eyes, and call the unstable sure,
The unlovely lovely and the filthy pure;
In self-belyings, self-deceivings roll,
And lose in Action, Passion, Talk, the soul.
Ah better far to mark off so much air
And call it heaven, place bliss and glory there,
Fix perfect homes in the unsubstantial sky
And say what is not shall be by and by,
What here exists not, must exist elsewhere.
Play thou not tricks upon thyself, O man;
Let fact be fact, and life the thing it can.
SPIRIT
So! stand you up, my friend, for fact?
And I am for confusion?
Bare thought is common sense; an act
The acme of illusion?
Worthy of Malebranche or Berkeley,
So philosophical and clerkly.
I trust it won't be thought a sin
Should I too " answer with grin".
These juicy meats, this flashing wine
May be an unreal mere appearance;
Only — for my inside, in fine,
They have a singular coherence.
This lovely creature's glowing charms
Are gross illusion, I don't doubt that,
But folded in each other's arms
We didn't somehow think about that.
Oh yes, my pensive youth, abstain:
And any empty sick sensation,
Remember, anything like pain
Is only your imagination.
Trust me, I've read your German sage
To far more purpose e'er than you did;
You find it in his wisest page,
Whom God deludes is well deluded.
St Giorgio and the Redemptore!
This Gothic is a worn-out story;
No building, trivial, gay or solemn
Can spare the shapely Grecian column:
'Tis not these centuries four for nought
Our European world of thought
Has made familiar to its home
The Classic mind of Greece and Rome;
In all new work that dare look forth
To more than antiquarian worth
Palladio's pediments and bases
Or something such will find their places:
Maturer optics don't delight
In childish dim religious light,
In evanescent vague effects
That shirk, not face, one's intellects;
They love not fancies fast betrayed,
And artful tricks of light and shade,
But pure form nakedly displayed,
And all things absolutely made.
The Doge's palace, though, from hence,
In spite of Ruskin's d — d pretence,
The tide now level with the quay,
Is certainly a thing to see.
We'll turn to the Rialto soon;
They say it looks well by the moon.
DIPSYCHUS
Where are the great whom thou would'st wish should praise thee?
Where are the pure whom thou would'st choose to love thee?
Where are the brave to stand supreme above thee,
Whose high commands would cheer, whose chiding raise thee?
Seek, seeker, in thyself; submit to find
In the stones bread, and life in the blank mind.
(Written in London, standing in the Park,
An evening last June, just before dark.)
SPIRIT
As I sat at the cafe, I thought to myself
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,
They may jeer if they like about eating and drinking,
But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
How pleasant it is to have money.
I sit at my table en grand seigneur ,
And when I have done, toss a crust to the poor;
Not only the pleasure, oneself, of good living,
But also the pleasure of now and then giving.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
The horses are brought, and the horses they stay,
I haven't quite settled on riding today,
The servants they wait, and they mustn't look sour,
Though we change our intention ten times in an hour
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
I drive through the streets, and I care not a d-mn,
The people they stare, and inquire who I am,
And if I should chance to run over a cad,
I can pay for the damage, if ever so bad.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
We stroll to our box, and look down on the pit,
If it weren't rather low should be tempted to spit;
We loll and we talk until people look up,
And when it's half over we go out and sup.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
The best of the rooms and best of the fare,
And as for all others, the devil may care;
It isn't our fault, if they dare not afford
To sup like a prince and be drunk as a lord.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
We sit at our table, and tipple champagne,
Ere one bottle goes, comes another again;
The waiters they skip and they scuttle about,
And the landlord attends us so civilly out.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
It was but last Winter I came up to town,
But I'm getting already a little renown;
I get to good houses without much ado,
Am beginning to see the nobility too,
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
O dear! what a pity they ever should lose it,
For they are the gentry that know how to use it,
So grand and so graceful, such manners, such dinners,
But yet, after all, it is we shall be winners.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
So I sat at my table en grand seigneur ,
And when I had done threw a crust to the poor;
Not only the pleasure, oneself, of good eating,
But also the pleasure of now and then treating.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
So pleasant it is to have money.
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,
Declare one ought never to think of oneself,
Say that pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking;
My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
How pleasant it is to have money.
Written in Venice, somewhere about two;
'Twas not a crust I gave him, but a sou.
And now it is time I think, my men
We try the Grand Canal again.
A gondola here and a gondola there,
'Tis the pleasantest fashion of taking the air.
To right and to left; stop, turn, and go yonder,
And let us repeat o'er the tide as we wander,
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho,
How pleasant it is to have money.
DIPSYCHUS
Nor ever think to call to mind
Our brother slaving hard behind
Nor ever need, so light we go,
Whether he lives or not, to know.
How light we go, how soft we skim,
And all in moonlight seem to swim.
The south side rises o'er our bark,
A wall impenetrably dark;
The north is seen profusely bright;
The water — is it shade or light?
Say gentle moon, which conquers now,
The flood, those bulky hulls, or thou?
How light we go, how softly! Ah
Were life but as the gondola!
How light we go, how soft we skim
And all in moonlight seem to swim.
In moonlight is it now or shade?
In planes of clear division made
By angles sharp of palace walls
The clear light and the shadow falls:
O sight of glory, sight of wonder,
Seen, a pictorial portent under,
O great Rialto, the clear round
Of thy vast solid arch profound.
How light we go, how softly! Ah
Life should be as the gondola!
How light we go, how softly —
SPIRIT
Stay,
Enough, I think of that today.
I'm deadly weary of your tune,
And half-ennuye with the moon;
The shadows lie, the glories fall,
And are but moonshine after all;
It goes against my conscience really
To let myself feel so ideally:
Make me repose no power of man shall
In things so deuced unsubstantial.
Come, to the Piazzetta steer,
'Tis nine by this, or very near.
These airy blisses, skiey joys
Of vague romantic girls and boys,
Which melt the heart (and the brain soften)
When not affected, as too often
They are, remind me I protest
Of nothing better at the best
Than Timon's feast to his ancient lovers,
Warm water under silver covers;
" Lap, dogs", I think I hear him say,
And lap who will, so I'm away.
DIPSYCHUS
How light we go, how soft we skim,
And all in open moonlight swim:
Bright clouds against, reclined I mark
The white dome now projected dark,
And by o'er-brilliant lamps displayed,
The Doge's columns and arcade;
Over smooth waters mildly come
The distant laughter and the hum.
How light we go, how softly! ah,
Life should be as the gondola!
SPIRIT
By Jove we've had enough of you,
Quote us a little Wordsworth, do;
Those lines which are so true, they say:
" A something far more deeply" eh?
" Interfused" — what is it they tell us?
Which and the sunset are bedfellows.
DIPSYCHUS
How light we go, how soft we skim,
And all in open moonlight swim.
Oh, gondolier, slow, slow, more slow!
We go; but wherefore thus should go?
O let not muscles all too strong
Beguile, betray thee to our wrong.
On to the landing, onward. Nay,
Sweet dream, a little longer stay!
On to the landing. Here. And, ah,
Life is not as the gondola.
SPIRIT
Tre ore . So. The Parthenone,
Is it, you haunt for your limone ?
Let me induce you to join me
In gramolata persici .
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