Classic Poem

SCENE XII

Dipsychus

I had a vision; was it in my sleep?
And if it were, what then? But sleep or wake,
I saw a great light open o'er my head;
And sleep or wake, uplifted to that light,
Out of that light proceeding heard a voice
Uttering high words, which, whether sleep or wake,
In me were fixed, and in me must abide.

 ‘When the enemy is near thee,
Call on us!
 In our hands we will upbear thee,
 He shall neither scathe nor scare thee,
Call on us!
 Call when all good friends have left thee,
 All good sights and sounds bereft thee;
 Call when hope and heart are sinking,
 And the brain is sick with thinking,
Help, O help!
 Call, and following close behind thee
 There shall haste, and there shall find thee,
Help, sure help.
 When the panic comes upon thee,
 When necessity seems on thee,
 Hope and choice have all foregone thee,
 Fate and force are closing o'er thee,
 And but one way stands before thee—
Call on us!
 Oh, and if thou dost not call,
 Be but faithful, that is all.
 Go right on, and close behind thee
 There shall follow still and find thee,
Help, sure help.’
Not for thy service, thou imperious fiend,
Not to do thy work, or the like of thine;
Not to please thee, O base and fallen spirit!
But One Most High, Most True, whom without thee
It seems I cannot.
O the misery
That one must truck and practise with the world
To gain the 'vantage-ground to assail it from;
To set upon the giant one must first,
O perfidy! have eat the giant's bread.
If I submit, it is but to gain time
And arms and stature: 'tis but to lie safe
Until the hour strike to arise and slay:
'Tis the old story of the adder's brood
Feeding and nestling till the fangs be grown.
Were it not nobler done, then, to act fair,
To accept the service with the wages, do
Frankly the devil's work for the devil's pay?
Oh, but another my allegiance holds
Inalienably his. How much soe'er
I might submit, it must be to rebel.
Submit then sullenly, that's no dishonour.
Yet I could deem it better too to starve
And die untraitored. O, who sent me, though?
Some one, and to do something. O hard master!
To do a treachery. But indeed 'tis done:
I have already taken of the pay
And curst the payer; take I must, curse too.
Alas! the little strength that I possess
Derives, I think, of him. So still it is,
The timid child that clung unto her skirts,
A boy, will slight his mother, and, grown a man,
His father too. There's Scripture too for that!
Do we owe fathers nothing—mothers nought?
Is filial duty folly? Yet He says,
‘He that loves father, mother more than me’;
Yea, and ‘the man his parents shall desert,’
The ordinance says, ‘and cleave unto his wife’
O man, behold thy wife, th' hard naked world;
Adam, accept thy Eve.
So still it is,
The tree exhausts the soil; creepers kill it,
Their insects them: the lever finds its fulcrum
On what it then o'erthrows; the homely spade
In labour's hand unscrupulously seeks
Its first momentum on the very clod
Which next will be upturned. It seems a law.
And am not I, though I but ill recall
My happier age, a kidnapped child of Heaven,
Whom these uncircumcised Philistines
Have by foul play shorn, blinded, maimed, and kept
For what more glorious than to make them sport?
Wait, then, wait, O my soul! grow, grow, ye locks,—
Then perish they, and if need is, I too.

Spirit (aside)

A truly admirable proceeding!
Could there be finer special pleading
When scruples would be interceding?
There's no occasion I should stay;
He is working out, his own queer way,
The sum I set him; and this day
Will bring it, neither less nor bigger,
Exact to my predestined figure