Classic Poem

Dipsychus

The Law! 'twere honester, if 'twere genteel,
To say the dung-cart. What! shall I go about,
And like the walking shoeblack roam the flags
With heedful eyes, down bent, and like a glass
In a sea-captain's hand sweeping all round,
To see whose boots are dirtiest? Oh, the luck
To stoop and clean a pair!
Religion:—if indeed it be in vain
To expect to find in this more modern time
That which the old world styled, in old-world phrase,
Walking with God. It seems His newer will
We should not think of Him at all, but trudge it,
And of the world He has assigned us make
What best we can.
Then love: I scarce can think
That these be-maddening discords of the mind
To pure melodious sequence could be changed,
And all the vext conundrums of our life
Prove to all time bucolically solved
By a new Adam and a second Eve
Set in a garden which no serpent seeks.
And yet I hold heart can beat true to heart:
And to hew down the tree which bears this fruit,
To do a thing which cuts me off from hope,
To falsify the movement of love's mind,
To seat some alien trifler on the throne
A queen may come to claim—that were ill done.
What! to the close hand of the clutching Jew
Hand up that rich reversion! and for what?
This would be hard, did I indeed believe
'Twould ever fall. But love, the large repose
Restorative, not to mere outside needs
Skin-deep, but throughly to the total man,
Exists, I will believe, but so, so rare,
So doubtful, so exceptional, hard to guess;
When guessed, so often counterfeit; in brief,
A thing not possibly to be conceived
An item in the reckonings of the wise.

Action, that staggers me. For I had hoped,
'Midst weakness, indolence, frivolity,
Irresolution, still had hoped: and this
Seems sacrificing hope. Better to wait:
The wise men wait; it is the foolish haste,
And ere the scenes are in their slides would play,
And while the instruments are tuning, dance.
 I see Napoleon on the heights, intent
To arrest that one brief unit of loose time
Which hands high Victory's thread; his Marshals fret,
His soldiers clamour low: the very guns
Seem going off of themselves; the cannon strain
Like hell-dogs in the leash. But he, he waits;
And lesser chances and inferior hopes
Meantime go pouring past. Men gnash their teeth;
The very faithful have begun to doubt;
But they molest not the calm eye that seeks
'Midst all this huddling silver little worth
The one thin piece that comes, pure gold. He waits,
O me, when the great deed e'en now has broke
Like a man's hand the horizon's level line,
So soon to fill the zenith with rich clouds;
Oh, in this narrow interspace, this moment,
This list and selvage of a glorious time,
To despair of the great and sell to the mean!
O thou of little faith, what hast thou done?
Yet if the occasion coming should find us
Undexterous, incapable? In light things
Prove thou the arms thou long'st to glorify,
Nor fear to work up from the lowest ranks
Whence come great Nature's captains. And high deeds
Haunt not the fringy edges of the fight,
But the pell-mell of men. Oh, what and if
E'en now by lingering here I let them slip,
Like an unpractised spyer through a glass,
Still pointing to the blank, too high! And yet,
In dead details to smother vital ends
Which should give life to them; in the deft trick
Of prentice-handling to forget great art,
To base mechanical adroitness yield
The Inspiration and the Hope, a slave!
Oh, and to blast that Innocence which, though
Here it may seem a dull unopening bud,
May yet bloom freely in celestial clime!
Were it not better done, then, to keep off
And see, not share, the strife; stand out the waltz
Which fools whirl dizzy in? Is it possible?
Contamination taints the idler first.
And without base compliance, e'en that same
Which buys bold hearts free course, Earth lends not these
Their pent and miserable standing-room.
Life loves no lookers-on at his great game,
And with boy's malice still delights to turn
The tide of sport upon the sitters-by,
And set observers scampering with their notes.
Oh, it is great to do and know not what,
Nor let it e'er be known. The dashing stream
Stays not to pick his steps among the rocks,
Or let his water-breaks be chronicled.
And though the hunter looks before he leap,
'Tis instinct rather than a shaped-out thought
That lifts him his bold way. Then, instinct, hail,
And farewell hesitation! If I stay,
I am not innocent; nor if I go—
E'en should I fall—beyond redemption lost.

Ah, if I had a course like a full stream,
If life were as the field of chase! No, no;
The age of instinct has, it seems, gone by,
And will not be forced back. And to live now
I must sluice out myself into canals,
And lose all force in ducts. The modern Hotspur
Shrills not his trumpet of ‘To Horse, To Horse!’
But consults columns in a railway guide;
A demigod of figures; an Achilles
Of computation;
A verier Mercury, express come down
To do the world with swift arithmetic.
Well, one could bear with that; were the end ours,
One's choice and the correlative of the soul,
To drudge were then sweet service. But indeed
The earth moves slowly, if it move at all,
And by the general, not the single force.
At the [huge] members of the vast machine,
In all those crowded rooms of industry,
No individual soul has loftier leave
Than fiddling with a piston or a valve
Well, one could bear that also: one could drudge
And do one's petty part, and be content
In base manipulation, solaced still
By thinking of the leagued fraternity,
And of co-operation, and the effect
Of the great engine. If indeed it work,
And is not a mere treadmill! Which it may be;
Who can confirm it is not? We ask Action,
And dream of arms and conflict; and string up
All self-devotion's muscles; and are set
To fold up papers. To what end? We know not.
Other folks do so; it is always done;
And it perhaps is right. And we are paid for it
For nothing else we can be. He that eats
Must serve; and serve as other servants do:
And don the lacquey's livery of the house.
Oh, could I shoot my thought up to the sky,
A column of pure shape, for all to observe!
But I must slave, a meagre coral-worm,
To build beneath the tide with excrement
What one day will be island, or be reef,
And will feed men, or wreck them. Well, well, well.
Adieu, ye twisted thinkings. I submit.

Action is what one must get, it is clear,
And one could dream it better than one finds,
In its kind personal, in its motive not;
Not selfish as it now is, nor as now
Maiming the individual. If we had that,
It would cure all indeed. Oh, how would then
These pitiful rebellions of the flesh,
These caterwaulings of the effeminate heart,
These hurts of self-imagined dignity,
Pass like the seaweed from about the bows
Of a great vessel speeding straight to sea!
Yes, if we could have that; but I suppose
We shall not have it, and therefore I submit.

Spirit

Submit, submit!
'Tis common sense, and human wit
Can claim no higher name than it.
Submit, submit!

Devotion, and ideas, and love,
And beauty claim their place above;
But saint and sage and poet's dreams
Divide the light in coloured streams,
Which this alone gives all combined,
The siccum lumen of the mind
Called common sense: and no high wit
Gives better counsel than does it.
Submit, submit!

To see things simply as they are
Here, at our elbows, transcends far
Trying to spy out at midday
Some ‘bright particular star,’ which may,
Or not, be visible at night,
But clearly is not in daylight;
No inspiration vague outweighs
The plain good common sense that says,
Submit, submit!

'Tis common sense, and human wit
Can ask no higher name than it.
Submit, submit!
O did you think you were alone?
That I was so unfeeling grown
As not with joy to leave behind
My ninety-nine in hope to find
(How sweet the words my sense express!)
My lost sheep in the wilderness?