With that good treasure in defence,
Which is our gold crushed out of joy and pain
Since first men planted foot and hand was king:
Bright,
nimble of the marrow-nerve
To wield thy double edge, retort
Or hold the deadlier reserve,
And through thy victim's
weapon sting:
Thine is the service, thine the sport
This shifty heart of ours to hunt
Across its webs and round the many a ring
Where fox it is, or snake, or mingled seeds
Occasion heats to shape, or the poor smoke
Struck 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 Law
We read upon that building's architrave
In the mind's
firmament, by men upraised
With sweat of blood when they had quitted cave
For
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, seen
His rebel
agitation at our root:
Thou hast him out of hawking eyes;
Nor ever morning of the clang
Young Echo sped on hill from horn
In forest blown when scent was keen
Off earthy dews besprinkling blades
Of
covert grass more
merrily rang
The yelp of chase down alleys green,
Forth of the headlong-pouring glades,
Over the dappled fallows wild away,
Than thy fine unaccented scorn
At 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 morn
His handmaiden appear! Youth claims his hour.
The
generously ludicrous
Espouses 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 light
That gives direction, not the eclipse;
Or dost thou look where niggard Age,
Demanding
reverence for wrinkles, whips
A 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, compact
Of
wisdom else, the breast's old tempter trips;
Or see we
ceremonial state,
Robing the gilded beast, exact
Abjection, while the crackskull name of Fate
Is 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 write
Upon a perishable page
An inch above their fellows'
height; -
The criers of foregone
wisdom, who impose
Its slough on live conditions, much for the greed
Of 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 pool
Of 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 untaught
By thy quick founts to beat
abroad, by thee
Untamed to tone its passions under thought,
The rich humaneness
reading in thy fun.
Of them a world of coltish heels for school
We have; a world with driving wrecks bestrewn.
'Tis written of the Gods of human mould,
Those Nectar Gods, of
gloriousstature hewn
To
quicken hymns, that they did hear, incensed,
Satiric comments overbold,
From one whose part was by decree
The jester's; but they boiled to feel him bite.
Better for them had they with Reason fenced
Or smiled corrected! They in the great Gods' might
Their prober crushed, as fingers flea.
Crumbled Olympus when the
sovereign sire
His fatal kick to Momus gave, albeit
Men could behold the
sacred Mount aspire,
The Satirist pass by on limping feet.
Those Gods who saw the ejected laugh alight
Below had then their last of airy glee;
They in the cup sought Laughter's drowned 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 recount
Of 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 band
Whom a loose-cheeked, wide-lipped gay
cripple leads
At haunts of
holiday on summer sand:
And
lightly he will hint to one that heeds
Names in pained designation of them, names
Ensphered on blue skies and on black, which twirl
Our
hearing madly from our
seeing dazed,
Add Bacchus unto both; and he entreats
(His baby dimples in
maternal chaps
Running wild labyrinths of line and curl)
Compassion for his masterful Trombone,
Whose
thunder is the brass of how he blazed
Of old: for him of the mountain-muscle feats,
Who guts a drum to fetch a snappish groan:
For his
fierce bugler horning onset, whom
A truncheon-battered
helmet caps . . .
The creature is of
earnest mien
To 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 become
A globe in cupolas; the blowziest queen
Of 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, alike
Ogles the bursters of the horn and drum.
Curtain her close! her open arms
Have suckers for beholders: she to this?
For that she could not, save in fury, hear
A sharp corrective
utterance flick
Her idle manners, for the laugh to strike
Beauty so
breeding beauty, without peer
Above the snows, among the flowers? She reaps
This 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 brine
To thoughts of taste; is 't love?--bark, dog! hoot, owl!
And she is blushless: ancient
worship weeps.
Suicide Graces
dangle down the charms
Sprawling like gourds on outer garden-heaps.
She stands in her unholy oily leer
A
statue losing feature, weather-sick
Mid 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 dart
To bring her,
countless as the crested deeps,
Her subjects of the uncorrected heart?
False is that
vision, shrieks the devotee;
Incredible, we echo; and anew
Like a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps.
Low humourist this leader seems; perchance
Pitched from his University career,
Adept at
classic fooling. Yet of mould
Human 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 swell
To notions
monstrous,
doings mad
As billows on a foam-lashed beach;