The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems Part 4

At random thus for all, for none, he lives, Profusely lavish though he nothing gives; The world he roves as living but to show A friendless man without a single foe; From bad to good, to bad from good to run, And find a character by seeking none.

Who covets fame should ne'er be over nice, Some slight distortion pays the market price.

If haply lam'd by some propitious chance, Instruct in att.i.tude, or teach to dance; Be still extravagant in deed, or word; If new, enough, no matter how absurd.

Then what is Genius? Nay, if rightly us'd, Some gift of Nature happily abus'd.

Nor wrongly deem by this eccentrick rule That Nature favours whom she makes a fool; Her scorn and favour we alike despise; Not Nature's follies but our own we prize.

"Or what is wit?" a meteor bright and rare, What comes and goes we know not whence, or where; A brilliant nothing out of something wrought, A mental vacuum by condensing thought.

Behold Tortoso. There's a man of wit; To all things fitted, though for nothing fit; Scourge of the world, yet crouching for a name, And honour bartering for the breath of fame: Born to command, and yet an arrant slave; Through too much honesty a seeming knave; At all things grasping, though on nothing bent, And ease pursuing e'en with discontent; Through Nature, Arts, and Sciences he flies, And gathers truth to manufacture lies.

Nor only Wits, for tortur'd talents claim Of sov'reign mobs the glorious meed of fame; E'en Sages too, of grave and rev'rend air, Yclepp'd _Philosophers_, must have their share; Who deeper still in conjuration skill'd, _A mighty something out of nothing build._

'Then wherefore read? why cram the youthful head With all the learned lumber of the dead; Who seeking wisdom followed Nature's laws, Nor dar'd effects admit without a cause?'

Why?--Ask the sophist of our modern school; To foil the workman we must know the tool; And, that possess'd, how swiftly is defac'd The n.o.blest, rarest monument of taste!

So neatly too, the mutilations stand Like native errors of the artist's hand; Nay, what is more, the very tool betray'd To seem the product of the work it made.

'Oh, monstrous slander on the human race!'

Then read conviction in Ortuno's case.

By Nature fas.h.i.+on'd in her happiest mood, With learning, fancy, keenest wit endued; To what high purpose, what exalted end These lofty gifts did great Ortuno bend?

With grateful triumph did Ortuno raise The mighty trophies to their Author's praise; With skill deducing from th' harmonious whole Immortal proofs of One Creative soul?

Ah, no! infatuate with the dazzling light, In them he saw their own creative might; Nay, madly deem'd, if _such_ their wond'rous _skill_, The phantom of a G.o.d 'twas theirs to _will_.

But granting that he _is_, he bids you show By what you prove it, or by what you know.

Oh, reas'ning worm! who questions thus of Him That lives in all, and moves in every limb, Must with himself in very strangeness dwell, Has never heard the voice of Conscience tell Of right and wrong, and speak in louder tone Than tropick thunder of that Holy One, Whose pure, eternal, justice shall requite The deed of wrong, and justify the right.

Can such blaspheme and breathe the vital air?

Let mad philosophy their names declare.

Yet some there are, less daring in their aim, With humbler cunning butcher sense for fame; Who doubting still, with many a fearful pause, Th' existence grant of one almighty cause; But halting there, in bolder tone deny The life hereafter, when the man shall die, Nor mark the monstrous folly of their gain-- That G.o.d all-wise should fas.h.i.+on _them_ in vain.

'Twere labour lost in this material age, When school boys trample on the Inspir'd Page, When coblers prove by syllogistick pun The soal they mend, and that of man are one; 'Twere waste of time to check the Muses' speed, For all the _whys_ and _wherefores_ of their creed; To show how prov'd the juices are the same That feed the body, and the mental frame.

But who, half sceptic, half afraid of wrong, Shall walk our streets, and mark the pa.s.sing throng; The brawny oaf in mould herculean cast, The pigmy statesman trembling in his blast, The c.u.mb'rous citizen of portly paunch, Unwont to soar beyond the smoaking haunch; The meagre bard behind the moving tun, His shadow seeming lengthen'd by the sun; Who forms scarce visible shall thus descry, Like flitting clouds athwart the mental sky; From giant bodies then bare gleams of mind, Like mountain watch-lights blinking to the wind; Nor blush to find his unperverted eye Flash on his heart, and give his tongue the lie.

'Tis pa.s.sing strange! yet, born as if to show Man to himself his most malignant foe, There are (so desperate is the madness grown) Who'd rather live a _lie_ than live unknown; Whose very tongues, with force of holy writ, Their doctrines d.a.m.n with self-recoiling wit.

Behold yon dwarf, of visage pale and wan; A sketch of life, a remnant of a man!

Whose livid lips, as now he moulds a grin, Like charnel doors disclose the waste within; Whose stiffen'd joints within their sockets grind, Like gibbets creaking to the pa.s.sing wind; Whose shrivell'd skin with much adhesion clings His bones around in hard compacted rings, If veins there were, no blood beneath could force, Unless by miracle, its trickling course;-- Yet even _he_ within that sapless frame, A mind sustained that climb'd the steeps of fame.

Such is the form by mystic Heaven design'd, The earthly mansion of the rarest mind.

But, mark his grat.i.tude. This soul sublime, This soul lord paramount o'er s.p.a.ce and time, This soul of fire, with impious madness sought, Itself to prove of mortal matter wrought; Nay, bred, engendered, on the grub-worm plan, From that vile clay which made his outward man, That shadowy form which dark'ning into birth, But seem'd a sign to mark a soul on earth.

But who shall cast an introverted eye Upon himself, that will not there descry A conscious life that shall, nor cannot die?

E'en at our birth, when first the infant mould Gives it a mansion and an earthly hold, Th' exulting Spirit feels the heavenly fire That lights her tenement will ne'er expire; And when, in after years, disease and age, Our fellow-bodies sweeping from life's stage, Obtrude the thought of death, e'en then we seem, As in the revelation of a dream, To hear a voice, more audible than speech, Warn of a part which death can never reach.

Survey the tribes of savage men that roam Like wand'ring herds, each wilderness their home;-- Nay, even there th' immortal spirit stands Firm on the verge of death, and looks to brighter lands.

Shall human wisdom then, with beetle sight, Because obstructed in its blund'ring flight, Despise the deep conviction of our birth, And limit life to this degraded earth?

Oh, far from me be that insatiate pride, Which, turning on itself, drinks up the tide Of natural light; 'till one eternal gloom, Like walls of adamant enclose the tomb.

Tremendous thought! that this transcendant Power, Fell'd with the body in one fatal hour, With all its faculties, should pa.s.s like air For ages without end as though it never were!

Say, whence, obedient, to their destin'd end The various tribes of living nature tend?

Why beast, and bird, and all the countless race Of earth and waters, each his proper place Instinctive knows, and through the endless chain Of being moves in one harmonious strain; While man alone, with strange perversion, draws Rebellious fame from Nature's broken laws?

Methinks I hear, in that still voice which stole On h.o.r.eb's mount o'er rapt Elijah's soul, With stern reproof indignant Heaven reply: 'Tis o'erweening Pride, that blinds the eye Of reasoning man, and o'er his darkened life Confusion spreads and misery and strife.

With wonder fill'd and self-reflecting praise, The slave of pride his mighty powers surveys; On Reason's sun (by bounteous Nature given, To guide the soul upon her way to heaven) Adoring gazes, 'till the dazzling light, To darkness sears his rain presumptuous sight; Then bold, though blind, through error's night he runs, In fancy lighted by a thousand suns; For b.l.o.o.d.y laurels now the warrior plays, Now libels nature for the poet's bays; Now darkness drinks from metaphysic springs, Or follows fate on astrologick wings: 'Mid toils at length the world's loud wonder won, With Persian piety, to Reason's sun Profound he bows, and, idolist of fame, Forgets the G.o.d who lighted first the flame.

All potent Reason! what thy wond'rous light?

A shooting star athwart a polar night; A bubble's gleam amid the boundless main; A sparkling sand on waste Arabia's plain: E'en such, vain Power, thy limited control, E'en such thou art, to mans mysterious soul!

Presumptuous man! would'st thou aspiring reach True wisdom's height, let conscious weakness teach Thy feeble soul her poor dependant state, Nor madly war with Nature to be great.

Come then, Humility, thou surest guide!

On earth again with frenzied men reside; Tear the dark film of vanity and lies, And inward turn their renovated eyes; In aspect true let each himself behold, By self deform'd in pride's portentous mould.

And if thy voice, on Bethl'em's holy plain Once heard, can reach their flinty hearts again, Teach them, as fearful of a serpent's gaze, Teach them to shun the gloating eye of praise; That slightest swervings from their nature's plan Make them a lie, and poison all the man, 'Till black corruption spread the soul throughout, Whence thick and fierce, like fabled mandrakes, sprout The seeds of rice with more than tropick force, Exhausting in the growth their very vital source.

Nor wrongly deem the cynick muse aspires, With monkish tears to quench our n.o.bler fires.

Let honest pride our humble hearts inflame, First to deserve, ere yet we look to, fame; Not fame miscall'd, the mob's applauding stare; This monsters have, proportion'd as they're rare; But that sweet praise, the tribute of the good, For wisdom gain'd, through love of truth pursued.

Coeval with our birth, this pure desire Was given to lift our grov'ling natures higher, Till that high praise, by genuine merit wrung From men's slow justice, shall employ the tongue Of yon Supernal Court, from whom may flow Or bliss eternal or eternal wo.

And since in all this hope exalting lives, Let virtuous toil improve what Nature gives: Each in his sphere some glorious palm may gain, For Heaven all-wise created nought in vain.

Oh, task sublime, to till the human soil Where fruits immortal crown the lab'ror's toil!

Where deathless flowers, in everlasting bloom, May gales from Heaven with odorous sweets perfume; Whose fragrance still when man's last work is done, And h.o.a.ry Time his final course has run, Thro' ages back, with fresh'ning power shall last, Mark his long track, and linger where he past!

The Paint-Kings.

Fair Ellen was long the delight of the young, No damsel could with her compare; Her charms were the theme of the heart and the tongue.

And bards without number in extacies sung, The beauties of Ellen the fair.

Yet cold was the maid; and tho' legions advanced, All drill'd by Ovidean art, And languish'd, and ogled, protested and danced, Like shadows they came, and like shadows they glanced From the hard polish'd ice of her heart.

Yet still did the heart of fair Ellen implore A something that could not be found; Like a sailor she seem'd on a desolate sh.o.r.e, With nor house, nor a tree, nor a sound but the roar Of breakers high das.h.i.+ng around.

From object to object still, still would she veer, Though nothing, alas, could she find; Like the moon, without atmosphere, brilliant and clear, Yet doom'd, like the moon, with no being to cheer The bright barren waste of her mind.

But rather than sit like a statue so still When the rain made her mansion a _pound_, Up and down would she go, like the sails of a mill, And pat every stair, like a woodp.e.c.k.e.r's bill, From the tiles of the roof to the ground.

One morn, as the maid from her cas.e.m.e.nt inclin'd, Pa.s.s'd a youth, with a frame in his hand.

The cas.e.m.e.nt she clos'd--not the eye of her mind; For, do all she could, no, she could not be blind; Still before her she saw the youth stand.

"Ah, what can he do," said the languis.h.i.+ng maid, "Ah, what with that frame can he do?"

And she knelt to the G.o.ddess of Secrets and pray'd, When the youth pa.s.s'd again, and again he display'd The frame and a picture to view.

"Oh, beautiful picture!" the fair Ellen cried, "I must see thee again or I die."

Then under her white chin her bonnet she tied, And after the youth and the picture she hied, When the youth, looking back, met her eye.