Part 5

As a queenly daffodil in the springtide of its bloom, Falls, whelmed beneath the plough-share, and wondering at its doom; Or as a scarlet poppy, laying weary neck on earth, Yields its breath to the full shower it welcomed at its birth; So, all too fair to die, star of a life, Euryalus Left for Nisus nought but despair, with dire revenge; and thus Sank Pallas, young and brave;—as, under a girl’s heedless feet, Drop violets, soft and shy, or hyacinths, faint and sweet, Appealing from Fate to Heav’n, with all of their grace and sheen, Telling—the more that life has fled—of what its charms have been; Or as Babe on its Mother’s breast, who cannot, will not, think Rosy lips half open are cold, and presses them to drink.

Things

Æneidos, Bk. I. v. 462

_Sunt lacryma rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt_

There is spirit immortal that mounts up on high, Yet reaches longing hands back to hopes left to die; There are things that are tears; there are tears that are things; There are tears that are water, and tears that are wings!

LUCRETIUS

Hymn to Venus

TITI LUCRETII CARI De Rerum Natura, Bk. I. vv. 1-48

Goddess! in whom our Rome is proud to trace Nursing Mother of an Imperial race; Who ’neath the constellations, as they range, Heav’n’s standard-bearers, in soft interchange Of night’s watches, rulest how, when, and where. In Ocean’s finny depths, in upper air, And teeming soil, Life, urgent to be born, Shall at thy smile burst forth to greet the morn, All without thee was gusty darkness; then A sudden rapture stirs in Gods and Men! Thou comest! Winds fall; the sky no more low’rs: Earth embroiders herself with fragrant flow’rs; Billows that had been rolling mountains high, Ripple laughter to greet a sapphire sky. Wherever thou art is spring; thine the key That sets the prisoned wanton west-wind free To beat time to thy approach; and note how Birds, thy heralds, by fits skim to and fro; While, more fiercely-smitten, herds that had been Content to graze their pastures rich and green, Toss hoofs and horns, breast headlong streams; and where It pleases Thee follow, whitherso’er! Venus, all provident, and kind, and wise, Nought in sea, torrent, hill escapes thy eyes; No green plain, no tree that invites a nest. With soothing touch in every breathing breast Thou layest seed of love, yet with such skill, A forethought so unerring, and a will So tenderly sure, that never a spark Strays from its order, but knows each its mark; Kind choosing kind, species species, race race, Till Being grows, age to age, in emulous grace! Alone thou steerest Nature on her course! Failing Thee, lost the aye marshalling force To wash blind atoms on the shores of Light, Where each shall take up Life in its due right, To use it at its best, and for the best, Joy for itself, harmony for the rest?

A theme, which it might well have seemed in vain To attempt with powers of mortal brain; Then least, when Rome—how lately!—claimed of all Her children service at the trumpet’s call. Ev’n still she aches with pangs that she has borne, Glooming dumbly with fear they may return. But, Goddess, I trust! greatly dare to ask: “Shed thy eternal charm upon my task: Bid warfare cease; uplift thy sovereign hand; And blissful Peace will brood o’er sea and land. What can resist Thee? Mars with his alarms? Where lies the God but in thy lovely arms? Slender throat thrown back, see, his hungry eyes Feed upon thine with ever fresh surprise! Queen, he is thine; wound deeply as thou wilt; Sweeter smart than all the blood he has spilt! Cling round him; fold in thy divine embrace; Lift tow’rds his the appeal of thy bright face; Whisper love’s little nothings, till deep calm Steep his whole being in a honeyed balm; And he forget ’twas his murderous car Spread frenzy through our streets of civil War!”

But the fever has abated; so long As it is stayed, I will resume my song;— The more gladly if it be heard by One Whom Venus willed long back a Paragon, Adorned with all the gifts that mortal man Has owed her since Humanity began. A Memmius is by that illustrious name Pledged not to stand aloof from Rome aflame; And thou didst thy part; but, the crisis past, Thou now, my Lord and Friend, art free at last. Yet weigh all well; I have toiled hard to learn, And with pains equal held it my concern, When I myself was satisfied, to find Means to pass truths into another mind. No less a duty, if thou undertake, Wilt thou betray, if thou should then forsake! Away with mean cares; give, if aught, thy whole— The sum of Reason—that which makes the Soul!

Philosophy

Bk. II. vv. 1-60

“Listen! the waves hiss, and loud the winds roar! See! a ship drifts on a lee shore! “Help!” No help; a whole crew on the beach dead. Alas poor souls! I sleep on a good bed.

And lo! two hosts in line of battle drawn. Thousands will not wake at next dawn! To be killed, or kill—life or death for those— I wonder which; happy I cannot lose!”

Count not men Molochs that with passive eyes, They witness neighbours’ agonies. Bodily ills all; how should bodies care For others’ ills? Each has its own to bear.

Easily flow our tears when others weep; As easily we fall asleep; When Havoc stalks abroad, content we see Other flesh in pain from which ours is free!

Let flesh be flesh; we by rough ways and bleak Will climb up to the mountain peak; And entering through guarded ramparts there Find peace from flesh in temples stately, fair;

Work of wise builders, where a welcome waits, With keys to life, within the gates. That riddle many have tried, and not guessed; They wander, spirit in flesh; nowhere rest.

Spirit trumpets down from tower, spire and hall; They cannot hearken to the call. Smothered in that they worship—wealth, power, birth— Dream they are growing wings, and rot on earth!

Self-courted woes, suicide of the brain, Dark chos’n for light, tortures in vain Endured; this particle of life we have— A spark at best—o’erdriven to the grave!

All but to pamper bodies, that, so long As they are painless, hale, and strong, Are warranted by Nature, watch-dog kind, To press no further wants upon the Mind.

This commonwealth of limbs, together brought To be a tenement for Thought, Asks but to be exempt from fell disease, Joy in mere breath, and feel itself at ease.

When the lamps’ flame from golden statues gleams, Do the lights vie with the sun’s beams? Must music to stir hearts to leap and bound, From frescoed walls and fretted roofs resound?

Or if some time hot fever racks the head, Are you, tossing on a sick bed, Easier at all that you chance to lie On cedarn couch purple with Tyrian dye?

Know you not, wastrels, that what Mind you give To flesh you steal from power to live? The spirit is the root of life; thereby We live; and if we starve it, then we die.

When spirit-comrades by cool brook recline, Beneath the shade of beech or pine, They reck not which the rich, and which the poor. Nor envious, nor jealous of neighbours’ store.

Enough to feel the warm blood answering The joyousness of the sweet Spring: While the soft turf, to offer greetings due, Dresses itself in flow’rs of ev’ry hue.

Sense feels the charm, and Nature all approves; While spirit talks with spirit, as it loves. Ah! know how nought to flesh itself the whole You sell life for; how hateful to the soul!

‘Musical as is Apollo’s Lute’

Bk. IV. vv. 1-25

I know a dell the Muses haunt; lone scene, Where ne’er ere now had mortal footstep been. Curious they what wand’rer should invade The tuneful solitude, and pray their aid. Ungrateful office his who tries to set Men free from the close meshes of the net In which religions of whatever kind Presume to hold humanity confined. Repulsed by those for whose sakes I pursued A thankless work, I trod ways rough and rude, Until, the track by good chance missed, I came Solitary, out of heart, footsore, lame, To this strange spot where the Nine Sisters camp Out in the wilderness, and light their lamp To guide lost wayfarers thither. I asked, And received; the Goddesses even tasked Themselves for my scorned mission, which they dressed In new melodies as an honoured guest; For it unsealing in the sands fresh springs, Inspiring it to lift itself on wings, While they bade flow’rs strange to poesy blow, That they might wreathe a garland for my brow. If I, to emancipate Mind, make use Of verse, does the enlistment need excuse? Ignorance is the babe who drinks all up When doctors sweeten at its brim the cup. No sickness equals spectres of the brain, They enslave till the bondsman hugs his chain. Whose soul should not burn, as like mine, it sees Hale men being treated, as for disease, With drugs that force a nightmare-ridden sleep, When they might bask in sun, and shout, and leap! But the remedy? Reason wears a face Austere, abstracted, void of outward grace. The problems it would solve are deep and high; And the informing light they shed is dry. The crowd, long since besotted, in affright Shrinks to its lazy phantoms from the sight Of Wisdom, grim and grimy, in the mire Calling it to drudge and moil without hire. Whatever means Souls’ doctors can command Should not they use to make men understand That they are free—the more for the consent Of Heav’n’s music to be their instrument? Music interprets Mind; by it I strive— Like physicians by honey from the hive— To clothe bare truths Philosophy has taught In garb that points—not hides—the charms of Thought. All praise be to the Muses that I find Power in their sweet mystery to bind A friend in toils so happy that his soul Will refuse deliverance ere the whole Reveals itself to him of Nature’s plan, Even in our verse, and how good for Man!

The Fear of Death

Bk. III. vv. 883-1107, and Bk. III. vv. 9-30

Men’s Words and Thoughts on Death! One will deny His and his dead body’s identity; Yet resent, as if slight to his own worth, Its rotting when deposited in earth; Flame’s outrage, devouring it with his goods; Beasts’, tearing it to pieces in the woods. His proud profession that he does not care For his body’s plight—He will not be there— Rings false; he keeps, secreted in his heart, A nerve which aches, though flesh and feeling part. Not will self be root and branch so wrenched out As that some still shall not be left about; For why contemplate else at all the lot Of the dead flesh he says concerns him not, Unless Self pities Self, and it hurts the Soul That it and flesh make an ill-smelling whole? But, if strange that the sufferer thus made To stand by, share the cruel insult paid The carcase, being flesh and spirit, one, Though feigned to feel, by now is past and gone, And as Nothingness cannot feel it ill For brutes to maul it, is not stranger still The impulse rather to exult than mourn When men foresee they shall hereafter burn Upon a grand funeral pyre, or lie Mummies, stifled, frozen, alternately, On polished slabs of marble, or be hid, Crushed beneath a mountainous pyramid! You grieve: “No more will echoes of your feet Reach home; no wife and children run to greet Your glad return, and vie for the first kiss, Flooding a heart, too full for speech, with bliss; No more for dear ones will you watch and store; Be their armour, and citadel no more;— Oh! that one day, cruel, accursed, should spoil, The harvesting of a whole lifetime’s toil!” But in these sighs, what cause will you have shown For real tribulation of your own? Rather will not the death that you bewail Be happy ending of a fairy tale? Reduce your cries to words; and they will clear Away a grievance, and assuage a fear. To fall asleep at a fair life’s fair close, And thence till Time shall cease enjoy repose— Where hardship? If it be to leave behind Boundless sorrow to kindred, ease your mind; The ash-pale face on the funeral pile, Far from forbidding kindly souls to smile, Stands for rest rewarding labour, release From accidents of fortune’s blind caprice! Folly again, when banqueters recline, Brows roses-wreathed, cups in their hands, the wine At their hearts, and—“brief harvest this of joy For us poor things”, they cry; “the hour employ! What is is ours; for use; not to recall!” As if of death’s ills, if any, of all Chief were to think of feasting in the past, Feel in the hand the wine cup, and not taste!

Mere slumber will the night from day divide, And brush life’s merriment and cares aside. Death has infinite force to put asleep Body and Mind, and how can men then keep From craving the fuller, they being one? Is not Death Sleep, but a sleep going on, On eternally—more complete again, While it lasts, than the sleep of living men? Sleep in its own true nature does not quit Its hold so far of sense as to unfit A wakened subject to collect his powers For the due service of his working hours. Much less—if nought with something may compare— Than busy life’s in slumber, is Death’s care For Self! Death owes no duty unto life, Its joys and griefs, its harmony and strife; Dissolves as if intent to negative The utmost art of builder to revive. Did ever man re-tread his native land On whom Death once has laid his icy hand? Yet living men will counterfeit a woe For loss that in their graves they cannot know! Well Nature losing patience might express Herself in plain reproof of fussiness: “What ails the man? Why all this waste of breath In fond anger at the approach of Death? Did all thy days in unmixed misery pass? No drop of pleasure moisten the cracked glass? If satiety the fault, better, Guest, Fly a feast too hospitable, and rest. Since the offence a glut of life, the waste Is the worse the longer the life shall last. Why live, when, as each hour is born, and dies, You read its curses in lack-lustre eyes? Off with yourself; nought fresh can I invent; You’ve sampled my whole stock; my wits are spent!” You object: “Your years few; body not chill Or withered with age; your joints supple still?” True, I dare say: yet though you should defy Whole centuries to kill—nay, never die— Nature endures; all would be stale to you!— Plead guilty; for you know the charge is true. Call next appellant—one advanced in years, Who meets Death’s advent with protesting tears. Would not Nature have reason on her side, If high She raised her voice to scold and chide: “Begone! bad jester, peak and pule elsewhere! I will not stand your sickly groanings here. What if, when, as your head you laid just now On the pillow, thinking nought else than how Empty you were, hungering for rich fare, Death entered, bidding you forthwith prepare To follow! You may call it hard, unkind Of the many years which left you behind, Drift-weed, ashore cast by the downward flow, Unsatisfied, forlorn, —But wherefore so? Did I not range careers for you to choose— This, that—a crowd—while you, from fear to lose A better, let all go? At last be sage; And cut ambition short to suit your age; Accept complacently the golden rule— What must be must be— kick; and die a fool!”

Nature is right to rate a worthless son, Though She may find use for him later on. A battered thing like that, long past its prime, Rusted and cankered with unlovely grime, Out of shape and fashion, is good enough To feed Creation’s furnace with the stuff It is ever craving, supply of fresh Material of mortal mind and flesh. You need not be afraid that you, poor Clown, Will—deserve as you may—be shovelled down Into a bottomless pit, or consigned To Hell, as sport for devils there confined. How unless from old clay could new be born? Dust we were, and must, dust to dust, return; Millions before have fallen to it; thus Will numberless worse, better, fall like us! New pots from old— just that is Nature’s view; Still the old stuff, although the style be new. —And Man the stuff; no scrap of Self his own; Nothing fee simple; all on lease, or loan!