Part 7

Throughout it all, Mankind was being taught To voice the rising requirements of Thought. Gradual process! Gesture was first stage; The fingers point a want in infant age. Each creature feels what force the best to spend To indicate a need, and gain an end. An angry calf soon after it is born, Butts with forehead not armed as yet with horn; Whelps of panthers, and cubs of lions treat As weapons teeth to be, and clawless feet. Chickens ruffle spread-wings, as at a foe, Threatening trespassers things they might do. What emotion will not all beasts succeed In expressing, though without speech, at need? Your Molossian draws back his large, soft lips, And shews his hard teeth! Strangers, ware, he grips! Then comes an old friend of the Master’s—hark! With frolic round and round, the joyous bark! So with the whole tribe; whether in a glow Of love they lick their pups; or to and fro Roll them—mimic rage—and bare, as to glut Cannibal hunger, teeth in jaws half shut. All who know but a little of the kind, And listen to the scolding match, will find Worlds of difference from the doleful bay Of hound deserted, whipt, cow’ring away. Horses, again; does not the rule apply? You tell by a steed’s neigh that mares are nigh; Straightway he feels the spur of wingéd love; They interpret his challenge to the drove. But—nostrils spread, the neigh become a snort; War steeds, jangling armour, pass—he would join the sport! Nor are birds, ospreys, gulls, without their choice Of vents for feeling; all unlike the voice, In wooing, to the hunger-scream of strife, Or victor’s, grappling sea fish for its life. Even, it is believed, some kinds that ride The air have means by varied cries to guide Men’s acts. Rough throated rooks and crows are said By secular sign-reading to have bred An instinct when winds, floods, rain they would have, To warn of weather coming that they crave. Thus, ears attest the ways that have been found By lower races to converse by sound, Strange if Man, Nature’s first-born, built not speech On sounds for meanings diverse, one for each! Fond fable that one knew all names, and then Distributed them to dumb fellow men! Before common use, by what means learned he Articulate speech had utility? How urge men as good as deaf—so, the rule, Sulky—for no clear gain, to go to school, When Nature had already, by design For them, through combining powers, to reign, Giv’n versatility of voice and tongue To plan, to act, and drive the world along! Strength in union; this the great, first law, From which, and its self-sacrifice, men draw Sovereignty in Nature; thence learned to bow To chiefs in mind and heart, who taught them how To change forms of living and life for new. From acceptance of son after sire grew Kingship and kings; with cities in due course, And citadels as centres of armed force, Or royal refuges in civil strife; For complex soon became national life. Wealth counted first by cattle, and by land; And the State’s part was at the King’s command. By his own standard he apportioned it, For strength or beauty; sometimes mother-wit. Laws of inheritance grew fixed; and great Landowners vied with kings to rule a State. Gold came; race, steel, charm, acres ceased to reign; All gave gold way, and followed in its train. An owner used it to earn rule and fame; Less for themselves—not e’en so high his aim— Than that he sought to hide some stain of earth. None blushed to rank by accidents of birth; But rank through money! Rich men would disguise That flaw by vouching aught else for their rise, They wished wealth for enjoyment, yet to shun Odium for it behind honours won. Vain! each peak climbed breeds on its own account Envy with traps to trip you as you mount; The more, and loftier, surer the flash Of a bolt, and for you, amid the crash, To find yourself contemptuously hurled Into the foul pit of the Underworld. Flee gold and power, both; neither is one With happiness; or sheds bliss on a throne. Few who have touched the goal aver the good Equals the price they paid in sweat of blood. Better it satisfies to be of those That obey than to sway realms, and crush foes. Hear Reason, and know wealth, absolute, whole, Is so to live that means disturb not soul. You wish to forbid Penury your door? Then adjust your house-keeping to your store. Ambition exalts to abase; your eyes, If they see, will teach you its lures are lies.

Earth’s masters despised these truths; they who had Supremacy and wealth went drunk and mad With licence; worms could bear no more; and crown, And lordship—heads with them—came tumbling down. Majesty was a ball for mobs to spurn; Awe’s excess was matched by excess of scorn. It was the dregs’ orgy; rule of brute force; And each man’s fury followed its full course. Guilt will, whatever an offence, appear Less heinous to third persons than seen near. Trial now was before a Court of one;— Judge, suitor, he to whom the hurt was done. Vengeance extreme would rouse convict, or kin, To redress disproportioned to the sin, And, unindulged, leave on the other side A balance owing, and unsatisfied; Enmeshing in either case a wide swarm Of households pledged to work each other harm. A blood-feud chokes enterprise;—earn reward For deeds, when hangs over the door a sword! Then, in all ages, let him who shall dare Set rolling stones of civil feud, beware! Whatever lives earlier it may spoil, It will not miss him out; it must recoil, No peace at home for one who has, the first, Poisoned man’s faith in man; he is accurst. Skulk as he may, himself does not believe He shall for aye be able to deceive; In sleep, fever-raging, he will proclaim His sin, and roam clad in the sheet of shame! Drear this “mid passage”, when, as themselves thought, Emancipated, men were sold and bought; Bondsmen to cunning demagogues, who saw Their gain in putting off the reign of Law. But ev’n the Multitude will not endure Chaos, save as interlude. Hence the cure. Mankind wearies of frauds; of vengeful deeds, Infinitely renewing, like ill weeds. From lassitude it lets the wise and good Enlist strong arms to stem the turbid flood. In time some sage arises to extract Ideas of right, that laws condense to act. Youth long since was past; Nature stood aside, Leaving Man to face problems, and replies provide.

Iphigenia

Bk. I. vv. 80-102

Think not I, and in Reason’s name, blaspheme Holy truths. Nay, for this would ill beseem My purpose. To bring home impious deeds Done as for Religion—that is my theme.

Who knows not of Aulis—the Chiefs arrayed About the Altar of the Trivian Maid— Lords, chosen of Achæa, kings of men, Reluctant murderers, ashamed, afraid.

And lo! though startled, with no fear at all— For how suspect ill in her loved sire’s call!— A girl, young; yet ripe for marriage; perhaps, Summoned to adorn that high festival!

What if some tremor? In her flow’r of days, Brought hither for the host of Greeks to gaze, And admire the Fair, a young hero’s bride. Hark! is not that the wedding chant they raise?

Courage! Faint not; here are brave friends will bear Thee to the Altar; all await thee there! “Who, and for what?” She knows not, but a steam, A blood offering, scents she in the air.

In a trance she moves; round her a void space. Awed as if at Death’s halo on Youth’s grace, Warriors shrink as on the Princess comes, Abashed to look their victim in the face.

A priest’s touch—the tresses in which maids bind Their waving hair have found themselves confined By a sacrificial fillet, the ends Circling each cheek, and flowing down behind.

She wakes. Flash on her soul—the Fleet’s delay— Her Mother’s despair as she went her way— The wrath of Artemis, Her gory rites— Basilisk glance as Calchas passed that day!

And her sire—not once to have turned and smiled Upon his best beloved, his first-born child— The gleam from a ray on a Thing ill veiled— And a swell of sobs that could not be stilled!

Her knees fail her; and how not? how sustain The horror! her father to will to stain His dagger with her blood! to breathe beneath A load of inextinguishable pain!

So, shed Iphianassa her pure life, Borne in shuddering arms to a Sire’s knife: Printing with chaste blood incestuous stains, Re-dyed later by a foul, vengeful wife!

The whole to verify a priest’s surmise, Prove privity with Heav’n in vulgar eyes! No matter how Gods’ credit was abused, Or sweet innocence sacrificed to lies.

Maternal Love

Bk. II. vv. 342-380

Admire how Nature, with her jealous care For purity in kind, still schemes to pair Mother and child by features that forbid Confusion in the common home all share.

Members of a kind insomuch agree; Yet each is itself; whence diversity. Mutual recognition rests on that; Family ties without it could not be.

No human convention; dumb cattle can Be sure where love is due, no less than Man. An universal instinct—and, for guide, A sense of differences—Nature’s plan.

A calf may its innocent life resign On the altar before some stately shrine, Shedding a flood of warm blood ’mid the steam Of incense, and libations of red wine.

And the Mother! in many a green glade She tracks the lost by prints his feet have made. Each spot she studies, in the fond belief The faith of love can never be gainsaid.

Then, from the woods that her moans overflow, An impulse drives her to renew her woe At the stall, where a passionate regret, Piercing her heart, tosses her to and fro.

Not willow saplings, dewy grass, nor sight Of brimming rivers, with, in warm noon light, Cool pools to stand in, banish pain and ache, Much less, yield an interval of delight.

A calf at play impose on her belief! Be accepted as hers, and bring relief! Numberless signs attest it not her own; Both like and unlike aggravate her grief.

’Tis given not to flocks alone and herds To mark diversities, but wild beasts, birds, Joying in lonely groves, and streams, and lakes, Even fish that understand without words,

As they swim the deep, paint in shells the shore,— Nay, grains of corn themselves, an endless store, Remain distinguishable, one and all; Are known apart by learnéd in such lore.

Art works after one pattern, and by rule; Nature as the mood inspires, not a school. She is certain in idea; diverse In embodiment; never same and dull.

Echo

Bk. IV. vv. 525-536, 549-596

Sound, voice are bodies. Though not for the hand To grasp, sense feels them, acts at their command. They wind into the ear, and strike the drum; Hark! response, as to a conductor’s wand.

The voice even can hurt, as fist, or saw. In full volume, hoarse, grating on the jaw, Jostling its way in haste to worry through, It leaves the path it travels rough and raw.

And no less bodily a spoken word; When moulded, and dressed, to be rightly heard, And winged by that arch modeller, the tongue, It slips through the lips, and careers, a bird.

If the length to be traversed is unfair, Symmetry is marred; speakers must prepare For dazed confusion in their audience, And only a blurred rumbling in the air.

Then set a Herald in a market place. For him thousands of eyes gaze from one face; And he flings at the whole a single word, That each will drink-in as his special grace.

It multiplies, and with the hearers; all Receive stamped facsimiles, to recall Both form and sound, distinct, as that went forth; Each can claim his own for original.

Human ears are the goal; and when no ear Is reached, after roaming everywhere In vain for shelter, the poor thing expires, To flit a ghostly leaf, dead, shrunk and sere.

Or chance may be that it collides with rock; When—as with pebble that recoils—the shock Returns the voice thither whence it had come, And so unchanged that it appears to mock.

Natural the cause, effect; the surprise, When in lone spots a company’s loud cries After stragglers on dark hills, bring back nought But old words in old order as replies.

Where a height faced height, I have known a shout To gambol between in a joyous rout, And six or seven times reverberate; Like ball thrown to and fro in play about.

Nothing is out of Nature’s course, the mode In which She acts; but Fancy loves to load Being with mysteries; not learn the laws Within our ken that rule Earth, our abode.

Thus, a charmed husbandman will vigils keep, Imagining far echoes breaking sleep, ’Mid silences that seem to hold their breath, To be Pan come, half God, half Beast, with leap,

And rustle of his bristly, pine-wreathed head— Drawn lip running o’er shrilling pipe—to lead His troop, goat-footed Satyrs, Nymphs, and Fauns, Till cliffs and caves reply to chords and reed.

He deems that shy Powers, as falls the Dark, In solitudes—no prying crowds to mark— Fill woods and hills with music, wind and stringed, That he hears till the day-star wakes the lark.

For ears hear as they list. The world is wide, With wildernesses wherein few abide. Remote from busy marts these joy to dream Some Gods do not disdain to dwell beside!

The Seasons

Bk. V. vv. 736-746

The pageant of the Seasons! Venus comes; She brings with her, As leader of the revel, winged Zephyr, Spring’s harbinger. And Flora has spread a carpet, finer was never wove, All hues and fragrances, to be trod by the Queen of Love. Next enters red-hot Summer; but its droughts are lightly borne By good Goddess Ceres; for they ripen the standing corn Nought ashamed is She of the dusty sweat upon her brow. Foreseeing her sheaves, how more and heavier they shall grow; Nor even scolds the North-wind; it steels the straw to sustain, By its rough embraces, the weight of the hardening grain. Autumn steps close after; and it too with a God for guide; Hark! shout the vineyards, “Bacchus! Hail to Bacchus!” far and wide. And now Earth’s “No-man’s land!” Spring, Autumn, Summer here and there; While up and down dance the Winds in the Kingdom of the Air. South-easters roar through woods where green leaves whispered yesterday; And thunders the South on meadows that wear the bloom of May. But the Year is waning; in the long chilly Dark it sits; No more, though by mere spasms, it breaks out into merry fits. Sulky and dull it mumbles its tempers in fog and sleet; Its joints are stiff with age; it totters on frost-bitten feet. ’Tis Winter, with a train pinched like itself, and short of breath, That shivers, and, as it moves, rattles its remains of teeth.

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.