“When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read”
The horrible Bohemian Huss,
The tedious Wycliffe, where are they?
But where is old Nestorius?
The wind has blown them all away.
II
The Kohen out of Novdograd
Who argued from the Roman Jus
“_Privata fasta nihil ad
Rem nisi sint de sacribus_.”
And Hume, who made a dreadful fuss
About the Resurrection Day
And said it was ridiculous--
The wind has blown them all away.
III
Of Smith the gallant Mormon lad
That took of wives an over-plus:
Johanna Southcott who was mad
And nasty Nietzsche, who was worse.
Of Tolstoy, the Eccentric Russ,
Our strong Posterity shall say:
“Lord Jesus! What are these to us?
The wind has blown them all away!”
_Envoi_
Prince, should you meet upon a bus
A man who makes a great display
Of Dr Haeckel, argue thus:--
The wind has blown them all away.
V
EPIGRAMS
I
_On His Books_
When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
“His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”
II
_On Noman, a Guest_
Dear Mr Noman, does it ever strike you,
The more we see of you, the less we like you?
III
_A Trinity_
Of three in One and One in three
My narrow mind would doubting be
Till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met
And all at once were Juliet
IV
_On Torture, a Public Singer_
Torture will give a dozen pence or more
To keep a drab from bawling at his door.
The public taste is quite a different thing--
Torture is positively paid to sing.
V
_On Paunch, a Parasite_
Paunch talks against good liquor to excess,
And then about his raving Patroness;
And then he talks about himself. And then
We turn the conversation on to men.
VI
_On Hygiene_
Of old when folk lay sick and sorely tried
The doctors gave them physic, and they died.
But here’s a happier age: for now we know
Both how to make men sick and keep them so.
VII
_On Lady Poltagrue, a Public Peril_
The Devil, having nothing else to do,
Went off to tempt My Lady Poltagrue.
“From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends, Theres nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends”
We taught the art of writing things
On men we still should like to throttle:
And where to get the Blood of Kings
At only half a crown a bottle.
* * * * *
Eheu Fugaces! Postume!
(An old quotation out of mode);
My coat of dreams is stolen away
My youth is passing down the road.
* * * * *
The wealth of youth, we spent it well
And decently, as very few can.
And is it lost? I cannot tell:
And what is more, I doubt if you can.
The question’s very much too wide,
And much too deep, and much too hollow,
And learned men on either side
Use arguments I cannot follow.
They say that in the unchanging place,
Where all we loved is always dear,
We meet our morning face to face
And find at last our twentieth year....
They say (and I am glad they say)
It is so; and it may be so:
It may be just the other way,
I cannot tell. But this I know:
From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
* * * * *
But something dwindles, oh! my peers,
And something cheats the heart and passes,
And Tom that meant to shake the years
Has come to merely rattling glasses.
And He, the Father of the Flock,
Is keeping Burmesans in order,
An exile on a lonely rock
That overlooks the Chinese border.
And One (Myself I mean--no less),
Ah!--will Posterity believe it--
Not only don’t deserve success,
But hasn’t managed to achieve it.
Not even this peculiar town
Has ever fixed a friendship firmer,
But--one is married, one’s gone down,
And one’s a Don, and one’s in Burmah.
* * * * *
And oh! the days, the days, the days,
When all the four were off together:
The infinite deep of summer haze,
The roaring charge of autumn weather!
* * * * *
I will not try the reach again,
I will not set my sail alone,
To moor a boat bereft of men
At Yarnton’s tiny docks of stone.
“Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone”
Then, in due order, on
these expanding leaves _Boiling_ Water is largely poured and
the god arises, worthy of continual but evil praise and of the
thanks of the vicious, a Deity for the moment deceitfully kindly to
men. Under his influence the whole mind receives a sharp vision of
power. It is a phantasm and a cheat. Men can do wonders through
wine; through Tea they only think themselves great and clear--but
that is enough if one has bound oneself to that strange idol and
learnt the magic phrase on His Pedestal, [Greek: ARISTON MEN TI],
for of all the illusions and dreams men cherish none is so grandiose
as the illusion of conscious power within.
* * * * *
Well, then, it fades.... I begin to see that this cannot continue
... of Tea it came, inconsecutive and empty; with the influence of
Tea dissolving, let these words also dissolve.... I could wish it
had been Opium, or Haschisch, or even Gin; you would have had
something more soaring for your money.... _In vino Veritas. In
Aqua satietas. In_ ... What is the Latin for Tea? What! Is there
no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would
have let the vulgar stuff alone.
ON THEM
I do not like Them. It is no good asking me why, though I have
plenty of reasons. I do not like Them. There would be no particular
point in saying I do not like Them if it were not that so many
people doted on Them, and when one hears Them praised, it goads one
to expressing one's hatred and fear of Them.
I know very well that They can do one harm, and that They have
occult powers. All the world has known that for a hundred thousand
years, more or less, and every attempt has been made to propitiate
Them. James I. would drown Their mistress or burn her, but
_They_ were spared. Men would mummify Them in Egypt, and
worship the mummies; men would carve Them in stone in Cyprus, and
Crete and Asia Minor, or (more remarkable still) artists, especially
in the Western Empire, would leave Them out altogether; so much was
Their influence dreaded. Well, I yield so far as not to print Their
name, and only to call Them "They", but I hate Them, and I'm not
afraid to say so.
“Im tired of love; Im still more tired of rhyme; but money gives me pleasure all the time.”
XIX
_On a Dead Hostess_
Of this bad world the loveliest and the best
Has smiled and said “Good Night,” and gone to rest.
XX
_On a Great Election_
The accursèd power which stands on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and Champagne and Bridge)
Broke--and Democracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).
XXI
_On a Mistaken Mariner_
He whistled thrice to pass the Morning Star,
Thinking that near which was so very far.
So I, whenas I meet my Dearest Dear,
Still think that far which is so very near.
XXII
_On a Sleeping Friend_
Lady, when your lovely head
Droops to sink among the Dead,
And the quiet places keep
You that so divinely sleep;
Then the dead shall blessèd be
With a new solemnity,
For such Beauty, so descending,
Pledges them that Death is ending.
Sleep your fill--but when you wake
Dawn shall over Lethe break.
XXIII
_Fatigued_
I’m tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme.
But Money gives me pleasure all the time.
XXIV
_On Benicia, who Wished Him Well_
Benicia wished me well; I wished her well.
And what I wished her more I may not tell.
XXV
_The False Heart_
I said to Heart, “How goes it?” Heart replied:
“Right as a Ribstone Pippin!” But it lied.
XXVI
_Partly from the Greek_
She would be as the stars in your sight
That turn in the endless hollow;
That tremble, and always follow
The quiet wheels of the Night.
VI
THE BALLAD OF VAL-ÈS-DUNES
THE VICTORY OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR IN HIS YOUTH OVER THE REBELS
AT VAL-ÈS-DUNES IN THE YEAR 1047
[This piece of verse is grossly unhistorical. Val-ès-Dunes is not
on the sea but inland. No Norman blazoned a shield or a church
window in the middle eleventh century, still less would he frame
one in silver, and I doubt gilt spurs. It was not the young Bastard
of Falaise, but the men of the King in Paris that really won the
battle.
For I know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and it is this contrast and perpetual quarrel which feeds a spring of merriment in the soul of a sane man.
Their sharp steadfastness and their clean uplifted lines compelled my
adoration. Up there, the sky above and below them, part of the sky,
but part of us, the great peaks made communion between that homing
creeping part of me which loves vineyards and dances and a slow
movement among pastures, and that other part which is only properly at
home in Heaven. I say that this kind of description is useless, and
that it is better to address prayers to such things than to attempt to
interpret them for others.
These, the great Alps, seen thus, link one in some way to one's
immortality. Nor is it possible to convey, or even to suggest, those
few fifty miles, and those few thousand feet; there is something more.
Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it
were, my religion. I mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of
height and of distance, the glory of God, the infinite potentiality of
reception whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration
also towards completion, and my confidence in the dual destiny. For I
know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and
it is this contrast and perpetual quarrel which feeds a spring of
merriment in the soul of a sane man.
Since I could now see such a wonder and it could work such things in
my mind, therefore, some day I should be part of it. That is what I
felt.
This it is also which leads some men to climb mountain-tops, but not
me, for I am afraid of slipping down.
Then you will say, if I felt all this, why do I draw it, and put it in
my book, seeing that my drawings are only for fun? My jest drags down
such a memory and makes it ludicrous. Well, I said in my beginning
that I would note down whatever most impressed me, except figures,
which I cannot draw (I mean figures of human beings, for mathematical
figures I can draw well enough), and I have never failed in this
promise, except where, as in the case of Porrentruy, my drawing was
blown away by the wind and lost--- if anything ever is lost. So I put
down here this extraordinary drawing of what I saw, which is about as
much like it as a printed song full of misprints is to that same song
sung by an army on the march. And I am consoled by remembering that if
I could draw infinitely well, then it would become sacrilege to
attempt to draw that sight.
“We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.”
“When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.”
“Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.”
“Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.”
From quiet homes and first beginning,Out to the undiscovered ends,Theres nothing worth the wear of winning,But laughter and the love of friends.
He [the poet] brings out the inner part of things and presents them to men in such a way that they cannot refuse but must accept it. But how the mere choice and rhythm of words should produce so magical an effect no one has yet been able to comprehend, and least of all the poets themselves.
When I am dead, I hope it may be said, His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!
No, she laughed. How on earth could that be done? If you try to laugh and say ‘No’ at the same time, it sounds like neighing — yet people are perpetually doing it in novels. If they did it in real life they would be locked up.
It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated.
For no one, in our long decline,So dusty, spiteful and divided,Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,Or loved them half as much as I did.
You know (to adopt the easy or conversational style) that you and I belong to a happy minority. We are the sons of the hunters and the wandering singers, and from our boyhood nothing ever gave us greater pleasure than to stand under lonely skies in forest clearings, or to find a beach looking westward at evening over unfrequented seas. But the great mass of men love companionship so much that nothing seems of any worth compared with it. Human communion is their meat and drink, and so they use the railways to make bigger and bigger hives for themselves.
All that can best be expressed in words should be expressed in verse, but verse is a slow thing to create; nay, it is not really created: it is a secretion of the mind, it is a pearl that gathers round some irritant and slowly expresses the very essence of beauty and of desire that has lain long, potential and unexpressed, in the mind of the man who secretes it. God knows that this Unknown Country has been hit off in verse a hundred times...Milton does it so well in the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost that I defy any man of a sane understanding to read the whole of that book before going to bed and not to wake up next morning as though he had been on a journey.
The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too.He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization, should have offended him with priests and soldiers.... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.
These are the advantages of travel, that one meets so many men whom one would otherwise never meet, and that one feeds as it were upon the complexity of mankind
