| |
| LET us begin and carry up this corpse, | |
| Singing together. | |
| Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes | |
| Each in its tether | |
| Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, | 5 |
| Cared-for till cock-crow: | |
| Look out if yonder be not day again | |
| Rimming the rock-row! | |
| That’s the appropriate country; there, man’s thought, | |
| Rarer, intenser, | 10 |
| Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, | |
| Chafes in the censer. | |
| Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop: | |
| Seek we sepulture | |
| On a tall mountain, citied to the top, | 15 |
| Crowded with culture! | |
| All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; | |
| Clouds overcome it; | |
| No! yonder sparkle is the citadel’s | |
| Circling its summit. | 20 |
| Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights; | |
| Wait ye the warning? | |
| Our low life was the level’s and the night’s; | |
| He’s for the morning. | |
| Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, | 25 |
| ’Ware the beholders! | |
| This is our master, famous, calm and dead, | |
| Borne on our shoulders. | |
| |
| Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, | |
| Safe from the weather! | 30 |
| He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, | |
| Singing together, | |
| He was a man born with thy face and throat, | |
| Lyric Apollo! | |
| Long the lived nameless: how should Spring take note | 35 |
| Winter would follow? | |
| Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone! | |
| Cramped and diminished, | |
| Moaned he, “New measures, other feet anon! | |
| My dance is finished?” | 40 |
| No, that’s the world’s way: (keep the mountainside, | |
| Make for the city!) | |
| He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride | |
| Over men’s pity; | |
| Left play for work, and grappled with the world | 45 |
| Bent on escaping: | |
| “What’s in the scroll,” quoth he, “thou keepest furled? | |
| Show me their shaping, | |
| Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,— | |
| Give!”—So, he gowned him, | 50 |
| Straight got by heart that book to its last page: | |
| Learned, we found him. | |
| Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead, | |
| Accents uncertain: | |
| “Time to taste life,” another would have said, | 55 |
| “Up with the curtain!” | |
| This man said rather, “Actual life comes next? | |
| Patience a moment! | |
| Grant I have mastered learning’s crabbed text, | |
| Still there’s the comment. | 60 |
| Let me know all! Prate not of most or least, | |
| Painful or easy! | |
| Even to the crumbs I’d fain eat up the feast, | |
| Ay, nor feel queasy.” | |
| Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, | 65 |
| When he had learned it, | |
| When he had gathered all books had to give! | |
| Sooner, he spurned it. | |
| Image the whole, then execute the parts— | |
| Fancy the fabric | 70 |
| Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, | |
| Ere mortar dab brick! | |
| |
| (Here’s the town-gate reached: there’s the market-place | |
| Gaping before us.) | |
| Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace | 75 |
| (Hearten our chorus!) | |
| That before living he’d learn how to live— | |
| No end to learning: | |
| Earn the means first—God surely will contrive | |
| Use for our earning. | 80 |
| Others mistrust and say, “But time escapes: | |
| Live now or never!” | |
| He said, “What’s time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! | |
| Man has Forever.” | |
| Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head: | 85 |
| Calculus racked him: | |
| Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: | |
| Tussis attacked him. | |
| “Now, master, take a little rest!”—not he! | |
| (Caution redoubled, | 90 |
| Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) | |
| Not a whit troubled, | |
| Back to his studies, fresher than at first, | |
| Fierce as a dragon | |
| He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst) | 95 |
| Sucked at the flagon. | |
| Oh, if we draw a circle premature, | |
| Heedless of far gain, | |
| Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure | |
| Bad is our bargain! | 100 |
| Was it not great? did not he throw on God, | |
| (He loves the burthen)— | |
| God’s task to make the heavenly period | |
| Perfect the earthen? | |
| Did not he magnify the mind, show clear | 105 |
| Just what it all meant? | |
| He would not discount life, as fools do here, | |
| Paid by instalment. | |
| He ventured neck or nothing—heaven’s success | |
| Found, or earth’s failure: | 110 |
| “Wilt thou trust death or not?” He answered ”Yes! | |
| Hence with life’s pale lure!” | |
| That low man seeks a little thing to do, | |
| Sees it and does it: | |
| This high man, with a great thing to pursue, | 115 |
| Dies ere he knows it. | |
| That low man goes on adding one to one, | |
| His hundred’s soon hit: | |
| This high man, aiming at a million, | |
| Misses an unit. | 120 |
| That, has the world here—should he need the next, | |
| Let the world mind him! | |
| This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed | |
| Seeking shall find him. | |
| So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, | 125 |
| Ground he at grammar; | |
| Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife: | |
| While he could stammer | |
| He settled Hoti’s business—let it be!— | |
| Properly based Oun— | 130 |
| Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, | |
| Dead from the waist down. | |
| Well, here’s the platform, here’s the proper place: | |
| Hail to your purlieus, | |
| All ye highfliers of the feathered race, | 135 |
| Swallows and curlews! | |
| Here’s the top-peak; the multitude below | |
| Live, for they can, there: | |
| This man decided not to Live but Know— | |
| Bury this man there? | 140 |
| Here—here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, | |
| Lightnings are loosened, | |
| Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, | |
| Peace let the dew send! | |
| Lofty designs must close in like effects: | 145 |
| Loftily lying, | |
| Leave him—still loftier than the world suspects, | |
| Living and dying. | |
| |
