Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (635 page)

(I am not myself the finest Parian)

With my coevals. So poor Colin Clout,

To whom raw onion gives prospective zest,

Consoling hours of dampest wintry work,

Could hardly fancy any regal joys

Quite unimpregnate with the onion’s scent:

Perhaps his highest hopes are not all clear

Of waftings from that energetic bulb:

‘T is well that onion is not heresy.

Speaking in parable, I am Colin Clout.

A clinging flavour penetrates my life —

My onion is imperfectness: I cleave

To nature’s blunders, evanescent types

Which sages banish from Utopia.

“Not worship beauty?’’ say you. Patience, friend!

I worship in the temple with the rest;

But by my hearth I keep a sacred nook

For gnomes and dwarfs, duck-footed waddling elves

Who stitched and hammered for the weary man

In days of old. And in that piety

I clothe ungainly forms inherited

From toiling generations, daily bent

At desk, or plough, or loom, or in the mine,

In pioneering labours for the world,

Nay, I am apt when floundering confused

From too rash flight, to grasp at paradox,

And pity future men who will not know

A keen experience with pity blent.

The pathos exquisite of lovely minds

Hid in harsh forms — not penetrating them

Like fire divine within a common bush

Which glows transfigured by the heavenly guest.

So that men put their shoes off; but encaged

Like a sweet child within some thick-walled cell,

Who leaps and fails to hold the window-bars,

But having shown a little dimpled hand

Is visited thenceforth by tender hearts

Whose eyes keep watch about the prison walls.

A foolish, nay, a wicked paradox!

For purest pity is the eye of love

Melting at sight of sorrow; and to grieve

Because it sees no sorrow, shows a love

Warped from its truer nature, turned to love

Of merest habit, like the miser’s greed.

But I am Colin still: my prejudice

Is for the flavour of my daily food.

Not that I doubt the world is growing still

As once it grew from Chaos and from Night;

Or have a soul too shrunken for the hope

Which dawned in human breasts, a double morn,

With earliest watchings of the rising light

Chasing the darkness; and through many an age

Has raised the vision of a future time

That stands an Angel with a face all mild

Spearing the demon. I too rest in faith

That man’s perfection is the crowning flower,

Toward which the urgent sap in life’s great tree

Is pressing — seen in puny blossoms now,

But in the world’s great morrows to expand

With broadest petal and with deepest glow.

Yet, see the patched and plodding citizen

Waiting upon the pavement with the throng

While some victorious world-hero makes

Triumphal entry, and the peal of shouts

And flush of faces ‘neath uplifted hats

Run like a storm of joy along the streets!

He says, “ God bless him!” almost with a sob,

As the great hero passes; he is glad

The world holds mighty men and mighty deeds;

The music stirs his pulses like strong wine,

The moving splendour touches him with awe —

‘T is glory shed around the common weal,

And he will pay his tribute willingly,

Though with the pennies earned by sordid toil.

Perhaps the hero’s deeds have helped to bring

A time when every honest citizen

Shall wear a coat unpatched. And yet he feels

More easy fellowship with neighbours there

Who look on too; and he will soon relapse

From noticing the banners and the steeds

To think with pleasure there is just one bun

Left in his pocket, that may serve to tempt

The wide-eyed lad, whose weight is all too much

For that young mother’s arms: and then he falls

To dreamy picturing of sunny days

When he himself was a small big-cheeked lad

In some far village where no heroes came,

And stood a listener ‘twixt his father’s legs

In the warm fire-light while the old folk talked

And shook their heads and looked upon the floor;

And he was puzzled, thinking life was fine —

The bread and cheese so nice all through the year

And Christmas sure to come! Oh that good time!

He, could he choose, would have those days again

And see the dear old-fashioned things once more.

But soon the wheels and drums have all passed by

And tramping feet are heard like sudden rain:

The quiet startles our good citizen;

He feels the child upon his arms, and knows

He is with the people making holiday

Because of hopes for better days to come.

But Hope to him was like the brilliant west

Telling of sunrise in a world unknown.

And from that dazzling curtain of bright hues

He turned to the familiar face of fields

Lying all clear in the calm morning land.

Maybe ‘t is wiser not to fix a lens

Too scrutinizing on the glorious times

When Barbarossa shall arise and shake

His mountain, good King Arthur come again.

And all the heroes of such giant soul

That, living once to cheer mankind with hope,

They had to sleep until the time was ripe

For greater deeds to match their greater thought.

Yet no! the earth yields nothing more Divine

Than high prophetic vision — than the Seer

Who fasting from man’s meaner joy beholds

The paths of beauteous order, and constructs

A fairer type to shame our low content.

But prophecy is like potential sound

Which turned to music seems a voice sublime

From out the soul of light; but turns to noise

In scrannel pipes, and makes all ears averse.

The faith that life on earth is being shaped

To glorious ends, that order, justice, love

Mean man’s completeness, mean effect as sure

As roundness in the dew-drop — that great faith

Is but the rushing and expanding stream

Of thought, of feeling, fed by all the past.

Our finest hope is finest memory,

As they who love in age think youth is blest

Because it has a life to fill with love.

Full souls are double mirrors, making still

An endless vista of fair things before

Repeating things behind: so faith is strong

Only when we are strong, shrinks when we shrink.

It comes when music stirs us and the chords

Moving on some grand climax shake our souls

With influx new that makes new energies.

It comes in swellings of the heart and tears

That rise at noble and at gentle deeds —

At labours of the master-artist’s hand

Which, trembling, touches to a finer end,

Trembling before an image seen within.

It comes in moments of heroic love,

Unj ealous joy in j oy not made for us —

In conscious triumph of the good within —

Making us worship goodness that rebukes.

Even our failures are a prophecy,

Even our yearnings and our bitter tears

After that fair and true we cannot grasp;

As patriots who seem to die in vain

Make liberty more sacred by their pangs.

Presentiment of better things on earth

Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls

To admiration, self-renouncing love,

Or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one, —

Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night

We hear the roll and dash of waves that break

Nearer and nearer with the rushing tide,

Which rises to the level of the cliff

Because the wide Atlantic rolls behind,

Throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs.