Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (28 page)

If simplified still further one degree:

The small becomes the dreadful and immense!

Lightning, forsooth? No word more upon that!

A tin-foil bottle, a strip of greasy silk,

With a bit of wire and knob of brass, and there’s

Your dollar’s-worth of lightning! But the cyst –

The life of the least of the little things?

                                  No, no!

Preachers and teachers try another tack,

Come near the truth this time: they put aside

[1130] Thunder and lightning: ‘That’s mistake,’ they cry,

‘Thunderbolts fall for neither fright nor sport,

But do appreciable good, like tides,

Changes o’ the wind, and other natural facts –

“Good” meaning good to man, his body or soul.

Mediate, immediate, all things minister

To man, – that’s settled: be our future text

“We are His children!”’ So, they now harangue

About the intention, the contrivance, all

That keeps up an incessant play of love, –

See the Bridgewater book.

                              
[1140] Amen to it!

Well, sir, I put this question: I’m a child?

I lose no time, but take you at your word:

How shall I act a child’s part properly?

Your sainted mother, sir, – used you to live

With such a thought as this a-worrying you?

‘She has it in her power to throttle me,

Or stab or poison: she may turn me out

Or lock me in, – nor stop at this today,

But cut me off tomorrow from the estate

[1150] I look for’ – (long may you enjoy it, sir!)

‘In brief, she may unchild the child I am.’

You never had such crotchets? Nor have I!

Who, frank confessing childship from the first,

Cannot both fear and take my ease at once,

So, don’t fear, – know what might be, well enough,

But know too, child-like, that it will not be,

At least in my case, mine, the son and heir

O’ the kingdom, as yourself proclaim my style.

But do you fancy I stop short at this?

[1160] Wonder if suit and service, son and heir

Needs must expect, I dare pretend to find?

If, looking for signs proper to such an one,

I straight perceive them irresistible?

Concede that homage is a son’s plain right,

And, never mind the nods and raps and winks,

’Tis the pure obvious supernatural

Steps forward, does its duty: why, of course!

I have presentiments; my dreams come true:

I fancy a friend stands whistling all in white

[1170] Blithe as a boblink, and he’s dead I learn.

I take dislike to a dog my favourite long,

And sell him; he goes mad next week and snaps.

I guess that stranger will turn up today

I have not seen these three years; there’s his knock.

I wager ‘sixty peaches on that tree!’ –

That I pick up a dollar in my walk,

That your wife’s brother’s cousin’s name was George –

And win on all points. Oh, you wince at this?

You’d fain distinguish between gift and gift,

[1180] Washington’s oracle and Sludge’s itch

O’ the elbow when at whist he ought to trump?

With Sludge it’s too absurd?
Fine, draw the line

Somewhere, but, sir, your somewhere is not mine!

Bless us, I’m turning poet! It’s time to end.

How you have drawn me out, sir! All I ask

Is – am I heir or not heir? If I’m he,

Then, sir, remember, that same personage

(To judge by what we read i’ the newspaper)

Requires, beside one nobleman in gold

[1190] To carry up and down his coronet,

Another servant, probably a duke,

To hold egg-nog in readiness: why want

Attendance, sir, when helps in his father’s house

Abound, I’d like to know?

                           Enough of talk!

My fault is that I tell too plain a truth.

Why, which of those who say they disbelieve,

Your clever people, but has dreamed his dream,

Caught his coincidence, stumbled on his fact

He can’t explain, (he’ll tell you smilingly)

[1200] Which he’s too much of a philosopher

To count as supernatural, indeed,

So calls a puzzle and problem, proud of it, –

Bidding you still be on your guard, you know,

Because one fact don’t make a system stand,

Nor prove this an occasional escape

Of spirit beneath the matter: that’s the way!

Just so wild Indians picked up, piece by piece,

The fact in California, the fine gold

That underlay the gravel – hoarded these,

[1210] But never made a system stand, nor dug!

So wise men hold out in each hollowed palm

A handful of experience, sparkling fact

They can’t explain; and since their rest of life

Is all explainable, what proof in this?

Whereas I take the fact, the grain of gold,

And fling away the dirty rest of life,

And add this grain to the grain each fool has found

O’ the million other such philosophers, –

Till I see gold, all gold and only gold,

[1220] Truth questionless though unexplainable,

And the miraculous proved the commonplace!

The other fools believed in mud, no doubt –

Failed to know gold they saw: was that so strange?

Are all men born to play Bach’s fiddle-fugues,

‘Time’ with the foil in carte, jump their own height,

Cut the mutton with the broadsword, skate a five,

Make the red hazard with the cue, clip nails

While swimming, in five minutes row a mile,

Pull themselves three feet up with the left arm,

[1230] Do sums of fifty figures in their head,

And so on, by the scores of instances?

The Sludge with luck, who sees the spiritual facts

His fellows strive and fail to see, may rank

With these, and share the advantage.

                                Ay, but share

The drawback! Think it over by yourself;

I have not heart, sir, and the fire’s gone grey.

Defect somewhere compénsates for success,

Everyone knows that. Oh, we’re equals, sir!

The big-legged fellow has a little arm

[1240] And a less brain, though big legs win the race:

Do you suppose I ‘scape the common lot?

Say, I was born with flesh so sensitive,

Soul so alert, that, practice helping both,

I guess what’s going on outside the veil,

Just as a prisoned crane feels pairing-time

In the islands where his kind are, so must fall

To capering by himself some shiny night,

As if your back-yard were a plot of spice –

Thus am I ’ware o’ the spirit-world: while you,

[1250] Blind as a beetle that way, – for amends,

Why, you can double fist and floor me, sir!

Ride that hot hardmouthed horrid horse of yours,

Laugh while it lightens, play with the great dog,

Speak your mind though it vex some friend to hear,

Never brag, never bluster, never blush, –

In short, you’ve pluck, when I’m a coward – there!

I know it, I can’t help it, – folly or no,

I’m paralysed, my hand’s no more a hand,

Nor my head a head, in danger: you can smile

[1260] And change the pipe in your cheek. Your gift’s not mine.

Would you swap for mine? No! but you’d add my gift

To yours: I dare say! I too sigh at times,

Wish I were stouter, could tell truth nor flinch,

Kept cool when threatened, did not mind so much

Being dressed gaily, making strangers stare,

Eating nice things; when I’d amuse myself,

I shut my eyes and fancy in my brain

I’m – now the President, now Jenny Lind,

Now Emerson, now the Benicia Boy –

[1270] With all the civilized world a-wondering

And worshipping. I know it’s folly and worse;

I feel such tricks sap, honeycomb the soul,

But I can’t cure myself: despond, despair,

And then, hey, presto, there’s a turn o’ the wheel,

Under comes uppermost, fate makes full amends;

Sludge knows and sees and hears a hundred things

You all are blind to, – I’ve my taste of truth,

Likewise my touch of falsehood, – vice no doubt,

But you’ve your vices also: I’m content.

[1280] What, sir? You won’t shake hands? ‘Because I cheat!’

‘You’ve found me out in cheating!’ That’s enough

To make an apostle swear! Why, when I cheat,

Mean to cheat, do cheat, and am caught in the act
,

Are you, or, rather, am I sure o’ the fact?

(There’s verse again, but I’m inspired somehow.)

Well then I’m not sure! I may be, perhaps,

Free as a babe from cheating: how it began,

My gift, – no matter; what ’tis got to be

In the end now, that’s the question; answer that!

[1290] Had I seen, perhaps, what hand was holding mine,

Leading me whither, I had died of fright:

So, I was made believe I led myself.

If I should lay a six-inch plank from roof

To roof, you would not cross the street, one step,

Even at your mother’s summons: but, being shrewd,

If I paste paper on each side the plank

And swear ’tis solid pavement, why, you’ll cross

Humming a tune the while, in ignorance

Beacon Street stretches a hundred feet below:

[1300] I walked thus, took the paper-cheat for stone.

Some impulse made me set a thing o’ the move

Which, started once, ran really by itself;

Beer flows thus, suck the siphon; toss the kite,

It takes the wind and floats of its own force.

Don’t let truth’s lump rot stagnant for the lack

Of a timely helpful lie to leaven it!

Put a chalk-egg beneath the clucking hen,

She’ll lay a real one, laudably deceived,

Daily for weeks to come. I’ve told my lie,

[1310] And seen truth follow, marvels none of mine;

All was not cheating, sir, I’m positive!

I don’t know if I move your hand sometimes

When the spontaneous writing spreads so far,

If my knee lifts the table all that height,

Why the inkstand don’t fall off the desk a-tilt,

Why the accordion plays a prettier waltz

Than I can pick out on the pianoforte,

Why I speak so much more than I intend,

Describe so many things I never saw.

[1320] I tell you, sir, in one sense, I believe

Nothing at all, – that everybody can,

Will, and does cheat: but in another sense

I’m ready to believe my very self –

That every cheat’s inspired, and every lie

Quick with a germ of truth.

                            You ask perhaps

Why I should condescend to trick at all

If I know a way without it? This is why!

There’s a strange secret sweet self-sacrifice

In any desecration of one’s soul

[1330] To a worthy end, – isn’t it Herodotus

(I wish I could read Latin!) who describes

The single gift o’ the land’s virginity,

Demanded in those old Egyptian rites,

(I’ve but a hazy notion – help me, sir!)

For one purpose in the world, one day in a life,

One hour in a day – thereafter, purity,

And a veil thrown o’er the past for evermore!

Well, now, they understood a many things

Down by Nile city, or wherever it was!

[1340] I’ve always vowed, after the minute’s lie,

And the end’s gain, – truth should be mine henceforth.

This goes to the root o’ the matter, sir, – this plain

Plump fact: accept it and unlock with it

The wards of many a puzzle!

                            Or, finally,

Why should I set so fine a gloss on things?

What need I care? I cheat in self-defence,

And there’s my answer to a world of cheats!

Cheat? To be sure, sir! What’s the world worth else?

Who takes it as he finds, and thanks his stars?

[1350] Don’t it want trimming, turning, furbishing up

And polishing over? Your so-styled great men,

Do they accept one truth as truth is found,

Or try their skill at tinkering? What’s your world?

Here are you born, who are, I’ll say at once,

Of the luckiest kind, whether in head and heart,

Body and soul, or all that helps them both.

Well, now, look back: what faculty of yours

Came to its full, had ample justice done

By growing when rain fell, biding its time,

[1360] Solidifying growth when earth was dead,

Spiring up, broadening wide, in seasons due?

Never! You shot up and frost nipped you off,

Settled to sleep when sunshine bade you sprout;

One faculty thwarted its fellow: at the end,

All you boast is ‘I had proved a topping tree

In other climes’ – yet this was the right clime

Had you foreknown the seasons. Young, you’ve force

Wasted like well-streams: old, – oh, then indeed,

Behold a labyrinth of hydraulic pipes

[1370] Through which you’d play off wondrous waterwork;

Only, no water’s left to feed their play.

Young, – you’ve a hope, an aim, a love: it’s tossed

And crossed and lost: you struggle on, some spark

Shut in your heart against the puffs around,

Through cold and pain; these in due time subside,

Now then for age’s triumph, the hoarded light

You mean to loose on the altered face of things, –

Up with it on the tripod! It’s extinct.

Spend your life’s remnant asking, which was best,

[1380] Light smothered up that never peeped forth once,

Or the cold cresset with full leave to shine?