SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN EUROPE
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,
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,
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:
°23
He’s for
the morning.
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
’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 he lived nameless: how should spring take
note
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
mountain-side,
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
Bent on escaping°:
°46
“What’s in the scroll,” quoth he,
“thou keepest furled?
Show me their
shaping,°
°48
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,
“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,
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 strikes 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
(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:
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)
Sucked at the
flagon.
Oh, if we draw a circle premature,
Heedless of far
gain,°
°98
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
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,
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.
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,
Ground he at grammar;
Still, thro’ the rattle, parts of speech were
rife:
While he could
stammer
He settled Hoti’s° business—let
it be!— °129
Properly based
Oun°—
°130
Gave as the doctrine of the enclitic De°
°131
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,
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:
Loftily lying,
Leave him—still loftier than the world
suspects,
Living and dying.
120
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