You were my wonders, you my Lars, In darkling days my sun and stars, And over you entranced I hung, to know that I was young. Gazing with still unsated bliss, My fancies took some shape like this: "I have my world, and so have you, A tiny universe for two,
A bubble by the artist blown, Scarcely more fragile than our own, Where you have all a whale could wish, Happy as Eden's primal fish. Manna is dropt you thrice a day From some kind heaven not far away, And still you snatch its softening crumbs, Nor, more than we, think whence it comes. No toil seems yours but to explore Your cloistered realm from shore to shore; Sometimes you trace its limits round, Sometimes its limpid depths you sound, Or hover motionless midway, Like gold-red clouds at set of day; Erelong you whirl with sudden whim Off to your globe's most distant rim, Where, greatened by the watery lens, Methinks no dragon of the fens Flashed huger scales against the sky, Roused by Sir Bevis or Sir Guy, And the one eye that meets my view, Lidless and strangely largening, too, Like that of conscience in the dark, Seems to make me its single mark. What a benignant lot is yours That have an own All-out-of-doors, No words to spell, no sums to do, No Nepos and no parlyvoo! How happy you without a thought Of such cross things as Must and Ought,- I too the happiest of boys
To see and share your golden joys!"
So thought the child, in simpler words, Of you his finny flocks and herds; Now, an old man, I bid you rise To the fine sight behind the eyes, And, lo, you float and flash again In the dark cistern of my brain. But o'er your visioned flames I brood With other mien, in other mood; You are no longer there to please, But to stir argument, and tease My thought with all the ghostly shapes From which no moody man escapes.
Diminished creature, I no more Find Fairyland beside my door, But for each moment's pleasure pay With the quart d'heure of Rabelais !
I watch you in your crystal sphere, And wonder if you see and hear Those shapes and sounds that stir the wide Conjecture of the world outside; In your pent lives, as we in ours, Have you surmises dim of powers, Of presences obscurely shown, Of lives a riddle to your own, Just on the senses' outer verge, Where sense-nerves into soul-nerves merge, Where we conspire our own deceit Confederate in deft Fancy's feat, And the fooled brain befools the eyes With pageants woven of its own lies? But are they lies? Why more than those Phantoms that startle your repose, Half seen, half heard, then flit away, And leave you your prose-bounded day?
The things ye see as shadows I Know to be substance; tell me why My visions, like those haunting you, May not be as substantial too. Alas, who ever answer heard From fish, and dream-fish too? Absurd! Your consciousness I half divine, But you are wholly deaf to mine. Go, I dismiss you; ye have done All that ye could; our silk is spun: Dive back into the deep of dreams, Where what is real is what seems! Yet I shall fancy till my grave Your lives to mine a lesson gave; If lesson none, an image, then, Impeaching self-conceit in men Who put their confidence alone
In what they call the Seen and Known. How seen? How known? As through your glass
Our wavering apparitions pass Perplexingly, then subtly wrought To some quite other thing by thought. Here shall my resolution be: The shadow of the mystery Is haply wholesomer for eyes That cheat us to be overwise, And I am happy in my right
To love God's darkness as His light.
Men shall say, "A lover of this fashion Such an icy mistress well beseems." Women say, "Could we deserve such passion,
We might be the marvel that he dreams."
ON HEARING A SONATA OF BEETHOVEN'S PLAYED IN THE NEXT ROOM
UNSEEN Musician, thou art sure to please, For those same notes in happier days I heard
Poured by dear hands that long have never stirred
Yet now again for me delight the keys: Ah me, to strong illusions such as these What are Life's solid things? The walls that gird
Our senses, lo, a casual scent or word Levels, and 't is the soul that hears and sees !
Play on, dear girl, and many be the years Ere some gray haired survivor sit like
And, for thy largess pay a meed of tears Unto another who, beyond the sea
Of Time and Change, perhaps not sadly hears
A music in this verse undreamed by thee!
INTENDED TO GO WITH A POSSET DISH TO MY DEAR LITTLE GODDAUGHTER, 1882
It is of interest to know that the goddaughter was a child of Leslie Stephen.
IN good old times, which means, you know, The time men wasted long ago, And we must blame our brains or mood If that we squander seems less good, In those blest days when wish was act And fancy dreamed itself to fact, Godfathers used to fill with guineas The cups they gave their pickaninnies, Performing functions at the chrism Not mentioned in the Catechism. No millioner, poor I fill up With wishes my more modest cup, Though had I Amalthea's horn
It should be hers the newly born. Nay, shudder not! I should bestow it So brimming full she could n't blow it. Wishes are n't horses: true, but still There are worse roadsters than goodwill. And so I wish my darling health, And just to round my couplet, wealth, With faith enough to bridge the chasm "Twixt Genesis and Protoplasm, And bear her o'er life's current vext From this world to a better next, Where the full glow of God puts out Poor reason's farthing candle, Doubt. I've wished her healthy, wealthy, wise, What more can godfather devise?
But since there's room for countless wishes In these old-fashioned posset dishes, I'll wish her from my plenteous store Of those commodities two more,
Her father's wit, veined through and through
With tenderness that Watts (but whew! Celia 's aflame, I mean no stricture On his Sir Josh-surpassing picture) — I wish her next, and 't is the soul Of all I've dropt into the bowl, Her mother's beauty nay, but two So fair at once would never do. Then let her but the half possess, Troy was besieged ten years for less. Now if there's any truth in Darwin, And we from what was, all we are win, I simply wish the child to be A sample of Heredity, Enjoying to the full extent
Life's best, the Unearned Increment Which Fate her Godfather to flout Gave him in legacies of gout. Thus, then, the cup is duly filled; Walk steady, dear, lest all be spilled.
"A similar change is made in the ninth verse of the stanza, where simpleness' is substituted for steadfastness.' The change from
steadfast' to 'simple' was not made, probably through oversight, in the first verse of the second stanza. There is nothing to indicate what epithet Mr. Lowell would have chosen to complete the first verse of the third stanza. C. E. Ñ."
STRONG, simple, silent are the [steadfast] laws
That sway this universe, of none withstood, Unconscious of man's outcries or applause, Or what man deems his evil or his good; And when the Fates ally them with a cause That wallows in the sea-trough and seems
Drifting in danger of the reefs and sands Of shallow counsels, this way, that way, tost,
Strength, silence, simpleness, of these three strands
They twist the cable shall the world hold fast
To where its anchors clutch the bed-rock of the Past.
Strong, simple, silent, therefore such was
Who helped us in our need; the eternal law That who can saddle Opportunity
Is God's elect, though many a mortal flaw May minish him in eyes that closely see, Was verified in him: what need we say Of one who made success where others failed,
Who, with no light save that of common day,
Struck hard, and still struck on till Fortune quailed,
But that (so sift the Norns) a desperate
Ne'er fell at last to one who was not wholly
A face all prose where Time's [benignant] haze
Softens no raw edge yet, nor makes all fair With the beguiling light of vanished days; This is relentless granite, bleak and bare, Roughhewn, and scornful of æsthetic phrase;
Nothing is here for fancy, naught for dreams,
The Present's hard uncompromising light
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