Слике страница
PDF
ePub

He even seeketh not to please God more
(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.
Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach
The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be,
Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do:
How can he give his neighbour the real ground,
His own conviction? Ardent as he is
Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old
"Be it as God please" reassureth him.
I probed the sore as thy disciple should:
"How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessness
Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march
To stamp out like a little spark thy town,
Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?"
He merely looked with his large eyes on me.
The man is apathetic, you deduce?

Contrariwise, he loves both old and young,
Able and weak, affects the very brutes

And birds - how say I? flowers of the field -
As a wise workman recognizes tools

220

[ocr errors]

230

In a master's workshop, loving what they make.
Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:
Only impatient, let him do his best,
At ignorance and carelessness and sin
An indignation which is promptly curbed:
As when in certain travel I have feigned
To be an ignoramus in our art

According to some preconceived design,
And happed to hear the land's practitioners
Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,
Prattle fantastically on disease,

240

Its cause and cure and I must hold my peace!

Thou wilt object — Why have I not ere this

Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene
Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,
Conferring with the frankness that befits?

Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech
Perished in a tumult many years ago,
Accused, our learning's fate, of wizardry,
Rebellion, to the setting up a rule

And creed prodigious as described to me.

His death, which happened when the earthquake fell

(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss

To occult learning in our lord the sage
Who lived there in the pyramid alone)

Was wrought by the mad people—that's their wont!
On vain recourse, as I conjecture it,

250

To his tried virtue, for miraculous help

How could he stop the earthquake? That's their way!

The other imputations must be lies:

260

But take one, tho' I loathe to give it thee,

In mere respect for any good man's fame.

(And after all, our patient Lazarus

Is stark mad; should we count on what he says?
Perhaps not: tho' in writing to a leech

'T is well to keep back nothing of a case.)
This man so cured regards the curer, then,
As - God forgive me! who but God himself,
Creator and sustainer of the world,

That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile.

-'Sayeth that such an one was born and lived,

Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,
Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,

And yet was

what I said nor choose repeat,

And must have so avouched himself, in fact,

In hearing of this very Lazarus

Who saith—but why all this of what he saith?
Why write of trivial matters, things of price
Calling at every moment for remark?

I noticed on the margin of a pool
Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort,
Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!

Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,
Which, now that I review it, needs must seem
Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth!
Nor I myself discern in what is writ
Good cause for the peculiar interest

270

280

And awe indeed this man has touched me with.

Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness

Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus:

290

I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills

Like an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there came

A moon made like a face with certain spots
Multiform, manifold and menacing:
Then a wind rose behind me. So we met
In this old sleepy town at unaware,
The man and I. I send thee what is writ.
Regard it as a chance, a matter risked
To this ambiguous Syrian: he may lose,
Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.
Jerusalem's repose shall make amends

For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;
Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!

300

66

The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too -
So, thro' the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine:
But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!"
The madman saith He said so: it is strange.

310

10

CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS;

OR,

NATURAL THEOLOGY IN THE ISLAND.

36 Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself."

'WILL sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, belly in the pit's much mire,

With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin,
And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush,
And feels about his spine small eft-things course,
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh:
And while above his head a pompion-plant,
Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye,
Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard,
And now a flower drops with a bee inside,
And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch,
He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross
And recross till they weave a spider-web,
(Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times)
And talks to his own self, howe'er he please,
Touching that other, whom his dam called God.
Because to talk about Him, vexes - ha,
Could He but know! and time to vex is now,
When talk is safer than in winter-time.
Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep
In confidence he drudges at their task,
And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe,
Letting the rank tongue blossom into speech.]

Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos!

[ocr errors]

'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon.

"Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match, But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;

20

30

Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that:
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon,
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.

'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease:

He hated that He can not change His cold,
Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish

That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived,
And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine

O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid,

A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave;
Only, she ever sickened, found repulse

At the other kind of water, not her life,

(Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun)

Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe,
And in her old bounds buried her despair,

Hating and loving warmth alike: so He.

'Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle,

Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech;

Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing.

Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam,

That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown,

40

50

He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye

By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue
That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm,
And says a plain word when she finds her prize,
But will not eat the ants; the ants themselves
That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks
About their hole - He made all these and more,
Made all we see, and us, in spite: how else?
He could not, Himself, make a second self
To be His mate: as well have made Himself:
He would not make what He mislikes or slights,
An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains;
But did, in envy, listlessness or sport,

- that is it!

Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be -
Weaker in most points, stronger in a few,
Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while,
Things He admires and mocks too,
Because, so brave, so better tho' they be,
It nothing skills if He begin to plague.
Look now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash,
Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived,
Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss,
Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all,
Quick, quick, till maggots scamper thro' my brain;
Last, throw me on my back i' the seeded thyme,

50

20

And wanton, wishing I were born a bird.
Put case, unable to be what I wish,
I yet could make a live bird out of clay :
Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban
Able to fly? for, there, see, he hath wings,
And great comb like the hoopoe's to admire,
And there, a sting to do his foes offence,
There, and I will that he begin to live,
Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns
Of grigs high up that make the merry din,
Saucy thro' their veined wings, and mind me not.
In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay,
And he lay stupid-like, — why, I should laugh;
And if he, spying me, should fall to weep,
Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong,
Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again,
Well, as the chance were, this might take or else
Not take my fancy: I might hear his cry,
And give the mankin three sound legs for one,
Or pluck the other off, leave him like an egg,
And lessoned he was mine and merely clay.
Were this no pleasure, lying in the thyme,
Drinking the mash, with brain become alive,
Making and marring clay at will? So He.

'Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him
Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.
'Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs
That march now from the mountain to the sea;
'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.
'Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots
Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off;
'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm,
And two worms he whose nippers end in red:
As it likes me each time, I do: so He.

Well then, 'supposeth He is good i̇' the main,
Placable if His mind and ways were guessed,
But rougher than His handiwork, be sure!

Oh, He hath made things worthier than Himself,
And envieth that, so helped, such things do more

Than He who made them! What consoles but this?

That they, unless thro' Him, do naught at all,
And must submit: what other use in things?
'Hath cut a pipe of pithless elder-joint

That, blown through, gives exact the scream o' the jay
When from her wing you twitch the feathers blue:

80

90

100

110

« ПретходнаНастави »