Relax; and from vituperative lips
Words that of birch remind not, sounds of praise,
And jokes that must be laugh’d at shall proceed.
Westbury, 1799.
COOL REFLECTIONS DURING A MIDSUMMER WALK FROM WARMINSTER TO SHAFTESBURY. 1799.
O SPARE me — spare me, Phoebus! if indeed
Thou hast not let another Phaëton
Drive earthward thy fierce steeds and fiery car;
Mercy! I melt! I melt! No tree, no bush,
No shelter, not a breath of stirring air
East, West, or North, or South! Dear God of day,
Put on thy nightcap; crop thy locks of light,
And be in the fashion; turn thy back upon us,
And let thy beams flow upward; make it night
Instead of noon; — one little miracle,
In pity, gentle Phoebus!
What a joy,
Oh what a joy, to be a seal and flounder
On an ice island! or to have a den
With the white bear, cavern’d in polar snow!
It were a comfort to shake hands with Death, —
He has a rare cold hand! — to wrap one’s self
In the gift shirt Dejanira sent,
Dipt in the blood of Nessus, just to keep
The sun off; or toast cheese for Beelzebub, —
That were a cool employment to this journey
Along a road whose white intensity
Would now make platina uncongealable
Like quicksilver.
Were it midnight, I should walk
Self-lantern’d, saturate with sunbeams. Jove!
O gentle Jove! have mercy, and once more
Kick that obdurate Phoebus out of heaven;
Give Boreas the wind-cholic, till he roar
For cardamum, and drink down peppermint,
Making what’s left as precious as Tokay;
Send Mercury to salivate the sky
Till it dissolve in rain. O gentle Jove!
But some such little kindness to a wretch
Who feels his marrow spoiling his best coat, —
Who swells with calorique as if a Prester
Had leaven’d every limb with poison-yeast; —
Lend me thine eagle just to flap his wings
And fan me, and I will build temples to thee,
And turn true Pagan.
Not a cloud nor breeze, —
O you most heathen Deities! if ever
My bones reach home (for, for the flesh upon them,
It hath resolved itself into a dew,)
I shall have learnt owl-wisdom. Thou vile Phoebus,
Set me a Persian sun-idolater
Upon this turnpike road, and I’ll convert him
With no inquisitorial argument
But thy own fires. Now woe be to me, wretch,
That I was in a heretic country born!
Else might some mass for the poor souls that bleach,
And burn away the calx of their offences
In that great Purgatory crucible,
Help me. O Jupiter! my poor complexion!
I am made a copper-Indian of already;
And if no kindly cloud will parasol me,
My very cellular membrane will be changed, —
I shall be negrofied.
A brook! a brook!
O what a sweet, cool sound!
’Tis very nectar!
It runs like life through every strengthen’d limb!
Nymph of the stream, now take a grateful prayer.
1799.
THE PIG.
A COLLOQUIAL POEM.
JACOB! I do not like to see thy nose
Turn’d up in scornful curve at yonder Pig.
It would be well, my friend, if we, like him,
Were perfect in our kind! — And why despise
The sow-born grunter? — He is obstinate,
Thou answerest; ugly, and the filthiest beast
That banquets upon offal. — Now, I pray you,
Hear the Pig’s Counsel.
Is he obstinate?
We must not, Jacob, be deceived by words;
We must not take them as unheeding hands
Receive base money at the current worth,
But with a just suspicion try their sound,
And in the even balance weigh them well.
See now to what this obstinacy comes;
A poor, mistreated, democratic beast,
He knows that his unmerciful drivers seek
Their profit, and not his. He hath not learnt
That Pigs were made for Man, — born to be brawn’d
And baconized; that he must please to give
Just what his gracious masters please to take;
Perhaps his tusks, the weapons Nature gave
For self-defence, the general privilege;
Perhaps, — hark, Jacob! dost thou hear that horn?
Woe to the young posterity of Pork!
Their enemy is at hand.
Again. Thou say’st
The Pig is ugly. Jacob, look at him!
Those eyes have taught the Lover flattery.
His face, — nay, Jacob, Jacob! were it fair
To judge a Lady in her dishabille?
Fancy it dress’d, and with saltpetre rouged.
Behold his tail, my friend; with curls like that
The wanton hop marries her stately spouse:
So crisp in beauty Amoretta’s hair
Rings round her lover’s soul the chains of love.
And what is beauty, but the aptitude
Of parts harmonious? Give thy fancy scope,
And thou wilt find that no imagined change
Can beautify this beast. Place at his end
The starry glories of the Peacock’s pride,
Give him the Swan’s white breast; for his horn-hoofs
Shape such a foot and ankle as the waves
Crowded in eager rivalry to kiss
When Venus from the enamor’d sea arose; —
Jacob, thou canst but make a monster of him!
All alteration man could think, would mar
His Pig-perfection.
The last charge, — he lives
A dirty life. Here I could shelter him
With noble and right-reverend precedents,
And show by sanction of authority
That ’tis a very honorable thing
To thrive by dirty ways. But let me rest
On better ground the unanswerable defence:
The Pig is a philosopher, who knows
No prejudice. Dirt? — Jacob, what is dirt?
If matter, — why the delicate dish that tempts
An o’ergorged Epicure to the last morsel
That stuffs him to the throat-gates, is no more.
If matter be not, but, as Sages say,
Spirit is all, and all things visible
Are one, the infinitely modified,
Think, Jacob, what that Pig is, and the mire
Wherein he stands knee-deep!
And there! the breeze
Pleads with me, and has won thee to a smile
That speaks conviction. O’er yon blossom’d field
Of beans it came, and thoughts of bacon rise.
Westbury, 1799.
THE DANCING BEAR.
RECOMMENDED TO THE ADVOCATES FOR THE SLAVE-TRADE.
RARE music! I would rather hear cat-courtship
Under my bed-room window in the night,
Than this scraped catgut’s screak. Rare dancing too!
Alas, poor Bruin! How he foots the pole,
And waddles round it with unwieldy steps,
Swaying from side to side! — The dancing-master
Hath had as profitless a pupil in him
As when he would have tortured my poor toes
To minuet grace, and made them move like clock-
In musical obedience. Bruin! Bruin! [work
Thou art but a
clumsy biped! — And the mob
With noisy merriment mock his heavy pace,
And laugh to see him led by the nose! — themselves
Led by the nose, embruted, and in the eye
Of Reason from their nature’s purposes
As miserably perverted.
Bruin-Bear!
Now could I sonnetize thy piteous plight,
And prove how much my sympathetic heart
Even for the miseries of a beast can feel,
In fourteen lines of sensibility.
But we are told all things were made for man;
And I’ll be sworn there’s not a fellow here
Who would not swear ‘twere hanging blasphemy
To doubt that truth. Therefore, as thou wert born,
Bruin! for Man, and Man makes nothing of thee
In any other way, — most logically
It follows, thou wert born to make him sport;
That that great snout of thine was form’d on purpose
To hold a ring; and that thy fat was given thee
For an approved pomatum!
To demur
Were heresy. And politicians say
(Wise men who in the scale of reason give
No foolish feelings weight) that thou art here
Far happier than thy brother Bears who roam
O’er trackless snow for food; that being born
Inferior to thy leader, unto him
Rightly belongs dominion; that the compact
Was made between ye, when thy clumsy feet
First fell into the snare, and he gave up
His right to kill, conditioning thy life
Should thenceforth be his property; — besides,
’Tis wholesome for thy morals to be brought
From savage climes into a civilized state,
Into the decencies of Christendom —
Bear! Bear! it passes in the Parliament
For excellent logic, this! What if we say
How barbarously Man abuses power?
Talk of thy baiting, it will be replied,
Thy welfare is thy owner’s interest,
But were thou baited it would injure thee,
Therefore thou art not baited. For seven years
Hear it, O Heaven, and give ear, O Earth!
For seven long years this precious syllogism
Hath baffled justice and humanity!
Westbury, 1799.
THE FILBERT.
NAY, gather not that Filbert, Nicholas,
There is a maggot there, — it is his house,
His castle, — oh, commit not burglary!
Strip him not naked,—’tis his clothes, his shell,
His bones, the case and armor of his life,
And thou shalt do no murder, Nicholas!
It were an easy thing to crack that nut,
Or with thy crackers or thy double teeth;
So easily may all things be destroy’d!
But ’tis not in the power of mortal man
To mend the fracture of a filbert shell.
There were two great men once amused themselves
Watching two maggots run their wriggling race,
And wagering on their speed; but, Nick, to us
It were no sport, to see the pamper’d worm
Roll out and then draw in his folds of fat,
Like to some Barber’s leathern powder-bag
Wherewith he feathers, frosts, or cauliflowers
Spruce Beau, or Lady fair, or Doctor grave.
Enough of dangers and of enemies
Hath Nature’s wisdom for the worm ordain’d;
Increase not thou the number! Him the Mouse;
Gnawing with nibbling tooth the shell’s defence,
May from his native tenement eject;
Him may the Nut-hatch, piercing with strong bill,
Unwittingly destroy; or to his hoard
The Squirrel bear, at leisure to be crack’d.
Man also hath his dangers and his foes,
As this poor Maggot hath; and when I muse
Upon the aches, anxieties, and fears,
The Maggot knows not, Nicholas, methinks
It were a happy metamorphosis
To be enkernell’d thus: never to hear
Of wars, and of invasions, and of plots,
Kings, Jacobines, and Tax-commissioners;
To feel no motion but the wind that shook
The Filbert Tree, and rock’d us to our rest;
And in the middle of such exquisite food
To live luxurious! The perfection this
Of snugness! it were to unite at onee
Hermit retirement, Aldermanic bliss,
And Stoic independence of mankind.
Westbury, 1799.
THE CATARACT OF LODORE.
DESCRIBED IN RHYMES FOR THE NURSERY.
“How does the Water
Come down at Lodore?”
My little boy ask’d me
Thus, once on a time;
And moreover he task’d me
To tell him in rhyme.
Anon at the word,
There first came one daughter,
And then came another,
To second and third
The request of their brother,
And to hear how the Water
Comes down at Lodore,
With its rush and its roar,
As many a time
They had seen it before.
So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store;
And ’twas in my vocation
For their recreation
That so I should sing;
Because I was Laureate
To them and the King.
From its sources which well
In the Tarn on the fell;
From its fountains
In the mountains,
Its rills and its gills;
Through moss and through brake,
It runs and it creeps
For awhile, till it sleeps
In its own little Lake.
And thence at departing,
Awakening and starting,
It runs through the reeds,
And away it proceeds,
Through meadow and glade,
In sun and in shade,
And through the wood-shelter,
Among crags in its flurry,
Helter-skelter,
Hurry-scurry.
Here it comes sparkling,
And there it lies darkling;
Now smoking and frothing
Its tumult and wrath in,
Till in this rapid race
On which it is bent,
It reaches the place
Of its steep descent.
The Cataract strong
Then plunges along,
Striking and raging
As if a war waging
Its caverns and rocks among;
Rising and leaping,
Sinking and creeping,
Swelling and sweeping,
Showering and springing,
Flying and flinging,
Writhing and ringing,
Eddying and whisking.
Spouting and frisking,
Turning and twisting,
Around and around
With endless rebound:
Smiting and fighting,
A sight to delight in;
Confounding, astounding,
Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound
Collecting, projecting,
Receding and speeding,
And shocking and rocking,
And darting and parting,
And threading and spreading,
And whizzing and hissing,
And dripping and skipping,
And hitting and splitting,
And shining and twining,
And rattling and battling,
And shaking and quaking,
And pouring a
nd roaring,
And waving and raving,
And tossing and crossing,
And flowing and going,
And running and stunning,
And foaming and roaming,
And dinning and spinning,
And dropping and hopping,
And working and jerking,
And guggling and struggling,
And heaving and cleaving,
And moaning and groaning;
And glittering and frittering,
And gathering and feathering,
And whitening and brightening,
And quivering and shivering,
And hurrying and skurrying,
And thundering and floundering;
Dividing and gliding and sliding,
And falling and brawling and sprawling,
And driving and riving and striving,
And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling,
And sounding and bounding and rounding,
And bubbling and troubling and doubling,
And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling,
And clattering and battering and shattering;
Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting,
Delaying and straying and playing and spraying,
Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,
Recoiling, turmoilm? and toiling and boiling,
And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,
And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,
And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping,
And curling and whirling and purling and twirling,
And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping,
And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing;
And so never ending, but always descending,
Sounds and motions forever and ever are blending,
All at once and all o’er, with a mighty uproar,
And this way the Water comes down at Lodore.
Keswick, 1320.
ROBERT THE RHYMER’S TRUE AND PARTICULAR ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF.
ROBERT the Rhymer, who lives at the Lakes,
Describes himself thus, to prevent mistakes;
Or rather, perhaps, be it said, to correct them,
There being plenty about for those who collect them.
He is lean of body, and lank of limb;
The man must walk fast who would overtake him.
His eyes are not yet much the worse for the wear,
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 46