Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)

by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  There’s a banner in our van,

  And we follow as we can,

  For at times we scarce can see it,

  And at times it flutters high.

  But however it be flown,

  Still we know it as our own,

  And we follow, ever follow,

  Where we see the banner fly.

  In the struggle and the strife,

  In the weariness of life,

  The banner-man may stumble,

  He may falter in the fight.

  But if one should fail or slip,

  There are other hands to grip,

  And it’s forward, ever forward,

  From the darkness to the light.

  HOPE

  Faith may break on reason,

  Faith may prove a treason

  To that highest gift

  That is granted by Thy grace;

  But Hope! Ah, let us cherish

  Some spark that may not perish,

  Some tiny spark to cheer us,

  As we wander through the waste!

  A little lamp beside us,

  A little lamp to guide us,

  Where the path is rocky,

  Where the road is steep.

  That when the light falls dimmer,

  Still some God-sent glimmer

  May hold us steadfast ever,

  To the track that we should keep.

  Hope for the trending of it,

  Hope for the ending of it,

  Hope for all around us,

  That it ripens in the sun.

  Hope for what is waning,

  Hope for what is gaining,

  Hope for what is waiting

  When the long day is done.

  Hope that He, the nameless,

  May still be best and blameless,

  Nor ever end His highest

  With the earthworm and the slime.

  Hope that o’er the border,

  There lies a land of order,

  With higher law to reconcile

  The lower laws of Time.

  Hope that every vexed life,

  Finds within that next life,

  Something that may recompense,

  Something that may cheer.

  And that perchance the lowest one

  Is truly but the slowest one,

  Quickened by the sorrow

  Which is waiting for him here.

  RELIGIO MEDICI

  1

  God’s own best will bide the test,

  And God’s own worst will fall;

  But, best or worst or last or first,

  He ordereth it all.

  2

  For all is good, if understood,

  (Ah, could we understand!)

  And right and ill are tools of skill

  Held in His either hand.

  3

  The harlot and the anchorite,

  The martyr and the rake,

  Deftly He fashions each aright,

  Its vital part to take.

  4

  Wisdom He makes to form the fruit

  Where the high blossoms be;

  And Lust to kill the weaker shoot,

  And Drink to trim the tree.

  5

  And Holiness that so the bole

  Be solid at the core;

  And Plague and Fever, that the whole

  Be changing evermore.

  6

  He strews the microbes in the lung,

  The blood-clot in the brain;

  With test and test He picks the best,

  Then tests them once again.

  7

  He tests the body and the mind,

  He rings them o’er and o’er;

  And if they crack, He throws them back,

  And fashions them once more.

  8

  He chokes the infant throat with slime,

  He sets the ferment free;

  He builds the tiny tube of lime

  That blocks the artery.

  9

  He lets the youthful dreamer store

  Great projects in his brain,

  Until He drops the fungus spore

  That smears them out again.

  10

  He stores the milk that feeds the babe,

  He dulls the tortured nerve;

  He gives a hundred joys of sense

  Where few or none might serve.

  11

  And still He trains the branch of good

  Where the high blossoms be,

  And wieldeth still the shears of ill

  To prune and prime His tree.

  MAN’S LIMITATION

  Man says that He is jealous,

  Man says that He is wise,

  Man says that He is watching

  From His throne beyond the skies.

  But perchance the arch above us

  Is one great mirror’s span,

  And the Figure seen so dimly

  Is a vast reflected man.

  If it is love that gave us

  A thousand blossoms bright,

  Why should that love not save us

  From poisoned aconite?

  If this man blesses sunshine

  Which sets his fields aglow,

  Shall that man curse the tempest

  That lays his harvest low?

  If you may sing His praises

  For health He gave to you,

  What of this spine-curved cripple,

  Shall he sing praises too?

  If you may justly thank Him

  For strength in mind and limb,

  Then what of yonder weakling —

  Must he give thanks to Him?

  Ah dark, too dark, the riddle!

  The tiny brain too small!

  We call, and fondly listen,

  For answer to that call.

  There comes no word to tell us

  Why this and that should be,

  Why you should live with sorrow,

  And joy should live with me.

  MIND AND MATTER

  Great was his soul and high his aim,

  He viewed the world, and he could trace

  A lofty plan to leave his name

  Immortal ‘mid the human race.

  But as he planned, and as he worked,

  The fungus spore within him lurked.

  Though dark the present and the past,

  The future seemed a sunlit thing.

  Still ever deeper and more vast,

  The changes that he hoped to bring.

  His was the will to dare and do;

  But still the stealthy fungus grew.

  Alas the plans that came to nought!

  Alas the soul that thrilled in vain!

  The sunlit future that he sought

  Was but a mirage of the brain.

  Where now the wit? Where now the will?

  The fungus is the master still.

  DARKNESS

  A gentleman of wit and charm,

  A kindly heart, a cleanly mind,

  One who was quick with hand or purse,

  To lift the burden of his kind.

  A brain well balanced and mature,

  A soul that shrank from all things

  base,

  So rode he forth that winter day,

  Complete in every mortal grace.

  And then — the blunder of a horse,

  The crash upon the frozen clods,

  And — Death? Ah! no such dignity,

  But Life, all twisted and at odds!

  At odds in body and in soul,

  Degraded to some brutish state,

  A being loathsome and malign,

  Debased, obscene, degenerate.

  Pathology? The case is clear,

  The diagnosis is exact;

  A bone depressed, a haemorrhage,

  The pressure on a nervous tract.

  Theology? Ah, there’s the rub!

  Since brain and soul together fade,

  Then when the brain is dead — enough!r />
  Lord help us, for we need Thine aid!

  III — MISCELLANEOUS VERSES

  A WOMAN’S LOVE

  I am not blind — I understand;

  I see him loyal, good, and wise,

  I feel decision in his hand,

  I read his honour in his eyes.

  Manliest among men is he

  With every gift and grace to clothe

  him;

  He never loved a girl but me —

  And I — I loathe him! — loathe him!

  The other! Ah! I value him

  Precisely at his proper rate,

  A creature of caprice and whim,

  Unstable, weak, importunate.

  His thoughts are set on paltry gain —

  You only tell me what I see —

  I know him selfish, cold and vain;

  But, oh! he’s all the world to me!

  BY THE NORTH SEA

  Her cheek was wet with North Sea spray,

  We walked where tide and shingle

  meet;

  The long waves rolled from far away

  To purr in ripples at our feet.

  And as we walked it seemed to me

  That three old friends had met that

  day,

  The old, old sky, the old, old sea,

  And love, which is as old as they.

  Out seaward hung the brooding mist

  We saw it rolling, fold on fold,

  And marked the great Sun alchemist

  Turn all its leaden edge to gold,

  Look well, look well, oh lady mine,

  The gray below, the gold above,

  For so the grayest life may shine

  All golden in the light of love.

  DECEMBER’S SNOW

  The bloom is on the May once more,

  The chestnut buds have burst anew;

  But, darling, all our springs are o’er,

  ‘Tis winter still for me and you.

  We plucked Life’s blossoms long ago

  What’s left is but December’s snow.

  But winter has its joys as fair,

  The gentler joys, aloof, apart;

  The snow may lie upon our hair

  But never, darling, in our heart.

  Sweet were the springs of long ago

  But sweeter still December’s snow.

  Yes, long ago, and yet to me

  It seems a thing of yesterday;

  The shade beneath the willow tree,

  The word you looked but feared to say.

  Ah! when I learned to love you so

  What recked we of December’s snow?

  But swift the ruthless seasons sped

  And swifter still they speed away.

  What though they bow the dainty head

  And fleck the raven hair with gray?

  The boy and girl of long ago

  Are laughing through the veil of snow.

  SHAKESPEARE’S EXPOSTULATION

  Masters, I sleep not quiet in my grave,

  There where they laid me, by the Avon

  shore,

  In that some crazy wights have set it forth

  By arguments most false and fanciful,

  Analogy and far-drawn inference,

  That Francis Bacon, Earl of Verulam

  (A man whom I remember in old days,

  A learned judge with sly adhesive palms,

  To which the suitor’s gold was wont to

  stick) —

  That this same Verulam had writ the plays

  Which were the fancies of my frolic brain.

  What can they urge to dispossess the crown

  Which all my comrades and the whole loud

  world

  Did in my lifetime lay upon my brow?

  Look straitly at these arguments and see

  How witless and how fondly slight they be.

  Imprimis, they have urged that, being

  born

  In the mean compass of a paltry town,

  I could not in my youth have trimmed

  my mind

  To such an eagle pitch, but must be found,

  Like the hedge sparrow, somewhere near

  the ground.

  Bethink you, sirs, that though I was

  denied

  The learning which in colleges is found,

  Yet may a hungry brain still find its fo

  Wherever books may lie or men may be;

  And though perchance by Isis or by Cam

  The meditative, philosophic plant

  May best luxuriate; yet some would say

  That in the task of limning mortal life

  A fitter preparation might be made

  Beside the banks of Thames. And then

  again,

  If I be suspect, in that I was not

  A fellow of a college, how, I pray,

  Will Jonson pass, or Marlowe, or the rest,

  Whose measured verse treads with as

  proud a gait

  As that which was my own? Whence did

  they suck

  This honey that they stored? Can you

  recite

  The vantages which each of these has had

  And I had not? Or is the argument

  That my Lord Verulam hath written all,

  And covers in his wide-embracing self

  The stolen fame of twenty smaller men?

  You prate about my learning. I

  would urge

  My want of learning rather as a proof

  That I am still myself. Have I not traced

  A seaboard to Bohemia, and made

  The cannons roar a whole wide century

  Before the first was forged? Think you,

  then,

  That he, the ever-learned Verulam,

  Would have erred thus? So may my very

  faults

  In their gross falseness prove that I am true,

  And by that falseness gender truth in you.

  And what is left? They say that they

  have found

  A script, wherein the writer tells my Lord

  He is a secret poet. True enough!

  But surely now that secret is o’er past.

  Have you not read his poems? Know

  you not

  That in our day a learned chancellor

  Might better far dispense unjustest law

  Than be suspect of such frivolity

  As lies in verse? Therefore his poetry

  Was secret. Now that he is gone

  ‘Tis so no longer. You may read his verse,

  And judge if mine be better or be worse:

  Read and pronounce! The meed of

  praise is thine;

  But still let his be his and mine be mine.

  I say no more; but how can you for-

  swear

  Outspoken Jonson, he who knew me well;

  So, too, the epitaph which still you read?

  Think you they faced my sepulchre with

  lies —

  Gross lies, so evident and palpable

  That every townsman must have wot of it,

  And not a worshipper within the church

  But must have smiled to see the marbled

  fraud?

  Surely this touches you? But if by chance

  My reasoning still leaves you obdurate,

  I’ll lay one final plea. I pray you look

  On my presentment, as it reaches you.

  My features shall be sponsors for my fame;

  My brow shall speak when Shakespeare’s

  voice is dumb,

  And be his warrant in an age to come.

  THE EMPIRE

  1902

  They said that it had feet of clay,

  That its fall was sure and quick.

  In the flames of yesterday

  All the clay was burned to brick.

  When they carved our epitaph

  And marked us doomed beyond recall,

  “We are,” we answered,
with a laugh,

  “The Empire that declines to fall.”

  A VOYAGE

  1909

  Breathing the stale and stuffy air

  Of office or consulting room,

  Our thoughts will wander back to where

  We heard the low Atlantic boom,

  And, creaming underneath our screw,

  We watched the swirling waters break,

  Silver filagrees on blue

  Spreading fan-wise in our wake.

  Cribbed within the city’s fold,

  Fettered to our daily round,

  We’ll conjure up the haze of gold

  Which ringed the wide horizon round.

  And still we’ll break the sordid day

  By fleeting visions far and fair,

  The silver shield of Vigo Bay,

  The long brown cliff of Finisterre.

  Where once the Roman galley sped,

  Or Moorish corsair spread his sail,

  By wooded shore, or sunlit head,

  By barren hill or sea-washed vale

  We took our way. But we can swear,

  That many countries we have scanned,

  But never one that could compare

  With our own island mother-land.

  The dream is o’er. No more we view

  The shores of Christian or of Turk,

  But turning to our tasks anew,

  We bend us to our wonted work.

  But there will come to you and me

  Some glimpse of spacious days gone

  by,

  The wide, wide stretches of the sea,

  The mighty curtain of the sky,

  THE ORPHANAGE

  When, ere the tangled web is reft,

  The kid-gloved villain scowls and

  sneers,

  And hapless innocence is left

  With no assets save sighs and tears,

  ‘Tis then, just then, that in there stalks