Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)
Page 22
How you have drawn me out, sir! All I ask
Is – am I heir or not heir? If I’m he,
Then, sir, remember, that same personage
(To judge by what we read i’ the newspaper)
Requires, beside one nobleman in gold
[1190] To carry up and down his coronet,
Another servant, probably a duke,
To hold egg-nog in readiness: why want
Attendance, sir, when helps in his father’s house
Abound, I’d like to know?
Enough of talk!
My fault is that I tell too plain a truth.
Why, which of those who say they disbelieve,
Your clever people, but has dreamed his dream,
Caught his coincidence, stumbled on his fact
He can’t explain, (he’ll tell you smilingly)
[1200] Which he’s too much of a philosopher
To count as supernatural, indeed,
So calls a puzzle and problem, proud of it, –
Bidding you still be on your guard, you know,
Because one fact don’t make a system stand,
Nor prove this an occasional escape
Of spirit beneath the matter: that’s the way!
Just so wild Indians picked up, piece by piece,
The fact in California, the fine gold
That underlay the gravel – hoarded these,
[1210] But never made a system stand, nor dug!
So wise men hold out in each hollowed palm
A handful of experience, sparkling fact
They can’t explain; and since their rest of life
Is all explainable, what proof in this?
Whereas I take the fact, the grain of gold,
And fling away the dirty rest of life,
And add this grain to the grain each fool has found
O’ the million other such philosophers, –
Till I see gold, all gold and only gold,
[1220] Truth questionless though unexplainable,
And the miraculous proved the commonplace!
The other fools believed in mud, no doubt –
Failed to know gold they saw: was that so strange?
Are all men born to play Bach’s fiddle-fugues,
‘Time’ with the foil in carte, jump their own height,
Cut the mutton with the broadsword, skate a five,
Make the red hazard with the cue, clip nails
While swimming, in five minutes row a mile,
Pull themselves three feet up with the left arm,
[1230] Do sums of fifty figures in their head,
And so on, by the scores of instances?
The Sludge with luck, who sees the spiritual facts
His fellows strive and fail to see, may rank
With these, and share the advantage.
Ay, but share
The drawback! Think it over by yourself;
I have not heart, sir, and the fire’s gone grey.
Defect somewhere compénsates for success,
Everyone knows that. Oh, we’re equals, sir!
The big-legged fellow has a little arm
[1240] And a less brain, though big legs win the race:
Do you suppose I ‘scape the common lot?
Say, I was born with flesh so sensitive,
Soul so alert, that, practice helping both,
I guess what’s going on outside the veil,
Just as a prisoned crane feels pairing-time
In the islands where his kind are, so must fall
To capering by himself some shiny night,
As if your back-yard were a plot of spice –
Thus am I ’ware o’ the spirit-world: while you,
[1250] Blind as a beetle that way, – for amends,
Why, you can double fist and floor me, sir!
Ride that hot hardmouthed horrid horse of yours,
Laugh while it lightens, play with the great dog,
Speak your mind though it vex some friend to hear,
Never brag, never bluster, never blush, –
In short, you’ve pluck, when I’m a coward – there!
I know it, I can’t help it, – folly or no,
I’m paralysed, my hand’s no more a hand,
Nor my head a head, in danger: you can smile
[1260] And change the pipe in your cheek. Your gift’s not mine.
Would you swap for mine? No! but you’d add my gift
To yours: I dare say! I too sigh at times,
Wish I were stouter, could tell truth nor flinch,
Kept cool when threatened, did not mind so much
Being dressed gaily, making strangers stare,
Eating nice things; when I’d amuse myself,
I shut my eyes and fancy in my brain
I’m – now the President, now Jenny Lind,
Now Emerson, now the Benicia Boy –
[1270] With all the civilized world a-wondering
And worshipping. I know it’s folly and worse;
I feel such tricks sap, honeycomb the soul,
But I can’t cure myself: despond, despair,
And then, hey, presto, there’s a turn o’ the wheel,
Under comes uppermost, fate makes full amends;
Sludge knows and sees and hears a hundred things
You all are blind to, – I’ve my taste of truth,
Likewise my touch of falsehood, – vice no doubt,
But you’ve your vices also: I’m content.
[1280] What, sir? You won’t shake hands? ‘Because I cheat!’
‘You’ve found me out in cheating!’ That’s enough
To make an apostle swear! Why, when I cheat,
Mean to cheat, do cheat, and am caught in the act,
Are you, or, rather, am I sure o’ the fact?
(There’s verse again, but I’m inspired somehow.)
Well then I’m not sure! I may be, perhaps,
Free as a babe from cheating: how it began,
My gift, – no matter; what ’tis got to be
In the end now, that’s the question; answer that!
[1290] Had I seen, perhaps, what hand was holding mine,
Leading me whither, I had died of fright:
So, I was made believe I led myself.
If I should lay a six-inch plank from roof
To roof, you would not cross the street, one step,
Even at your mother’s summons: but, being shrewd,
If I paste paper on each side the plank
And swear ’tis solid pavement, why, you’ll cross
Humming a tune the while, in ignorance
Beacon Street stretches a hundred feet below:
[1300] I walked thus, took the paper-cheat for stone.
Some impulse made me set a thing o’ the move
Which, started once, ran really by itself;
Beer flows thus, suck the siphon; toss the kite,
It takes the wind and floats of its own force.
Don’t let truth’s lump rot stagnant for the lack
Of a timely helpful lie to leaven it!
Put a chalk-egg beneath the clucking hen,
She’ll lay a real one, laudably deceived,
Daily for weeks to come. I’ve told my lie,
[1310] And seen truth follow, marvels none of mine;
All was not cheating, sir, I’m positive!
I don’t know if I move your hand sometimes
When the spontaneous writing spreads so far,
If my knee lifts the table all that height,
Why the inkstand don’t fall off the desk a-tilt,
Why the accordion plays a prettier waltz
Than I can pick out on the pianoforte,
Why I speak so much more than I intend,
Describe so many things I never saw.
[1320] I tell you, sir, in one sense, I believe
Nothing at all, – that everybody can,
Will, and does cheat: but in another sense
/> I’m ready to believe my very self –
That every cheat’s inspired, and every lie
Quick with a germ of truth.
You ask perhaps
Why I should condescend to trick at all
If I know a way without it? This is why!
There’s a strange secret sweet self-sacrifice
In any desecration of one’s soul
[1330] To a worthy end, – isn’t it Herodotus
(I wish I could read Latin!) who describes
The single gift o’ the land’s virginity,
Demanded in those old Egyptian rites,
(I’ve but a hazy notion – help me, sir!)
For one purpose in the world, one day in a life,
One hour in a day – thereafter, purity,
And a veil thrown o’er the past for evermore!
Well, now, they understood a many things
Down by Nile city, or wherever it was!
[1340] I’ve always vowed, after the minute’s lie,
And the end’s gain, – truth should be mine henceforth.
This goes to the root o’ the matter, sir, – this plain
Plump fact: accept it and unlock with it
The wards of many a puzzle!
Or, finally,
Why should I set so fine a gloss on things?
What need I care? I cheat in self-defence,
And there’s my answer to a world of cheats!
Cheat? To be sure, sir! What’s the world worth else?
Who takes it as he finds, and thanks his stars?
[1350] Don’t it want trimming, turning, furbishing up
And polishing over? Your so-styled great men,
Do they accept one truth as truth is found,
Or try their skill at tinkering? What’s your world?
Here are you born, who are, I’ll say at once,
Of the luckiest kind, whether in head and heart,
Body and soul, or all that helps them both.
Well, now, look back: what faculty of yours
Came to its full, had ample justice done
By growing when rain fell, biding its time,
[1360] Solidifying growth when earth was dead,
Spiring up, broadening wide, in seasons due?
Never! You shot up and frost nipped you off,
Settled to sleep when sunshine bade you sprout;
One faculty thwarted its fellow: at the end,
All you boast is ‘I had proved a topping tree
In other climes’ – yet this was the right clime
Had you foreknown the seasons. Young, you’ve force
Wasted like well-streams: old, – oh, then indeed,
Behold a labyrinth of hydraulic pipes
[1370] Through which you’d play off wondrous waterwork;
Only, no water’s left to feed their play.
Young, – you’ve a hope, an aim, a love: it’s tossed
And crossed and lost: you struggle on, some spark
Shut in your heart against the puffs around,
Through cold and pain; these in due time subside,
Now then for age’s triumph, the hoarded light
You mean to loose on the altered face of things, –
Up with it on the tripod! It’s extinct.
Spend your life’s remnant asking, which was best,
[1380] Light smothered up that never peeped forth once,
Or the cold cresset with full leave to shine?
Well, accept this too, – seek the fruit of it
Not in enjoyment, proved a dream on earth,
But knowledge, useful for a second chance,
Another life, – you’ve lost this world – you’ve gained
Its knowledge for the next. What knowledge, sir,
Except that you know nothing? Nay, you doubt
Whether ’twere better have made you man or brute,
If aught be true, if good and evil clash.
[1390] No foul, no fair, no inside, no outside,
There’s your world!
Give it me! I slap it brisk
With harlequin’s pasteboard sceptre: what’s it now?
Changed like a rock-flat, rough with rusty weed,
At first wash-over o’ the returning wave!
All the dry dead impracticable stuff
Starts into life and light again; this world
Pervaded by the influx from the next.
I cheat, and what’s the happy consequence?
You find full justice straightway dealt you out,
[1400] Each want supplied, each ignorance set at ease,
Each folly fooled. No life-long labour now
As the price of worse than nothing! No mere film
Holding you chained in iron, as it seems,
Against the outstretch of your very arms
And legs i’ the sunshine moralists forbid!
What would you have? Just speak and, there, you see!
You’re supplemented, made a whole at last,
Bacon advises, Shakespeare writes you songs,
And Mary Queen of Scots embraces you.
[1410] Thus it goes on, not quite like life perhaps,
But so near, that the very difference piques,
Shows that e’en better than this best will be –
This passing entertainment in a hut
Whose bare walls take your taste since, one stage more,
And you arrive at the palace: all half real,
And you, to suit it, less than real beside,
In a dream, lethargic kind of death in life,
That helps the interchange of natures, flesh
Transfused by souls, and such souls! Oh, ’tis choice!
[1420] And if at whiles the bubble, blown too thin,
Seem nigh on bursting, – if you nearly see
The real world through the false, – what do you see?
Is the old so ruined? You find you’re in a flock
O’ the youthful, earnest, passionate – genius, beauty,
Rank and wealth also, if you care for these:
And all depose their natural rights, hail you,
(That’s me, sir) as their mate and yoke-fellow,
Participate in Sludgehood – nay, grow mine,
I veritably possess them – banish doubt,
[1430] And reticence and modesty alike!
Why, here’s the Golden Age, old Paradise
Or new Eutopia! Here’s true life indeed,
And the world well won now, mine for the first time!
And all this might be, may be, and with good help
Of a little lying shall be: so, Sludge lies!
Why, he’s at worst your poet who sings how Greeks
That never were, in Troy which never was,
Did this or the other impossible great thing!
He’s Lowell – it’s a world (you smile applause),
[1440] Of his own invention – wondrous Longfellow,
Surprising Hawthorne! Sludge does more than they,
And acts the books they write: the more his praise!
But why do I mount to poets? Take plain prose –
Dealers in common sense, set these at work,
What can they do without their helpful lies?
Each states the law and fact and face o’ the thing
Just as he’d have them, finds what he thinks fit,
Is blind to what missuits him, just records
What makes his case out, quite ignores the rest.
[1450] It’s a History of the world, the Lizard Age,
The Early Indians, the Old Country War,
Jerome Napoleon, whatsoever you please,
All as the author wants it. Such a scribe
You pay and praise for putting life in stones,
Fire into fog, making the past your world.
There’s plenty of ‘How did you contrive to grasp
The thread which led you through this labyrinth?
How build such solid fabric out of air?
How on so slight foundation found this tale,
[1460] Biography, narrative?’ or, in other words,
‘How many lies did it require to make
The portly truth you here present us with?’
‘Oh,’ quoth the penman, purring at your praise,
‘’Tis fancy all; no particle of fact:
I was poor and threadbare when I wrote that book
“Bliss in the Golden City.” I, at Thebes?
We writers paint out of our heads, you see!’
‘– Ah, the more wonderful the gift in you,
The more creativeness and godlike craft!’
[1470] But I, do I present you with my piece,
It’s ‘What, Sludge? When my sainted mother spoke
The verses Lady Jane Grey last composed
About the rosy bower in the seventh heaven
Where she and Queen Elizabeth keep house, –
You made the raps? ’Twas your invention that?
Cur, slave and devil!’ – eight fingers and two thumbs
Stuck in my throat!
Well, if the marks seem gone
’Tis because stiffish cocktail, taken in time,
Is better for a bruise than arnica.
[1480] There, sir! I bear no malice: ’tisn’t in me.
I know I acted wrongly: still, I’ve tried
What I could say in my excuse, – to show
The devil’s not all devil … I don’t pretend,
He’s angel, much less such a gentleman
As you, sir! And I’ve lost you, lost myself,
Lost all-l-l-l- …
No – are you in earnest, sir?
O yours, sir, is an angel’s part! I know
What prejudice prompts, and what’s the common course
Men take to soothe their ruffled self-conceit:
[1490] Only you rise superior to it all!
No, sir, it don’t hurt much; it’s speaking long
That makes me choke a little: the marks will go!
What? Twenty V-notes more, and outfit, too,
And not a word to Greeley? One – one kiss
O’ the hand that saves me! You’ll not let me speak,
I well know, and I’ve lost the right, too true!
But I must say, sir, if She hears (she does)
Your sainted … Well, sir, – be it so! That’s, I think,
My bed-room candle. Good night! Bl-l-less you, sir!
[1500] R-r-r, you brute-beast and blackguard! Cowardly scamp!
I only wish I dared burn down the house
And spoil your sniggering! Oh what, you’re the man?
You’re satisfied at last? You’ve found out Sludge?
We’ll see that presently: my turn, sir, next!
I too can tell my story: brute, – do you hear? –
You throttled your sainted mother, that old hag,