Читать книгу The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell - James Russell Lowell - Страница 164

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We see but half the causes of our deeds,

Seeking them wholly in the outer life,

And heedless of the encircling spirit-world,

Which, though unseen, is felt, and sows in us

All germs of pure and world-wide purposes.

From one stage of our being to the next

We pass unconscious o'er a slender bridge,

The momentary work of unseen hands,

Which crumbles down behind us; looking back,

We see the other shore, the gulf between, 10

And, marvelling how we won to where we stand,

Content ourselves to call the builder Chance.

We trace the wisdom to the apple's fall,

Not to the birth-throes of a mighty Truth

Which, for long ages in blank Chaos dumb,

Yet yearned to be incarnate, and had found

At last a spirit meet to be the womb

From which it might be born to bless mankind—

Not to the soul of Newton, ripe with all

The hoarded thoughtfulness of earnest years, 20

And waiting but one ray of sunlight more

To blossom fully.

But whence came that ray?

We call our sorrows Destiny, but ought

Rather to name our high successes so.

Only the instincts of great souls are Fate,

And have predestined sway: all other things,

Except by leave of us, could never be.

For Destiny is but the breath of God

Still moving in us, the last fragment left

Of our unfallen nature, waking oft 30

Within our thought, to beckon us beyond

The narrow circle of the seen and known,

And always tending to a noble end,

As all things must that overrule the soul,

And for a space unseat the helmsman, Will.

The fate of England and of freedom once

Seemed wavering in the heart of one plain man:

One step of his, and the great dial-hand,

That marks the destined progress of the world

In the eternal round from wisdom on 40

To higher wisdom, had been made to pause

A hundred years. That step he did not take—

He knew not why, nor we, but only God—

And lived to make his simple oaken chair

More terrible and soberly august,

More full of majesty than any throne,

Before or after, of a British king.

Upon the pier stood two stern-visaged men,

Looking to where a little craft lay moored,

Swayed by the lazy current of the Thames, 50

Which weltered by in muddy listlessness.

Grave men they were, and battlings of fierce thought

Had trampled out all softness from their brows,

And ploughed rough furrows there before their time,

For other crop than such as home-bred Peace

Sows broadcast in the willing soil of Youth.

Care, not of self, but for the common-weal,

Had robbed their eyes of youth, and left instead

A look of patient power and iron will,

And something fiercer, too, that gave broad hint 60

Of the plain weapons girded at their sides.

The younger had an aspect of command—

Not such as trickles down, a slender stream,

In the shrunk channel of a great descent,

But such as lies entowered in heart and head,

And an arm prompt to do the 'hests of both.

His was a brow where gold were out of place,

And yet it seemed right worthy of a crown

(Though he despised such), were it only made

Of iron, or some serviceable stuff

That would have matched his brownly rugged face 71

The elder, although such he hardly seemed

(Care makes so little of some five short years),

Had a clear, honest face, whose rough-hewn strength

Was mildened by the scholar's wiser heart

To sober courage, such as best befits

The unsullied temper of a well-taught mind,

Yet so remained that one could plainly guess

The hushed volcano smouldering underneath.

He spoke: the other, hearing, kept his gaze 80

Still fixed, as on some problem in the sky.

'O CROMWELL we are fallen on evil times!

There was a day when England had a wide room

For honest men as well as foolish kings:

But now the uneasy stomach of the time

Turns squeamish at them both. Therefore let us

Seek out that savage clime, where men as yet

Are free: there sleeps the vessel on the tide,

Her languid canvas drooping for the wind;

Give us but that, and what need we to fear 90

This Order of the Council? The free waves

Will not say No to please a wayward king,

Nor will the winds turn traitors at his beck:

All things are fitly cared for, and the Lord

Will watch us kindly o'er the exodus

Of us his servants now, as in old time.

We have no cloud or fire, and haply we

May not pass dry-shod through the ocean-stream;

But, saved or lost, all things are in His hand.'

So spake he, and meantime the other stood 100

With wide gray eyes still reading the blank air.

As if upon the sky's blue wall he saw

Some mystic sentence, written by a hand,

Such as of old made pale the Assyrian king,

Girt with his satraps in the blazing feast.

'HAMPDEN! a moment since, my purpose was

To fly with thee—for I will call it flight,

Nor flatter it with any smoother name—

But something in me bids me not to go;

And I am one, thou knowest, who, unmoved 110

By what the weak deem omens, yet give heed

And reverence due to whatsoe'er my soul

Whispers of warning to the inner ear.

Moreover, as I know that God brings round

His purposes in ways undreamed by us,

And makes the wicked but his instruments

To hasten their own swift and sudden fall,

I see the beauty of his providence

In the King's order: blind, he will not let

His doom part from him, but must bid it stay 120

As 't were a cricket, whose enlivening chirp

He loved to hear beneath his very hearth.

Why should we fly? Nay, why not rather stay

And rear again our Zion's crumbled walls,

Not, as of old the walls of Thebes were built,

By minstrel twanging, but, if need should be,

With the more potent music of our swords?

Think'st thou that score of men beyond the sea

Claim more God's care than all of England here?

No; when He moves his arm, it is to aid 130

Whole peoples, heedless if a few be crushed,

As some are ever, when the destiny

Of man takes one stride onward nearer home.

Believe me, 'tis the mass of men He loves;

And, where there is most sorrow and most want,

Where the high heart of man is trodden down

The most, 'tis not because He hides his face

From them in wrath, as purblind teachers prate:

Not so: there most is He, for there is He

Most needed. Men who seek for Fate abroad 140

Are not so near his heart as they who dare

Frankly to face her where she faces them,

On their own threshold, where their souls are strong

To grapple with and throw her; as I once,

Being yet a boy, did cast this puny king,

Who now has grown so dotard as to deem

That he can wrestle with an angry realm,

And throw the brawned Antæus of men's rights.

No, Hampden! they have half-way conquered Fate

Who go half-way to meet her—as will I. 150

Freedom hath yet a work for me to do;

So speaks that inward voice which never yet

Spake falsely, when it urged the spirit on

To noble emprise for country and mankind.

And, for success, I ask no more than this—

To bear unflinching witness to the truth.

All true whole men succeed; for what is worth

Success's name, unless it be the thought,

The inward surety, to have carried out

A noble purpose to a noble end, 160

Although it be the gallows or the block?

'Tis only Falsehood that doth ever need

These outward shows of gain to bolster her.

Be it we prove the weaker with our swords;

Truth only needs to be for once spoke out,

And there's such music in her, such strange rhythm,

As makes men's memories her joyous slaves,

And clings around the soul, as the sky clings

Round the mute earth, forever beautiful,

And, if o'erclouded, only to burst forth 170

More all-embracingly divine and clear:

Get but the truth once uttered, and 'tis like

A star new-born, that drops into its place,

And which, once circling in its placid round,

Not all the tumult of the earth can shake.

'What should we do in that small colony

Of pinched fanatics, who would rather choose

Freedom to clip an inch more from their hair,

Than the great chance of setting England free?

Not there, amid the stormy wilderness, 180

Should we learn wisdom; or if learned, what room

To put it into act—else worse than naught?

We learn our souls more, tossing for an hour

Upon this huge and ever-vexed sea

Of human thought, where kingdoms go to wreck

Like fragile bubbles yonder in the stream,

Than in a cycle of New England sloth,

Broke only by a petty Indian war,

Or quarrel for a letter more or less

In some hard word, which, spelt in either way, 190

Not their most learned clerks can understand.

New times demand new measures and new men;

The world advances, and in time outgrows

The laws that in our fathers' day were best;

And, doubtless, after us, some purer scheme

Will be shaped out by wiser men than we,

Made wiser by the steady growth of truth.

We cannot hale Utopia on by force;

But better, almost, be at work in sin,

Than in a brute inaction browse and sleep. 200

No man is born into the world whose work

Is not born with him; there is always work,

And tools to work withal, for those who will;

And blessed are the horny hands of toil!

The busy world stoves angrily aside

The man who stands with arms akimbo set,

Until occasion tells him what to do;

And he who waits to have his task marked out

Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.

Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds; 210

Season and Government, like two broad seas,

Yearn for each other with outstretched arms

Across this narrow isthmus of the throne,

And roll their white surf higher every day.

One age moves onward, and the next builds up

Cities and gorgeous palaces, where stood

The rude log-huts of those who tamed the wild,

Rearing from out the forests they had felled

The goodly framework of a fairer state;

The builder's trowel and the settler's axe 220

Are seldom wielded by the selfsame hand;

Ours is the harder task, yet not the less

Shall we receive the blessing for our toil

From the choice spirits of the aftertime.

My soul is not a palace of the past,

Where outworn creeds, like Rome's gray senate, quake,

Hearing afar the Vandal's trumpet hoarse,

That shakes old systems with a thunder-fit.

That time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change;

Then let it come: I have no dread of what 230

Is called for by the instinct of mankind;

Nor think I that God's world will fall apart

Because we tear a parchment more or less.

Truth Is eternal, but her effluence,

With endless change, is fitted to the hour;

Her mirror is turned forward to reflect

The promise of the future, not the past.

He who would win the name of truly great

Must understand his own age and the next,

And make the present ready to fulfil 240

Its prophecy, and with the future merge

Gently and peacefully, as wave with wave.

The future works out great men's purposes;

The present is enough, for common souls,

Who, never looking forward, are indeed

Mere clay, wherein the footprints of their age

Are petrified forever; better those

Who lead the blind old giant by the hand

From out the pathless desert where he gropes,

And set him onward in his darksome way, 250

I do not fear to follow out the truth,

Albeit along the precipice's edge.

Let us speak plain: there is more force in names

Than most men dream of; and a lie may keep

Its throne a whole age longer, if it skulk

Behind the shield of some fair-seeming name.

Let us call tyrants tyrants, and maintain That only freedom comes by grace of God, And all that comes not by his grace must fail; For men in earnest have no time to waste 260 In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth.

'I will have one more grapple with the man

Charles Stuart: whom the boy o'ercame,

The man stands not in awe of. I, perchance,

Am one raised up by the Almighty arm

To witness some great truth to all the world.

Souls destined to o'erleap the vulgar lot,

And mould the world unto the scheme of God,

Have a fore-consciousness of their high doom,

As men are known to shiver at the heart 270

When the cold shadow of some coming ill

Creeps slowly o'er their spirits unawares.

Hath Good less power of prophecy than Ill?

How else could men whom God hath called to sway

Earth's rudder, and to steer the bark of Truth,

Beating against the tempest tow'rd her port,

Bear all the mean and buzzing grievances,

The petty martyrdoms, wherewith Sin strives

To weary out the tethered hope of Faith?

The sneers, the unrecognizing look of friends, 280

Who worship the dead corpse of old king Custom,

Where it doth lie In state within the Church,

Striving to cover up the mighty ocean

With a man's palm, and making even the truth

Lie for them, holding up the glass reversed,

To make the hope of man seem farther off?

My God! when I read o'er the bitter lives

Of men whose eager heart's were quite too great

To beat beneath the cramped mode of the day,

And see them mocked at by the world they love, 290

Haggling with prejudice for pennyworths

Of that reform which their hard toil will make

The common birthright of the age to come—

When I see this, spite of my faith in God,

I marvel how their hearts bear up so long;

Nor could they but for this same prophecy,

This inward feeling of the glorious end.

'Deem me not fond; but in my warmer youth,

Ere my heart's bloom was soiled and brushed away,

I had great dreams of mighty things to come; 300

Of conquest, whether by the sword or pen

I knew not; but some Conquest I would have,

Or else swift death: now wiser grown in years,

I find youth's dreams are but the flutterings

Of those strong wings whereon the soul shall soar

In after time to win a starry throne;

And so I cherish them, for they were lots,

Which I, a boy, cast in the helm of Fate.

Now will I draw them, since a man's right hand,

A right hand guided by an earnest soul, 310

With a true instinct, takes the golden prize

From out a thousand blanks. What men call luck

Is the prerogative of valiant souls,

The fealty life pays its rightful kings.

The helm is shaking now, and I will stay

To pluck my lot forth; it were sin to flee!'

So they two turned together; one to die,

Fighting for freedom on the bloody field;

The other, far more happy, to become

A name earth wears forever next her heart; 320

One of the few that have a right to rank

With the true Makers: for his spirit wrought

Order from Chaos; proved that right divine

Dwelt only in the excellence of truth;

And far within old Darkness' hostile lines

Advanced and pitched the shining tents of Light.

Nor shall the grateful Muse forget to tell,

That—not the least among his many claims

To deathless honor—he was MILTON'S friend,

A man not second among those who lived 330

To show us that the poet's lyre demands

An arm of tougher sinew than the sword.