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My Commonplace Book
ОглавлениеOur God and soldier we alike adore,
When at the brink of ruin, not before;
After deliverance both alike requited,
Our God forgotten, and our soldiers slighted.
Francis Quarles (1592-1644).
In an age of fops and toys,
Wanting wisdom, void of right,
Who shall nerve heroic boys
To hazard all in Freedom’s fight?
...
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can.
R. W. Emerson (Voluntaries).
ENGLAND
When I have borne in memory what has tamed
Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts depart
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert
The student’s bower for gold, some fears unnamed
I had, my Country—am I to be blamed?
Now, when I think of thee, and what thou art,
Verily, in the bottom of my heart,
Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.
For dearly must we prize thee; we who find
In thee a bulwark for the cause of men;
And I by my affection was beguiled:
What wonder if a Poet now and then,
Among the many movements of his mind,
Felt for thee as a lover or a child!
Wordsworth (1803).
Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but record
One death struggle in the darkness ’twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.
J. R. Lowell (The Present Crisis).
Many loved Truth, and lavished life’s best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her,
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,
With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.
Many in sad faith sought for her,
Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life’s dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her....
They saw her plumed and mailed,
With sweet, stern face unveiled,
And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.
J. R. Lowell (Ode at Harvard Commemoration, 1865).
This Ode was written in memory of the Harvard University men who had died in the Secession war. Our own brave men are also fighting in the cause of Truth, against the hideous falsity of German teaching and morals.
The future’s gain
Is certain as God’s truth; but, meanwhile, pain
Is bitter, and tears are salt: our voices take
A sober tone; our very household songs
Are heavy with a nation’s griefs and wrongs;
And innocent mirth is chastened for the sake
Of the brave hearts that nevermore shall beat.
The eyes that smile no more, the unreturning feet!
J. G. Whittier (In War Time).
PRIEST
“The glory of Man is his strength,
And the weak man must die,” said the Lord.
CHORUS
Hark to the Song of the Sword!
PRIEST
Uplift! let it gleam in the sun—
Uplift in the name of the Lord!
KAISER
Lo! how it gleams in the light,
Beautiful, bloody, and bright.
Yea, I uplift the Sword
Thus in the name of the Lord!
THE CHIEFS
Form ye a circle of fire
Around him, our King and our Sire—
While in the centre he stands,
Kneel with your swords in your hands,
Then with one voice deep and free
Echo like waves of the sea—
“In the name of the Lord!”
VOICES WITHOUT
Where is he?—he fades from our sight!
Where the Sword?—all is blacker than night.
Is it finish’d, that loudly ye cry?
Doth he sheathe the great Sword while we die?
O bury us deep, most deep;
Write o’er us, wherever we sleep,
“In the name of the Lord!”
KAISER
While I uplift the Sword,
Thus in the name of the Lord,
Why, with mine eyes full of tears,
Am I sick of the song in mine ears?
God of the Israelite, hear;
God of the Teuton, be near;
Strengthen my pulse lest I fail.
Shut out these slain while they wail—
For they come with the voice of the grave
On the glory they give me and gave.
CHORUS
In the name of the Lord? Of what Lord?
Where is He, this God of the Sword?
Unfold Him; where hath He His throne?
Is He Lord of the Teuton alone?
Doth He walk on the earth? Doth He tread
On the limbs of the dying and dead?
Unfold Him! We sicken, and long
To look on this God of the strong!
PRIEST
Hush! In the name of the Lord,
Kneel ye, and bless ye the Sword!
R. Buchanan (The Apotheosis of the Sword, Versailles, 1871)
Short is mine errand to tell, and the end of my desire:
For peace I bear unto thee, and to all the kings of the earth,
Who bear the sword aright, and are crowned with the crown of worth;
But unpeace to the lords of evil, and the battle and the death;
And the edge of the sword to the traitor and the flame to the slanderous breath:
And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that the weary should sleep,
And that man should hearken to man, and that he that soweth should reap.
W. Morris (Sigurd the Volsung, Book III).
SACRIFICE
Though love repine, and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply,—
“’Tis man’s perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die.”
R. W. Emerson.
GREEKS OR GERMANS?
Do not imagine that you are fighting about a single issue, freedom or slavery. You have an empire to lose, and are exposed to danger by reason of the hatred which your imperial rule has inspired in other states. And you cannot resign your power, although some timid or unambitious spirits want you to act justly. For now your empire has become a despotism, a thing which in the opinion of mankind has been unjustly acquired yet cannot be safely relinquished. The men of whom I speak, if they could find followers, would soon ruin the state, and, if they were to found a state of their own, would just as soon ruin that.
(Speech by Pericles.)
I have observed again and again that a democracy cannot govern an empire; and never more clearly than now, when I see you regretting the sentence you pronounced on the Mityleneans. Having no fear or suspicion of one another, you deal with your allies on the same principle. You do not realize that, whenever you yield to them out of pity, or are prevailed on by their pleas, you are guilty of a weakness dangerous to yourselves and receive no gratitude from them. You need to bear in mind that your empire is a despotism exercised over unwilling subjects who are ever conspiring against you. They do not obey because of any kindness you show them: they obey just so far as you show yourselves their masters. They have no love for you, but are held down by force....
You must not be misled by pity, or eloquent pleading or by generosity. There are no three things more fatal to empire.
(Speech by Cleon) Thucydides, II, 63; III, 37, 40.
It will be seen that these odious sentiments are attributed by the impartial Thucydides to his hero Pericles as well as to the demagogue Cleon. The Greeks were fervent supporters of Democracy and Equality, but not when it came to dealing either with foreign states or with their own women or slaves. (See also Socrates and Aristotle, p. 367.)
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he, that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives anything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.
Thomas Paine (1776).
Outside the Bible and other books of religion, I think it would be difficult to find any single passage in the world’s literature that produced so wonderful a result as the above passage of Tom Paine’s. It was the opening paragraph of the first number of The Crisis, and was written by miserable, flaring candle-light, when Paine was a private in Washington’s ill-clad, worn-out army at Trenton. The soldiers, who were then despairing from hardship and defeat, were roused by these words to such enthusiasm that next day they rushed bravely in and won the first American victory, which turned the tide of the war of independence.
Previously to this, it was through Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, that the Americans first saw that separation was the only remedy for their grievances. Conway tells an amusing story about Common Sense and The Rights of Man. When the Bolton town crier was sent round to seize these prohibited books, he reported that he could not find any Rights of Man or Common Sense anywhere!
For trying to save the life of Louis XVI during the revolution, Paine was thrown into the Bastille, and only escaped death by a curious accident. It was customary for chalk-marks to be made on the cell-doors of those to be guillotined the following morning, and these doors opened outwards. When Paine’s door was marked, it happened to be open, and the mark was made on the inside, so that, when the door was shut, the mark was not visible. If Paine had not been a sceptic, this would have been described in those days as a wonderful interposition of Providence!
Conway lays a terrible indictment against Washington. When Paine, whose services to America, and to Washington himself, had been so magnificent, was thrown into the Bastille, Washington could have saved him by a word—but remained silent! This was no doubt the reason why Paine, after his liberation, was led to make an unjust attack on Washington’s military and Presidential work. It was due to this attack on Washington and the bigotry of the time against the author of The Age of Reason, that Paine fell utterly into disrepute.
When the Centenary of American independence was celebrated by an Exhibition at Philadelphia, a bust of Paine was offered to the city by his admirers, but was promptly declined! And yet Conway says that on the day, whose centenary was then being celebrated, Paine was idolized in America above all other men, Washington included.
The foregoing notes were made on reading an article on Paine by Moncure D. Conway in The Fortnightly, March, 1879. I think the fact mentioned in the last paragraph and the town-crier story do not appear in Conway’s subsequent Life of Paine.
Even at the present day bigotry seems to prevent any proper recognition of Paine’s fine character and important work. (The unpleasant flippancy[5] with which he dealt with serious religious questions is no doubt partly the cause of this.) I find very inadequate appreciation of him in The Americana and The Biographical Dictionary of America—and also in our own Dictionary of National Biography. The general impression among the public still probably is that Paine was an atheist; as a matter of fact, he was a Theist, and his will ends with the words, “I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.”
Carlyle’s reference to Paine is amusing: “Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has her Paine: rebellious staymaker; unkempt; who feels that he, a single needleman, did, by his Common-Sense Pamphlet, free America—that he can and will free all this World; perhaps even the other.” (French Revolution.)
Buy my English posies!
You that will not turn—
Buy my hot-wood clematis,
Buy a frond o’ fern
Gather’d where the Erskine leaps
Down the road to Lorne—
Buy my Christmas creeper
And I’ll say where you were born!
West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin—
They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn—
Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main—
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!
Buy my English posies!
Ye that have your own
Buy them for a brother’s sake
Overseas, alone.
Weed ye trample underfoot
Floods his heart abrim—
Bird ye never heeded,
O, she calls his dead to him!
Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas;
Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these!
Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land—
Masters of the Seven Seas, O, love and understand!
Rudyard Kipling (The Flowers).
