CANTO IV.
“Still her old empire to restore she tries,
For born a goddess Dullness never dies.”—Pope.
The builder or the architect,
Who would a nobler work erect,
Must needs discard the beam or spar
That would its strength or beauty mar:
So who would build the Commonweal,
Must labor with unwearied zeal,
To cull materials sound and tried,
And useless lumber fling aside;
And guard our franchises with care,
Since their abuse hangs on a hair.
’Tis terrible to contemplate,
That all the glory of the State,
Nay, its existence, as doth seem,
Rests on a baseless, airy, dream;
A phantom which we try to clasp,
But which forever mocks our grasp,
The ghost which thousands have pursued,
The whim of the great multitude!
Experience teaches, through all time,
In every age and every clime,
That virtuous wisdom in each realm
Should man the ship, direct the helm.
What merchant sends his bark afloat,
Manned by a loose, promiscuous vote
Of those who know nor rope nor chart,
Nor Charles’ Wain from farmer’s cart?
And yet, the nobler Ship of State
We leave to more ignoble fate;
The shuttle-cock of partisans,
Whose breath or mans it or unmans;
And, through base demagogues, inflates
Its sails to flout destruction’s gates.[l]
You say, “the Fathers so ordained,
And their decree must be sustained.”
Not so! The Fathers, wise and just,
Scorned to betray their country’s trust;
They framed a government the best
That this low world has ever blessed;
Based on this great and noble plan,
Th’ inherent dignity of man,
His virtue, wisdom and his worth;
And these, they hoped, would soon shine forth,
From out the ruin and the waste,
Wherein his soul had been debased.
They hoped, the day star soon would rise,
To purify our moral skies;
That, as the shades were swept away,
Grim night should yield to endless day;
That men, once freed from slavery’s chain,
Would not relapse, but free remain!
That taught by suffering they would prove
For suffering slaves a christian love:
That, as material wealth should flow,
Mind with it should progress below;
As Heaven abundant means should pour,
Schools should increase the land all o’er,
That learning, science, glorious art,
Should be diffused through every part;
That palaces should rise sublime,
Filled with the wealth that mocks at time!
Where invalids should be made whole
By balm that heals the broken soul;
And that the good, the learned and wise,
Should nobly wear the well-earned prize;
And every worker, statesman, bard,
Should there receive his just reward;
And not, as now, degraded stand,
To humbly bow, with hat in hand,
To proud officials raised to power,
By some base impulse of the hour.
Must genius grovel for its pay,
Like useless lumber stowed away,
In some official desk or camp,
To mix and mell with every scamp,
A serf,—a bureaucratic slave,
Court jester, beef-eater or knave;
And not amongst the noblest shine,
In its own right and light divine?
My soul revolts when it surveys
The injustice of former days!
And grieves to find our own as vile
As those which dimmed the olden style;
The days when Israelites selfwilled
The prophets stoned, the poets killed,
The days when slavish English churls
Their rhymers starved and worshiped earls;
Who Shakspeare’s record left to fade,
Because he had not begged their aid;
Who suffered Milton, blind and poor,
To starve, or beg from door to door,
As old, blind Homer did before.
Who scoffed at Dryden ’reft of hope
And for his wealth who envied Pope;
Who gorged their sybarites with sweets,
And doled the poorest skink to Keats;
Who Savage left, oh, how unwilling,
To praise his last,—his “Splendid Shilling;”
Who mocked at Johnson’s feet unshod,
While Chesterfield they deemed a god;
Who drove poor Burns to blank despair,
O’erwhelmed with toil, with debt and care;
They wronged him, as themselves allow,
And thus they wrong poor Wingate now.
Yes! Wingate sweetest strains has sung,
His nerves to tenderest feeling strung
Still vibrate to the slightest touch
Of love or pain, alas, too much!
Yet he is left to strive or pine
For bread, deep in the dark, damp mine;
There doomed to crawl on hands and knees;
Or if he seek a moment’s ease,
He twists for rest upon his back,
His upturned face with coal dust black,
And forces from th’ unwilling earth
Those diamonds which make bright their hearth.
Though known to all is his appeal,
’Tis met by all with hearts of steel;
Although a trifling aid would raise
The bard to his appropriate place.
Men read his works and shake their head,
Because he is a collier bred;
They meet the man and pass him by,
While Tennyson they deify!
Because, true flunkeys as they are,
They prize not worth but tinsel glare,
And spurn the diamond, rough, unhewn,
For one that glitters near a throne.
But let stern justice hold the scales,
And see with which true worth prevails;
The collier, not the Laureate, bard
Will claim the palm by her award.[m]
The Laureate bard! again my soul
Can scarce maintain its self-control!
Oh Tennyson! how can you bend
Your bardic spirit to such end?
Your wages twenty pounds a year,
With butt of wine and keg of beer!
Your credit on the royal books
Is scarce one third a third rate cook’s;
Yet you must sing and daub with praise
All those who bask in fortune’s rays;
You must uphold the Church and State,
Those pillars that make Britain “Great,”
Which proudly claims “to rule the waves,”
For “Britons never can be slaves!”
You gild this cunning, artful, lie
With tinsel and with sophistry!
This is your business, this your trade;
For this your office has been made!
Nor dare you hint, that men have rights
As well as duties; that the lights
Of knowledge which your masters hoard
Should free as sunlight shine abroad!
And that the people’s wealth enjoyed
By drones might better be employed,
In raising up from moral graves,
Your worse than dead, your worse than slaves!
That public schools should be maintained,
In which the masses might be trained
To rise to self-respect and power,
Nor slumber out life’s listless hour,
In apathy, bereft of hope,
Still doomed with poverty to cope;
To stagnate in its festering pool,
The scorn and butt of every fool;
Till every trace of manhood fade,
And rust the heart and soul invade;
Through which disease and swift decay,
Like vultures, on their vitals prey!
Nor dare you hint, that as I write,
While some three hundred wield the might,
The millions of the British race
Still bear the slave-mark on their face!
That, save a few of Norman blood,
The mass are swallowed by a flood
Of tyranny and priestcraft still,
As gross as in the days of “Will,”
The first of Normans, now so famed,
Who well the conqueror has been named.
Of thirty millions whom I quote,
Scarce half a million have a vote;
And, worst of mockeries, and shame!
Nine tenths of these have but the name,
These are the serfs, by force or law,
Of those who bribe or overawe;
So that of all Britannia’s crew,
How many truly free, say you?
You “dare not reckon!”
Dare you guess?
About three hundred, more or less;
Yet still “Britannia rules the waves,”
And “Britons never shall be slaves!”
Such freedom is an iron chain
Which binds the people to the plain;
Lest they, like earth-born giants, rise
And pile up mountains to the skies,
Whence kings and their proud hosts be hurled
Down headlong to this nether world;
Their kingcraft and their tinsel-glare
Exposed to the rude vulgar stare;
And all their strength long based on fear
Should, in a twinkling, disappear!
Such freedom is a monstrous cheat,
A whited sepulchre complete!
An empty phantom robed in pride,
All beautiful to those outside;
A baseless fabric built on air,
At distance seeming bright and fair;—
But touch it, and it crumbles down,
A heap of rubbish with a crown!
A den of crime, of vice and sin,
All worms and rottenness within!
A flickering, phosphorescent, ray,
That springs from bodies in decay,[n]
To warn the Nations to keep clear,
And straight through right to Freedom steer!
Good Heavens! it almost drives me mad,
To hear each simpering, yard-stick lad,
And every pettifogging ass,
With brain of lead and brow of brass,
Hiss thus; “We want a one-man rule,
Self-government’s an arrant fool!
Look to Great Britain, how she shines,
While every blessing she combines!
An aristocracy and king
For us were good, were just the thing!”
In such event, apes, where were you?
Too mean to black the servant’s shoe,
Or sweep the mud from off his track,
Too mean the “nigger’s” boots to black;
What place to suit you could be found,
Save yon foul nightman’s stifling round?
But, Tennyson, what chain should bind
The bard, the eagle of the mind,
And hold him down from mounting high,
And soaring through his native sky;
Whence he could see and point to men
The truth and clear it to their ken?
You think your golden chain too light
To quench your flame, impede your flight!
Alas! you feel, it holds you down;
And can you barter fair renown
For such vile dross? and can you sell
Your soul for this sporad of hell?
Renounce your birthright for a mess
Of pottage which no tongue can bless?
Take warning from those gone before!
Remember Southey, Wordsworth, Moore,[o]
And others warped by gold accurst,
But none so basely as the first:
For Southey, in young manhood’s glee,
Sang of Watt Tyler, bold and free;
Until the owls who love the night,
Beheld and curbed his upward flight.
Unfriended, poor, unsteady, young,
He yielded to temptation strong;
Like you, he snatched the golden bait,
And lost all view of Heaven’s gate;
Blew every spring a clarion note
By which he seemed to clear his throat,
Which dwindled down to bathos weak,
Nor brought a blush upon his cheek:
Thus all his talents ran to waste,
“Watt Tyler” was his first and last![p]
So, Tennyson, ’twill be with you,
Should you the beaten track pursue:
Your “gen’rous” patrons leave you free
To chant all themes, save Liberty,
To waste your time, from year to year,
On royal “Idylls,” wine and beer;
Or catch from Burns the brooklet’s play,
Or sing a baby’s lullaby.
But hark! he coos like cushat dove,
Of “Enoch Arden’s” puling love.
This ‘masterpiece’ becomes the rage
Of idlers in an earnest age;
Is puffed and lauded to the skies,
(How true, that “dullness never dies!”)
As if its author’s powers might cope
With those of Milton, Dryden, Pope;
And e’en the great Republic chimes
With this opprobrium of the times!
Oh praise absurd! since not one ray
Of genius sparkles in that ‘lay’
No sympathy for human woe,
No noble purpose,—patriot glow;—
No moral lesson to impart
Its solace to the suffering heart;
Not e’en the landscape’s vivid scene,
Or pointed barb of satire keen!
Where find in it one flash of wit,
One well aimed jest, one happy hit?
One master stroke on which to dwell,
One salient point its tale to tell?
Our critics stammer, as they stare;
“Wher—where?”—and Echo sobs, “wher—where?”
Now this reminds me of a story,
Which I will try to lay before you:
’Tis of a painting lately made
By Brown, who plies the artist’s trade.
Brown got an order to prepare
His canvass for a picture rare.
What might the weighty subject be?
’Twas “Israel crossing the Red Sea,
With Pharaoh’s host in hot pursuit;”
The artist boldly cried; “I’ll do it!”
And soon the work before him grew,
Like thought his pencil o’er it flew;
The landscape ’neath that pencil glowed,
Dark mountains frowned and waters flowed:
Already trumpet tongues proclaim
The prelude of Brown’s coming fame.
At last the work is done—brought home;
The patron, with amazement dumb,
Finds words at length, and thus exclaims;
“I see still water, rocks and streams;
But where is Pharaoh and his host?”
Brown—
“Oh! they in ocean’s depths are lost.”
Patron—
“But where is Moses and his train?
I search and search for them in vain.”
Brown—
“What! reproduce a scene so gross?
Why they, of course, are safe across!”
“Zounds!” cries his patron, with a frown,
“You’ve ‘done’ the job, and ‘done’ me,—Brown!”
This praise to Tennyson we give;
His ‘poem’s’ a splendid—negative.
No doubt it has much latent worth,
Else he would not have put it forth;
But this fine vein cannot be seen,
Except by eyes surpassing keen.
Some things are better understood
As seen by the great multitude.
The ken of Argus, (who denies?)
Was sharper for his hundred eyes.
Some for their whistle pay too dear,
If purchased where a throne is near;
Whilst Wingate, like the nightingale,
To darkness pours his mournful tale!
America, fair freedom’s home,
Shall you the despot’s foil become,
And holding Albion’s apron strings,
The bard chain down or clip his wings?
Shall you, while waxing fat and strong,
Become conservative of wrong,
Forgetful of the bygone time
When slavery you deemed a crime?
To Egypt’s fleshpots now look back,
Regardless of fair freedom’s track;
And turning from her glorious light
In vain seek comfort in dark night?
Shall you God’s chosen persecute,
Or bid his messengers be mute;
Because they point with sorrow keen
To that which never should have been;
And pray you blot from freedom’s page
The blackest record of the age?
And why so sensitive of pain,
Concerning what should make you vain;
Should be your glory and your pride,
Throughout the whole creation wide?
To hint the name of “radical”
Appears your feelings to appall;
And why? since he would sweep away
The roots of all that brings decay,
And drive from earth the baleful dross
Of which you seem to mourn the loss?
And since your temple’s corner stone
Rests on the radical alone!
You hate the name of abolition
Almost as much as of perdition,
Though abolition must precede,
If vice must fall and hope succeed;
The ground of weeds must be well cleared,
Ere healthy plants be set and reared;
Corruption and its horde must yield,
If Freedom is to keep the field.
You know that this is strictly true,
Yet hesitate what you should do!
Your innate worth and noble pride
Can scarce your trepidation hide,
And dread of censors placed to watch
Your every motion, and to catch
Your slightest tripping in that pet
Of fools and knaves called etiquette!
The wretched tricks, the feigned distress
Of those who live on State finesse,
Of scramblers in the sordid race
That leads to station, power and place;
Of pettifoggers who pollute
The tree of justice at its root;
These all by you should be ignored,
As relics of a barbarous horde!
Perhaps, e’en now, (ah! can it be?)
You feel the influence of the tree
Of royalty, whose upas-breath
Is foe to life and friend of death!
Some chain invisible still binds
Your leading, not your noblest, minds,
Who seem to take the timid ground,
That simple truth must be unsound,
And will not bear the deadly weight
Themselves inflict upon the State:
Who deem that sophistry and lies
Are for the people good supplies,—
By which the people must be fed,
That by the nose they may be led.
These worthies beat about the bush,
In search of moonshine, crying; “Hush!
Our babes, the people, might awake
And catch us in some grand mistake!
Or they might haply catch a gleam
Of light from our refulgent beam;
Like us become too ‘smart’ and wise,
And drive us from our paradise,
The chance of each log-rolling brother
For office, chosen by each other!”[q]
They call all men out-spoken, rash,
Who think pure truth the best of cash,
And that its gold should current pass,
In place of counterfeits of brass!
These seem disheartened and afraid
To call the honest to your aid;
Perhaps, because that name, of late,
Is out of fashion, out of date;
Perhaps, because each British scribe
With slender wit, but ready jibe,[r]
Scoffs at all honest worth as low,
If not decked out for royal show;
Or tricked in livery’s golden sheen,
Through which its face may not be seen;
And you too much inclined to yield
Your better judgment in this field,
Are, quite unconsciously, perhaps,
Entangled in these gilded traps,
And your true dignity disguise
In this unworthy compromise!
For shame, America, for shame!
Why not your mission grand proclaim,
And spread abroad God’s favorite plan,
To elevate his creature, man!
To you He grants the noblest place,
The hegemony of the race!
Without a blush accept your role,
And act your part with all your soul,
Nor through base fear of flunkey scorn,
Veil your fair face that rivals morn;
Its beauty let the world behold;
Sublimely grand, serenely bold;
Thus shall you still immortal shine,
In justice, truth, and love divine;
Though Britain tortuous paths pursue,
That can be no excuse for you;
She left her Chatterton to woe;
What have you done with Edgar Poe?
O pause, reflect, be wise in time;
Neglect of genius is a crime!
’Tis Heaven’s best gift, exceeding rare,
Then guard the plant with tenderest care;
Encourage it to spread abroad,
Its fruit is health and flows from God.
And still ’midst danger’s gloom you’ll find
Your greatest strength in men of mind,
Where genius, culture, worth, combine
To flood the soul with light divine.
Whilst monsters dull, depraved, ingrate,
Disgrace the land, distract the State;
Base slaves of Mammon’s sordid pelf,
Strive, each, to aggrandize himself;
Whilst vile contractors, like the leech,
Suck all the blood within their reach,
Their country drain at every pore
And fatten on her heroes’ gore;
Whilst every quack propounds his plan,
And no place has its proper man;
Where are the men whose mental gaze
Can penetrate the thickest haze,
And see, through instinct, dawning bright
The sun that scatters gloom and night;
Who, through rebellion’s stormy sea,
Can steer our bark to Liberty,
And, like the good and great of old,
Prize worth and virtue more than gold?
Are Whittier, Saxe, Bryant, unfit
For counsel, for that they have wit?
And Longfellow, the prince of all,
Why leave in Hiawatha’s hall,
Nor call him to the council board,
And profit by his precious hoard?
You “find no precedent,” you say;
Ha! then “red tape” is in the way!
No precedent! dear, honored, dame,
Your memory is here to blame;
For surely you have read the past,
When Pericles led ton and taste;
When Liberty prevailed in Greece,
And bore the palm in war and peace:
Then men of genius, honored, prized,
The noblest functions exercised;
And afterwards, in ancient Rome,
True genius found a welcome home,
When Virgil was Mæcenas’ friend,
And proud Augustus deigned to lend
His ear to Horace, and to drain
The noblest lessons from his brain.
The bard, in every clime and age,
Has figured on the world’s great stage:
Commissioned by the King of kings,
He soars on bright celestial wings;
Through mighty realms he speeds his way,
Like God’s own messenger of day,
Diffusing light and hope abroad,
And pointing out the ways of God
To presidents and kings and men,
With hallowed lips or burning pen;
So that no people can afford
To disregard his sacred word.
And whether at Paris or Weimar,
With Charles Augustus or the Czar,
With Lincoln or the British Queen,
There shines a Goethe or Martine;
Or there his influence prevails,
Or else the worldly project fails.
Then let your heart this truth record,
“The pen is mightier than the sword;”
With this to boot; of sword and pen
The bard is lord,—is king of men![t]