WITH BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE

Ay, this same midnight, by this chair of mine,

Come and review thy counsels: art thou still

Stanch to their teaching?—not as fools opine

Its purport might be, but as subtler skill

Could, through turbidity, the loaded line

Of logic casting, sound deep, deeper, till

It touched a quietude and reached a shrine

And recognized harmoniously combine

Evil with good, and hailed truth's triumph.—thine,

Sage dead long since, Bernard de Mandeville!

Only, 't is no fresh knowledge that I crave,

Fuller truth yet, new gainings from the grave;

Here we alive must needs deal fairly, turn

To what account Man may Man's portion, learn

Man's proper play with truth in part, before

Entrusted with the whole. I ask no more

Than smiling witness that I do my best

With doubtful doctrine: afterwards the rest!

So, silent face me while I think and speak!

A full disclosure? Such would outrage law.

Law deals the same with soul and body: seek

Full truth my soul may, when some babe, I saw

A new-born weakling, starts up strong—not weak—

Man every whit, absolved from earning awe,

Pride, rapture, if the soul attains to wreak

Its will on flesh, at last can thrust, lift, draw,

As mind bids muscle—mind which long has striven,

Painfully urging body's impotence

To effort whereby—once law's barrier riven,

Life's rule abolished—body might dispense

With infancy's probation, straight be given

—Not by foiled darings, fond attempts back-driven,

Fine faults of growth, brave sins which saint when shriven—

To stand full-statured in magnificence.

III

No: as with body so deals law with soul

That 's stung to strength through weakness, strives for good

Through evil,—earth its race-ground, heaven its goal,

Presumably: so far I understood

Thy teaching long ago. But what means this

—Objected by a mouth which yesterday

Was magisterial in antithesis

To half the truths we hold, or trust we may,

Though tremblingly the while? "No sign"—groaned he—

"No stirring of God's finger to denote

He wills that right should have supremacy

On earth, not wrong! How helpful could we quote

But one poor instance when he interposed

Promptly and surely and beyond mistake

Between oppression and its victim, closed

Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake

From our long dream that justice bears no sword,

Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves!

So might we safely mock at what unnerves

Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase

That haply evil's strife with good shall cease

Never on earth. Nay, after earth, comes peace

Born out of life-long battle? Man's lip curves

With scorn: there, also, what if justice swerves

From dealing doom, sets free by no swift stroke

Right fettered here by wrong, but leaves life's yoke—

Death should loose man from—fresh laid, past release?"

Bernard de Mandeville, confute for me

This parlous friend who captured or set free

Thunderbolts at his pleasure, yet would draw

Back, panic-stricken by some puny straw

Thy gold-rimmed amber-headed cane had whisked

Out of his pathway if the object risked

Encounter, 'scaped thy kick from buckled shoe!

As when folk heard thee in old days pooh-pooh

Addison's tye-wig preachment, grant this friend—

(Whose groan I hear, with guffaw at the end

Disposing of mock-melancholy)—grant

His bilious mood one potion, ministrant

Of homely wisdom, healthy wit! For, hear!

"With power and will, let preference appear

By intervention ever and aye, help good

When evil's mastery is understood

In some plain outrage, and triumphant wrong

Tramples weak right to nothingness: nay, long

Ere such sad consummation brings despair

To right's adherents, ah, what help it were

If wrong lay strangled in the birth—each head

Of the hatched monster promptly crushed, instead

Of spared to gather venom! We require

No great experience that the inch-long worm,

Free of our heel, would grow to vomit fire,

And one day plague the world in dragon form.

So should wrong merely peep abroad to meet

Wrong's due quietus, leave our world's way safe

For honest walking."

Sage, once more repeat

Instruction! 'T is a sore to soothe not chafe.

Ah, Fabulist, what luck, could I contrive

To coax from thee another "Grumbling Hive"!

My friend himself wrote fables short and sweet:

Ask him—"Suppose the Gardener of Man's ground

Plants for a purpose, side by side with good,

Evil—(and that he does so—look around!

What does the field show?)—were it understood

That purposely the noxious plant was found

Vexing the virtuous, poison close to food,

If, at first stealing-forth of life in stalk

And leaflet-promise, quick his spud should balk

Evil from budding foliage, bearing fruit?

Such timely treatment of the offending root

Might strike the simple as wise husbandry,

But swift sure extirpation would scarce suit

Shrewder observers. Seed once sown thrives: why

Frustrate its product, miss the quality

Which sower binds himself to count upon?

Had seed fulfilled the destined purpose, gone

Unhindered up to harvest—what know I

But proof were gained that every growth of good

Sprang consequent on evil's neighborhood?"

So said your shrewdness: true—so did not say

That other sort of theorists who held

Mere unintelligence prepared the way

For either seed's upsprouting: you repelled

Their notion that both kinds could sow themselves.

True! but admit 't is understanding delves

And drops each germ, what else but folly thwarts

The doer's settled purpose? Let the sage

Concede a use to evil, though there starts

Full many a burgeon thence, to disengage

With thumb and finger lest it spoil the yield

Too much of good's main tribute! But our main

Tough-tendoned mandrake-monster—purge the field

Of him for once and all? It follows plain

Who set him there to grow beholds repealed

His primal law: his ordinance proves vain:

And what beseems a king who cannot reign,

But to drop sceptre valid arm should wield?

"Still there 's a parable"—retorts my friend—

"Shows agriculture with a difference!

What of the crop and weeds which solely blend

Because, once planted, none may pluck them thence?

The Gardener contrived thus? Vain pretence!

An enemy it was who unawares

Ruined the wheat by interspersing tares.

Where 's our desiderated forethought? Where 's

Knowledge, where power and will in evidence?

'T is Man's-play merely! Craft foils rectitude,

Malignity defeats beneficence.

And grant, at very last of all, the feud

'Twixt good and evil ends, strange thoughts intrude

Though good be garnered safely, and good's foe

Bundled for burning. Thoughts steal: 'Even so—

Why grant tares leave to thus o'ertop, o'ertower

Their field-mate, boast the stalk and flaunt the flower,

Triumph one sunny minute? Knowledge, power,

And will thus worked?' Man's fancy makes the fault!

Man, with the narrow mind, must cram inside

His finite God's infinitude,—earth's vault

He bids comprise the heavenly far and wide,

Since Man may claim a right to understand

What passes understanding. So, succinct

And trimly set in order, to be scanned

And scrutinized, lo—the divine lies linked

Fast to the human, free to move as moves

Its proper match: awhile they keep the grooves,

Discreetly side by side together pace,

Till sudden comes a stumble incident

Likely enough to Man's weak-footed race,

And he discovers—wings in rudiment,

Such as he boasts, which full-grown, free-distent

Would lift him skyward, fail of flight while pent

Within humanity's restricted space.

Abjure each fond attempt to represent

The formless, the illimitable! Trace

No outline, try no hint of human face

Or form or hand!"

VII

Friend, here 's a tracing meant

To help a guess at truth you never knew.

Bend but those eyes now, using mind's eye too,

And note—sufficient for all purposes—

The ground-plan—map you long have yearned for—yes,

Make out in markings—more what artist can?—

Goethe's Estate in Weimar,—just a plan!

A is the House, and B the Garden-gate,

And C the Grass-plot—you 've the whole estate

Letter by letter, down to Y the Pond,

And Z the Pigsty. Do you look beyond

The algebraic signs, and captions say

"Is A the House? But where 's the Roof to A,

Where 's Door, where 's Window? Needs must House have such!"

Ay, that were folly. Why so very much

More foolish than our mortal purblind way

Of seeking in the symbol no mere point

To guide our gaze through what were else inane,

But things—their solid selves? "Is, joint by joint,

Orion man-like,—as these dots explain

His constellation? Flesh composed of suns—

How can such be?" exclaim the simple ones.

Look through the sign to the thing signified—

Shown nowise, point by point at best descried,

Each an orb's topmost sparkle: all beside

Its shine is shadow: turn the orb one jot—

Up flies the new flash to reveal 't was not

The whole sphere late flamboyant in your ken!

VIII

"What need of symbolizing? Fitlier men

Would take on tongue mere facts—few, faint and far,

Still facts not fancies: quite enough they are,

That Power, that Knowledge, and that Will,—add then

Immensity, Eternity: these jar

Nowise with our permitted thought and speech.

Why human attributes?"

A myth may teach:

Only, who better would expound it thus

Must be Euripides, not Æschylus.

Boundingly up through Night's wall dense and dark,

Embattled crags and clouds, outbroke the Sun

Above the conscious earth, and one by one

Her heights and depths absorbed to the last spark

His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge

Of mountain-granite which, transformed to gold,

Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's dusk fold

On fold of vapor-swathing, like a bridge

Shattered beneath some giant's stamp. Night wist

Her work done and betook herself in mist

To marsh and hollow, there to bide her time

Blindly in acquiescence. Everywhere

Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime,

Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there

No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,

No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew

Glad through the inrush—glad nor more nor less

Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,

Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,

The universal world of creatures bred

By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise—

All creatures but one only: gaze for gaze,

Joyless and thankless, who—all scowling can—

Protests against the innumerous praises? Man,

Sullen and silent.

Stand thou forth then, state

Thy wrong, thou sole aggrieved—disconsolate—

While every beast, bird, reptile, insect, gay

And glad acknowledges the bounteous day!

Man speaks now: "What avails Sun's earth-felt thrill

To me? Sun penetrates the ore, the plant—

They feel and grow: perchance with subtler skill

He interfuses fly, worm, brute, until

Each favored object pays life's ministrant

By pressing, in obedience to his will,

Up to completion of the task prescribed,

So stands and stays a type. Myself imbibed

Such influence also, stood and stand complete—

The perfect Man,—head, body, hands and feet,

True to the pattern: but does that suffice?

How of my superadded mind which needs

—Not to be, simply, but to do, and pleads

For—more than knowledge that by some device

Sun quickens matter: mind is nobly fain

To realize the marvel, make—for sense

As mind—the unseen visible, condense

—Myself—Sun's all-pervading influence

So as to serve the needs of mind, explain

What now perplexes. Let the oak increase

His corrugated strength on strength, the palm

Lift joint by joint her fan-fruit, ball and balm,—

Let the coiled serpent bask in bloated peace,—

The eagle, like some skyey derelict,

Drift in the blue, suspended, glorying,—

The lion lord it by the desert-spring,—

What know or care they of the power which pricked

Nothingness to perfection? I, instead,

When all-developed still am found a thing

All-incomplete: for what though flesh had force

Transcending theirs—hands able to unring

The tightened snake's coil, eyes that could out-course

The eagle's soaring, voice whereat the king

Of carnage couched discrowned? Mind seeks to see,

Touch, understand, by mind inside of me,

The outside mind—whose quickening I attain

To recognize—I only. All in vain

Would mind address itself to render plain

The nature of the essence. Drag what lurks

Behind the operation—that which works

Latently everywhere by outward proof—

Drag that mind forth to face mine? No! aloof

I solely crave that one of all the beams

Which do Sun's work in darkness, at my will

Should operate—myself for once have skill

To realize the energy which streams

Flooding the universe. Above, around,

Beneath—why mocks that mind my own thus found

Simply of service, when the world grows dark,

To half-surmise—were Sun's use understood,

I might demonstrate him supplying food,

Warmth, life, no less the while? To grant one spark

Myself may deal with—make it thaw my blood

And prompt my steps, were truer to the mark

Of mind's requirement than a half-surmise

That somehow secretly is operant,

A power all matter feels, mind only tries

To comprehend! Once more—no idle vaunt

'Man comprehends the Sun's self!' Mysteries

At source why probe into? Enough: display,

Make demonstrable, how, by night as day,

Earth's centre and sky's outspan, all 's informed

Equally by Sun's efflux!—source from whence

If just one spark I drew, full evidence

Were mine of fire ineffably enthroned—

Sun's self made palpable to Man!"

Thus moaned

Man till Prometheus helped him,—as we learn,—

Offered an artifice whereby he drew

Sun's rays into a focus,—plain and true,

The very Sun in little: made fire burn

And henceforth do Man service—glass-conglobed

Though to a pin-point circle—all the same

Comprising the Sun's self, but Sun disrobed

Of that else-unconceived essential flame

Borne by no naked sight. Shall mind's eye strive

Achingly to companion as it may

The supersubtle effluence, and contrive

To follow beam and beam upon their way

Hand-breadth by hand-breadth, till sense faint—confessed

Frustrate, eluded by unknown unguessed

Infinitude of action? Idle quest!

Rather ask aid from optics. Sense, descry

The spectrum—mind, infer immensity!

Little? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed—

Which, in the large, who sees to bless? Not I

More than yourself: so, good my friend, keep still

Trustful with—me? with thee, sage Mandeville!