Proverbial Philosophy / The First and Second Series

by Unknown

OF LIFE.

A child was playing in a garden, a merry little child,

Bounding with triumphant health, and full of happy fancies;

His kite was floating in the sunshine,—but he tied the string to a twig

And ran among the roses to catch a new-born butterfly;

His horn-book lay upon a bank, but the pretty truant hid it,

Buried up in gathered grass, and moss, and sweet wild-thyme;

He launched a paper boat upon the fountain, then wayward turned aside,

To twine some fragrant jessamines about the dripping marble:

So, in various pastime shadowing the schemes of manhood,

That curly-headed boy consumed the golden hours:

And I blessed his glowing face, envying the merry little child,

As he shouted with the ecstasy of being, clapping his hands for joyfulness:

For I said, Surely, O Life, thy name is happiness and hope,

Thy days are bright, thy flowers are sweet, and pleasure the condition of thy gift.

A youth was walking in the moonlight, walking not alone,

For a fair and gentle maid leant on his trembling arm:

Their whispering was still of beauty, and the light of love was in their eyes,

Their twin young hearts had not a thought unvowed to love and beauty;

The stars and the sleeping world, and the guardian eye of God,

The murmur of the distant waterfall, and nightingales warbling in the thicket,

Sweet speech of years to come, and promises of fondest hope,

And more, a present gladness in each other's trust,

All these fed their souls with the hidden manna of affection,

While their faces shone beatified in the radiance of reflected Eden:

I gazed on that fond youth, and coveted his heart,

Attuned to holiest symphonies, with music in its strings:

For I said, Surely, O Life, thy name is love and beauty,

Thy joys are full, thy looks most fair, thy feelings pure and sensitive.

A man sat beside his merchandize, a careworn altered man,

His waking hope, his nightly fear, were money, and its losses:

Rarely was the laugh upon his cheek, except in bitter scorn

For his foolishness of heart, and the lie of its romance, counting Love a treasure.

His talk is of stern Reality, chilling unimaginative facts,

The dull material accidents of this sensual body;

Lucreless honour were contemptible, impoverished affection but a pauper's riches,

Duty, struggling unrewarded, the bargain of a cheated fool:

The market value of a fancy must be measured by the gain it bringeth,

No man is fed or clothed by fame, or love, or duty:—

So toiled he day by day, that cold and joyless man,

I gazed upon his haggard face, and sorrowed for the change:

For I said, Surely, O Life, thy name is care and weariness,

Thy soil is parched, thy winds are fierce, and the suns above thee hardening.

A withered elder lay upon his bed, a desolate man and feeble:

His thoughts were of the past, the early past, the bygone days of youth:

Bitterly repented he the years stolen by the god of this world:

Remembering the maiden of his love, and the heart-stricken wife of his selfishness.

For the sunshiny morning of life came again to him a vivid truth,

But the years of toil as a long dim dream, a cloudy blighted noon:

He saw the nutting schoolboy, but forgat the speculative merchant;

The callous calculating husband was shamed by the generous lover:

He knew that the weeds of worldliness, and the smoky breath of Mammon

Had choked and killed those tender shoots, his yearnings after honour and affection;

So was he sick at heart, and my pity strove to cheer him,

But a deep and dismal gulf lay between comfort and his soul.

Then I said, Surely, O Life, thy name is vanity and sorrow,

Thy storms at noon are many, and thine eventide is clouded by remorse.

Now, when I thought upon these things, my heart was grieved within me:

I wept, with bitterness of speech, and these were the words of my complaining:

Wherefore is the bud so beautiful, but flower and fruit so blighted?

Hard is the lot of man; to be lured by the meteor of romance,

Only to be snared, and to sink, in the turbid mudpool of reality."

Suddenly, a light,—and a rushing presence,—and a consciousness of Something near me,—

I trembled, and listened, and prayed: then I knew the Angel of Life:

Vague, and dimly visible, mine eye could not behold Him,

As, calmly unimpassioned, He looked upon an erring creature;

Unseen, my spirit apprehended Him; though He spake not, yet I heard:

For a sympathetic communing with Him flashed upon my mind electric.

Pensioner of God, be grateful; the gift of Life is good:

The life of heart, and life of soul, mingled with life for the body.

Gladness and beauty are its just inheritance,—the beauty thou hast counted for romance:

And guardian spirits weep that selfishness and sorrow should destroy it.

Thou hast seen the natural blessing marred into a curse by man;

Come then, in favour will I show thee the proper excellence of life.

Keep thou purity, and watch against suspicion,—love shall never perish;

Guard thine innocency spotless, and the buoyancy of childhood shall remain.

Sweet ideals feed the soul, thoughts of loveliness delight it,

The chivalrous affection of uncalculating youth lacketh not honourable wisdom.

Charge not folly on invisibles, that render thee happier and purer,

The fair frail visions of Romance have a use beyond the maxims of the Real.

Behold a patriarch of years, who leaneth on the staff of religion;

His heart is fresh, quick to feel, a bursting fount of generosity:

He, playful in his wisdom, is gladdened in his children's gladness,

He, pure in his experience, loveth in his son's first love:

Lofty aspirations, deep affections, holy hopes are his delight;

His abhorrence is to strip from Life its charitable garment of Idea.

The cold and callous sneerer, who heedeth of the merely practical,

And mocketh at good uses in imaginary things, that man is his scorn:

The hard unsympathizing modern, filled with facts and figures,

Cautious, and coarse, and materialized in mind, that man is his pity.

Passionate thirst for gain never hath burnt within his bosom,

The leaden chains of that dull lust have not bound him prisoner:

The shrewd world laughed at him for honesty, the vain world mouthed at him for honour,

The false world hated him for truth, the cold world despised him for affection:

Still, he kept his treasure, the warm and noble heart,

And in that happy wise old man survive the child and lover.

For human Life is as Chian wine, flavoured unto him who drinketh it,

Delicate fragrance comforting the soul, as needful substance for the body:

Therefore, see thou art pure and guileless; so shall thy Realities of Life

Be sweetened, and tempered, and gladdened by the wholesome spirit of Romance.

Dost thou live, man, dost thou live,—or only breathe and labour?

Art thou free, or enslaved to a routine, the daily machinery of habit?

For, one man is quickened into life, where thousands exist as in a torpor,

Feeding, toiling, sleeping, an insensate weary round:

The plough, or the ledger, or the trade, with animal cares and indolence,

Make the mass of vital years a heavy lump unleavened.

Drowsily lie down in thy dulness, fettered with the irons of circumstance,

Thou wilt not wake to think and feel a minute in a month.

The epitome of common life is seen in the common epitaph,

Born on such a day, and dead on such another, with an interval of threescore years.

For time hath been wasted on the senses, to the hourly diminishing of spirit:

Lean is the soul and pineth, in the midst of abundance for the body:

He forgat the worlds to which he tended, and a creature's true nobility,

Nor wished that hope and wholesome fear should stir him from his hardened satisfaction.

And this is death in life; to be sunk beneath the waters of the Actual,

Without one feebly-struggling sense of an airier spiritual realm:

Affection, fancy, feeling—dead; imagination, conscience, faith,

All wilfully expunged, till they leave the man mere carcase.

See thou livest, whiles thou art: for heart must live, and soul,

But care and sloth and sin and self, combine to kill that life.

A man will grow to an automaton, an appendage to the counter or the desk,

If mind and spirit be not roused, to raise the plodding groveller:

Then praise God for sabbaths, for books, and dreams, and pains,

For the recreative face of nature, and the kindling charities of home;

And remember, thou that labourest,—thy leisure is not loss,

If it help to expose and undermine that solid falsehood, the Material.

Life is a strange avenue of various trees and flowers;

Lightsome at commencement, but darkening to its end, in a distant massy portal.

It beginneth as a little path, edged with the violet and primrose,

A little path of lawny grass, and soft to tiny feet:

Soon, spring thistles in the way, those early griefs of school,

And fruit-trees ranged on either hand show holiday delights:

Anon, the rose and the mimosa hint at sensitive affection,

And vipers hide among the grass, and briars are woven in the hedges:

Shortly, staked along in order, stand the tender saplings,

While hollow hemlock and tall ferns fill the frequent interval:

So advancing, quaintly mixed, majestic line the way

Sturdy oaks, and vigorous elms, the beech and forest-pine:

And here the road is rough with rocks, wide, and scant of herbage,

The sun is hot in heaven, and the ground is cleft and parched:

And many-times a hollow trunk, decayed, or lightning-scathed,

Or in its deadly solitude, the melancholy upas:

But soon, with closer ranks, are set the sentinel trees,

And darker shadows hover amongst Autumn's mellow tints;

Ever and anon, a holly,—junipers, and cypresses, and yews;

The soil is damp; the air is chill; night cometh on apace:

Speed to the portal, traveller,—lo, there is a moon,

With smiling light to guide thee safely through the dreadful shade:

Hark,—that hollow knock,—behold, the warder openeth,

The gate is gaping, and for thee;—those are the jaws of Death!

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