THE SCHOLAR (in deep spiritual reflection).
Do I see,
In its archetypal form, Zymology,
That most potential art?
THE SALT.
Yes, sir, the brew
Would grow a jumper on your chest. We'd chew
The dried sap of the spruce, and then we'd take
Dried tea-leaves with the chips of bark and make
A powerful, fine smoke. You never saw,
I suppose, a man rig up a lobster claw
With quid, to get a drag when he had lost
His pipe? I needn't ask. That never crossed
Your mind. I'd like to see a good round score
Like you, a-headin' all for Labrador,
Stowed in a fore-and-after with the sea,
A-ragin' through the scuppers. It would be
A sight for Satan, every time the ship,
With not too much of ballast, took a dip
To come right up again with soakin' jibs—
To watch your queasy stomachs and your ribs
In need of oilin'.
THE SCHOLAR.
Trivial your words,
Your passions bestial. The irrational herds
Roaming the plains would scorn such thoughts as these;
The ox, the zebra and the ass appease
Their several hungers, earth-born as they are—
Without afflatus, without mind—with far
More worthy satisfactions. What care you
(recurrence of symptoms)
For the primrose by the river's brink, the blue
Within the violet's eye, in fine, for flowers?
Eating and drinking you lay waste your powers,
The world being too much with you. Have you felt
A presence that disturbs you? Have you knelt
At Nature's shrine, bathed at her crystal fount,
And found her central peace? Say, do you count
By figures or by heart-throbs? Have you never
Listened to brooks that babble on for ever?
Sermons there are in stones; alas, they stir
You not.
THE SALT.
Shame on you, you idolater,
For worshippin' stocks and stones. I see you took
All your religion from a bot'ny book,
And a dry, small lump it is, by every sign
That I can see, you heathen. I gets mine
From another kind of book. You don't need learnin'
Neither, the kind that kills the soul's discernin'
Of spiritual things. That's what our parson said,
And he had learnin', too. It killed him dead
Before he gave it up, like a dry rot
That puts the blight on damson plums—that's what
It is. Give me what makes a critter whole,
And pours the blazin' glory on his soul,
And saves him from the horrors.
THE SCHOLAR (on the verge of a paroxysm).
A most rude
Conception of the spirit's growth—mere food
For sucklings, for the race at those low stages
Of history that form the world's Dark Ages.
From your contentions, then, must I assume
That in your mind's horizon is no room
For formulæ that dominate our times;
For laws that tell how by successive climbs
Our common human nature has become
The paragon magnificent for dumb
And erring brutes? Millions of years have passed
Between the first crude cycle and the last,
In which, despite the bludgeonings of chance
And fate, has man his own deliverance
Wrought out; survived the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. In the eternal rocks
Engraven is the epic.