The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01

by William Cowper Brann

Though thorny the pathway 'neath our feet,
Though nothing in life be left that's sweet;
Though friends prove faithless in trial's hours
And love a curst and poisonous flower;
Though Belial stalk in priestly gown
And virtue's reward is fortune's frown;
Though true hearts bleed and the coward slave
Tramples in dust the fallen brave;
Think not the unworthy acts of men
Will 'scape the recording angel's pen;
The sword of God, in ruin and wraith,
Will surely fall! Oh, cling to thy faith!

Though worldly wise say it cannot be
That there's a heaven for thee and me;
Though logic's banner they have unfurled
And by its cold light now view the world,
Calling High God to the courts of man
To be judged by human reason's span,
And failing to grasp the power divine
Will blindly assert: "It doth not shine";
Thy mother was wiser far than they
In twilight hour when she knelt to pray,
A radiant light on her sweet face
From Eternal God's high dwelling-place.

Lo here! lo here th' false prophets cry,
Pointing out new paths unto the sky,
Far pleasanter than our fathers trod
With bleeding feet in the fear of God;
While Atheists laugh our faith to scorn,
And say that no man of woman born
Ever pierced the evil or caught a gleam
Of the mystic land beyond life's stream;
That our fondest hopes, our prayers and sighs
For life eternal beyond the skies,
Are superstitions conceived in fear
And cherished by priest and lying seer.

The martyr's blood, the penitent's tears,
The inspired word of Judea's seers,
The name of God on the sacred mount,
The river that poured from rocky fount
In the burning sands beneath the rod,
Obedient to the will of God;
The prayers and sighs in Gethsemane,
The red tide gushing on Calvary,
The radiant smile when life is done
Of saint that tells that heaven is won—
Shall we say 'tis all a priestly lie
And like soulless beasts lie down to die?

Ah, better 'twould be to ride in mail
A weary quest for the Holy Grail;
Wield Saxon steel 'gainst Saracen sword
Around the sepulcher of our Lord;
See Cross and Crescent and mailed hand
All plashed with blood in that sacred land,
Than doubt that heaven e'er shed its light
Deep into this world's long troublous night;
That God hears our prayers, knows all our pains,
That earthly sorrows are heavenly gains,
That the grave's the gate to lasting life,
Unsullied by sorrow, pain and strife.

Oh, better worship at pagan shrine;
Or, prophet of Islam, e'en at thine;
To seek Nirvana in Buddhist lore,
Or pray to Isis on Afric's shore;
Better the dark, mysterious rites
Of Ceres on Elusian heights;
Better the Gueber's fierce God of fire—
Oh, better to wake the trembling lyre
To any Savior than to be hurled
Godless and hopeless out of the world;
To madly plunge in death's dark river,
Lost to life and heaven forever.
In dark seas where the whirlpool rages
Stands the eternal Rock of Ages;
Amid dangers dire, 'mid wreck and wraith
God plants the banner of Christian faith.
Unworthy the sailor whose heart doth fail
When the God of storms rides on the gale;
Coward the soldier who shuns the grave,
And thrice accursed the trembling slave
Who in life's battles, darkest hour
Renounces God and denies His power.
Then Tiens ta Foi through the bitter strife!
O cling to the cross—through death to life!

* * * THOMAS CARLYLE.

Of a recent edition of Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship," it is said that 100,000 copies are already sold. The work has been on the market many years, and this continued popularity is indeed encouraging. It argues that the taste for the legitimate, the sane in literature, has not yet been drowned in the septic sea of fin de siecle slop—that, despite the enervating influence of an all- pervasive sensationalism, or sybaritism, there be still minds capable of relishing the rugged, strong enough to digest the mental pabulum furnished by a really masculine writer. Carlyle ranges like an archangel through the universe of intellect, overturning mountains to see how they are made— now cleaving the empyrean with strong and steady wing, now shearing clear down to the profoundest depths of Ymir's Well at the foundations of the world. That his followers continue to increase argues well for the age, for he is a man whom weaklings should avoid if they would not be sawed in twain by mountain chains, forever lost in pathless limboes or drowned in the unmeasured deep. Even the strongest must perforce part company with him at times, else follow with the eye of faith, for his path oft leads up into that far region where mortals can scarce breathe, over Walpurgis' peaks, through bottomless chasms and along the filmy edge of clouds.

The admirers of Carlyle—may their tribe increase!—are indignant because one Edmund Gosse, in his introduction to the late edition of "Heroes and Hero Worship," alludes to the lion of modern literature as "an undignified human being, growling like an ill-bred collie dog." They take Mr. Gosse too seriously—dignify him with their displeasure. James Anthony Froude—a literary gun of much heavier caliber than Mr. Gosse appears to us from this passing glimpse—once wrote, if I remember aright, in a similar vein of the grizzled sage; but the unkind critique has been forgotten, and its author is fast following it into oblivion, while the shade of Carlyle looms ever larger, towering already above the Titans of his time, reaching even to the shoulder of Shakespeare! Gosse? Who is this presumptuous fellow who would take Carlyle in tutelage, foist himself upon the attention of the public by making a peep-show of the great essayist's faults? There is, or was, a pugilist named Gesse, or Goss; but as he did not deal foul blows to the dead, this must be a different breed of dogs. Sometime since there lived a little Englishman named William Edmund, or Edmund William Gosse, or Goss; but I had hitherto supposed that, becoming disgusted with himself, he crawled off and died. As I remember him, he was a kind of half-baked poetaster or he-bulbul, a Johannes Factotum in the province of dilettanteism, a universal Smart Alec who knew less about more things than any other animal in England. He was one of those persistently pestiferous insects tersely called by Carlyle "critic flies"—a descendant of that placed by aesop in St. Paul's cupola. They presume to judge all things, great and small, by their "half-inch vision"—take the measure of cathedrals and interpret to the world the meaning of brainy men! Unfortunately, the "critic fly" is confined to no one nation—is what might be called, in vigorous Texanese, an all-pervading dam-nuisance. Mounted upon a mole, pimple or other cutaneous imperfection of an intellectual colossus, it complacently smooths its wings and explains, with a patronizing air, that the big 'un isn't half bad; but sagely adds that had it been consulted, his too visible imperfections would have been eradicated. We dislike to see an insect leave its periods and semi-colons on the immortal marble; but it were idle to grow angry with a Gosse. This must be the English literary exquisite whom Americans have hitherto incidentally heard bellowing before the tent of this or the other giant and taking tickets—I mean the prig, not the pug. He is comparatively youthful yet, and can, on occasion, digest a good dinner. Perchance when he is well past four-score, worn with long years of labor compared with which the slavery of the bagne were a blessing, and half-dead with dyspepsia, he too, will "growl like a collie dog"; but never a copper will the great world care whether he grumbles or grins. Should he even get hydrophobia, that fact would scarce become historic. The public marks and magnifies a great man's foibles, but forgets both the little fellow and his faults. Jeanjean may hide from the battle in a hollow log, and none hear of it; but let a Demosthenes lose his shield and the world cackles over it for two-and-twenty centuries. To digress for a moment, I believe the story of Demosthenes' cowardice as damnable a lie as that relating to Col. Ingersoll's surrender. Even in his day human vermin sought to wreck with falsehood those they feared. The world—unwisely I think—interests itself in the personality of a genius, and somewhat impudently invades his privacy. A young man may muster up sufficient moral courage to lie to his callers, and thus preserve the proprieties; but an aged valetudinarian who wants to get into a quiet nook and nurse himself, may show scant courtesy—even brush the "critic fly" of the genus Gosse out of doors with a hickory broom.

Carlyle belonged to "the irritable race of poets," albeit he seldom imitated Pope's bad example and tortured his rugged ideas into oleaginous rhyme. There is a strange wild melody in all his work—what he would call "harmony in discord" suggesting that super-nervous temperament which is inseparable from the highest genius, and which degenerates so easily into acute neurosis—that "madness" to which wit is popularly supposed to be so "near allied." Such natures are aeolian harps acted upon, not by "the viewless air," but by a subtler, more impalpable power, which comes none know whence, and goes none know whither—one moment yielding soft melodies as of an angel's lute borne across sapphire seas, the next wailing like some lost soul or shrieking like Eumenides. The "self-poised," the "well-balanced" man, of whom you can safely predict what he will do under given conditions; the man who never bitterly disappoints you and makes you weep for very pity of his weakness, will never appall you by exhibitions of his strength. He may possess constructive talent, but never that creative power which we call genius because it suggests the genii. "No man is a hero to his valet," says the adage. Carlyle assumes this to be the fault of the latter—due to sawdust or other cheap filling in the head of the menial. Yet, may not the valet be wiser in this matter than the world? The hero, the greatest genius, is not always aflame with celestial fire, impelled by that mysterious power which comes from "beyond the clouds"— may be, for most part, the commonest kind of clay, a creature in nowise to be worshiped. The eagle, which soars so proudly at the sun, will return to its eyrie with drooping wing; the condor, whose shadow falls from afar on Chimborazo's alabaster brow, cannot live always in the empyrean, a thing ethereal, and back to earth is no better than a carrion crow. To genius more than to aught else, perhaps, distance lends enchantment. While we see only the bold outline of the Titan, we are content to worship— nay, insist upon it; but having scrutinized him inch by inch with a microscope, we realize that familiarity breeds contempt. Well does Christ say that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country—which is the origin of the hero and valet adage. I cannot understand why the world insists upon seeing le Grand Monarque in his night- cap and Carlyle in his chimney corner. With the harem of Byron and the drunken orgies of Burns, the poaching of Shakespeare and the vanity of Voltaire it has nothing to do—should content itself with what they have freely given it, the intellectual heritage they have left to humanity, and not pry into those frailties which they fain would hide. If Goldsmith "wrote like an angel and talked like a fool," it was because when he wielded the pen there was only a wise man present, and all are affected more or less by the company they keep. We care not whether the gold in our coffers was mined by saint or sinner, so that it be standard coin; then what boots it what manner of men stole from heaven that Promethean fire which surges in the poet's song, leaps in lightning-flash from the orator's lips, or becomes "dark with excess of bright" in Carlyle's Natural-Supernaturalism? Judge ye the work, and let the workman "growl like a collie dog" if it ease his dyspepsia!