13.06.2008, 21:33
Watchwords and Maxims
I
"Live dangerously." No braver mandate yet,
Nietzsche, nor charged with finer lightning ran
Around the world. And true it is the man
Who hath no menace in hin, nor hath met
A threatening Universe with counter-threat
Is caitiff still. In those who lead the van
The Headlong is the guide to each new plan,
While lances leap, spears break, the ground is wet.
One prayer I prayed: "Lord, if Thou hast discerned
Within me ought of manliness, enroll
Thy servant with the fighters, who have earned
Their manhood's charter where the thunders roll
Over the field, that so I may have learned
To taste this Element, and know my soul."
II
There comes to me a memorable thought
Borne an that voice, which like some wandering gleam
Brings freshness into Hegel's well-worn theme
From Naples lately, Croce, he who taught
That Art's true nature is not to be sought
In what is fitted only to redeem
By striet initiation souls who dream
Of beauty in some crafty pattern wrought,
But in the apt Expression, wheresoe'er
Expression apt is found, the Inward still'
Externalizing till the soul declare
The thing within it, and divinely fill
With sound or sign the habitable air—
A language universal as man's will.
III
Thus language is the type wherein revealed
Art's universal function we behold,
In sensuous forms appropriate to unfold
Whate'er of meaning Individuals yield:
A doctrine this which doth enlarge the field
To every man who in himself doth hold
But speech enough a simple thought to mould
In words well wedded to the sense concealed.
—Doubtless a truth, though strained beyond the Norm,
If still the theme, with varying purport fraught,
Loses itself entirely in the Form,
And ugliness and beauty count for naught
And yet a truth, although a truth in part,
All art expression, not all expression art.
IV
The Import counts. All great art greatly deals
With themes not insignificant. The less
Gives lesser art, howe'er the form express
The Sense of that the artist thinks or feels.
And wonderful it is how life reveals
The great theme near at hand, did we but press
Our lives less fiercely, and our souls possess,
When stirred, until the fitting word congeals.
Art should not fail among us. All have eyes
Which bring the star-sown heavens nightly home,
And there are ever winds about the world.
And no man but hath felt the mysteries
Of birth and wedlock and death's solemn gloam,
Or seen the petals of a rose uncurled.
V
Of Tragedy the essence and the goal
Is Vindication. Fear and pity close
The tale with mourning, but the issue shows
The moral order master of man's soul.
And as its slow and solemn waters roll
Thunderingly through the scenes, a sense there grows
Of some high Presence working in these throes,
Whose Being is the topic and the whole.
Thus not these personal griefs alone comprise
The theme of Tragedy, that theme more vast
Than its own content, deeper than the sighs
Of the doomed Titan hounded home at last—
The Universe in action, and the cries
Of Cosmic Vengeance closing with the Past.
VI
"Gehorsam." It is seldom that one hears
The German tongue commended. Yet I find
No spell more swift, more potent to unbind
The spirit's, shades in some fine phrase that clears
An entrance to the import of the years,
Where speech, unwinding as thought's coils unwind,
Makes landfall, and companioning man's mind,
Ends in the Innermost, whereto he steers.
And many a haunting solitary sound
In that strange tongue, with doubling content fraught,
Booms at the ear of conscience, whose profound
Responses in that energy are caught,
And Teuton loyalty, that holds its ground,
Sweeps Europe still, and sets a world at naught.
VII
Two other words contrasting well distil
In two clear drops of sound significant,
And flavoured to the thought, the crowning want
That mars our enterprise—the English will,
Steadfast of purpose, but unsteady still
In the particular. Strange humours haunt
The earnestness of battle, and we flaunt
The eccentric in us even as we kill.
A nobly erring pride is here, disdain
Of death — and duty, when that duty chimes
Not with our liking; and our stubbornness
Wants sternness in it to perfect the grain.
Of late to tragic heights the contrast climbs,
Which "Ernst" and "Eigensinnigkeit“ express.
VIII
Compel them to be free! A true word there
Thou minted'st, Rousseau - half the human race
Still unaspiring to that crowning grace,
Still disinclined the easy yoke to wear.
Oh, that at length our people would but dare
To look their cancer fiercely in the face,
Consenting on the foul and rotting place
The short sharp anguish of the knife to bear.
For there are powers upon us that still sap
Our liberty and drain our manhood dry,
Which if we clear not speedily, mayhap
Our twilight follows and the end is nigh;
Or else there rise a Strong One who will clap
The Teuton iron on us, and we die.
IX
As when along a level land we pace,
The scene, from where our forward-moving feet
Touch ground, to where the earth and heaven greet,
Seems to revolve in some vast wheel's embrace,
Whose spoke-wise turning slow the eye can trace
From near-by hedges, wayside trees, that fleet
With rick and steading by, till all lines meet
And motion dwindles in far distant space —
There haply some majestic mountain mass
By contrast travels with us as we go,
And doth across the spirit, as we pass,
The feeling of its omnipresence throw –
So o'er man's fleeting and particular fate
For ever omnipresent broods the State.
X
Unto man's spirit thou art closely bound
By natural drift and consanguinity,
But more by long companionship, the tie
That holds you twain together tightly wound
First in his infancy, where thou art found
Like some great watchdog that doth panting lie
Stretched by his infant master, his dull eye
Wakeful, his sharp ear cocked at every sound.
Nay, for the Bond is closer, 'twas thy face
Bent over him at birth; thy kindly pains
Steadied his childish feet. Nor can we trace
What in his blood derives not from thy veins
By long transfusion unprecipitate,
Alive, organically intimate.
XI
Suppose a race (the vision first I saw
Among the dark stern reasonings of Kant)
Resolved its past for ever to recant,
And from its island borders to withdraw:
No man shall move — I heard that doom with awe —
Until the wretched, last, lorn misereant
By shameful death full reparation grant
To the offended majesty of Law.
So as man's coming race prepares to leave
The Island of its Present, where to-day
Europe in crime lies sweltering, and to cleave
A fresh path through the portals of the Day,
At History's bar the nations duly lined
Await their judgment. Some remain behind.
XII
One thing upon the tablet of the mind
By fire should be imprinted. Nations stand
Only as to the touch of that great Hand
Their substance answers, which when it outlined
A cosmos on the waters, and designed
Earth's granite frame, and sundered sea and land,
Laid in man's heart a Law, more deeply planned
Than that of nations, compassing his kind.
And in that Law eternal stands revealed
How by self-abnegation man at length
Comes to himself, how to the meek is sealed
The habitable earth, how human strength
Is perfected in weakness, into dross
Earth's glory sinks confronted with Christ's Cross.
XIII
Protector of the spirit, who by night
With hands bent round it lanthorn-like dost frame
Against the wind a shelter for its flame,
Thyself a thing of spirit and a light,
The Commonwealth! Yet in thy sovereign right
Thou may'st not unrebuked, unchallenged claim
To be the First and Last, a holier Name
Than thine intoning from a higher height.
For blood is on thy hand and on thy head,
And war's black cloud upon thy Jeep dark brow;
And in thy shadow Socrates lies dead.
And though awhile it needs must be that thou
For man's unrighteousness shalt legislate,
Man's righteousness will yet become thy Fate.
I
"Live dangerously." No braver mandate yet,
Nietzsche, nor charged with finer lightning ran
Around the world. And true it is the man
Who hath no menace in hin, nor hath met
A threatening Universe with counter-threat
Is caitiff still. In those who lead the van
The Headlong is the guide to each new plan,
While lances leap, spears break, the ground is wet.
One prayer I prayed: "Lord, if Thou hast discerned
Within me ought of manliness, enroll
Thy servant with the fighters, who have earned
Their manhood's charter where the thunders roll
Over the field, that so I may have learned
To taste this Element, and know my soul."
II
There comes to me a memorable thought
Borne an that voice, which like some wandering gleam
Brings freshness into Hegel's well-worn theme
From Naples lately, Croce, he who taught
That Art's true nature is not to be sought
In what is fitted only to redeem
By striet initiation souls who dream
Of beauty in some crafty pattern wrought,
But in the apt Expression, wheresoe'er
Expression apt is found, the Inward still'
Externalizing till the soul declare
The thing within it, and divinely fill
With sound or sign the habitable air—
A language universal as man's will.
III
Thus language is the type wherein revealed
Art's universal function we behold,
In sensuous forms appropriate to unfold
Whate'er of meaning Individuals yield:
A doctrine this which doth enlarge the field
To every man who in himself doth hold
But speech enough a simple thought to mould
In words well wedded to the sense concealed.
—Doubtless a truth, though strained beyond the Norm,
If still the theme, with varying purport fraught,
Loses itself entirely in the Form,
And ugliness and beauty count for naught
And yet a truth, although a truth in part,
All art expression, not all expression art.
IV
The Import counts. All great art greatly deals
With themes not insignificant. The less
Gives lesser art, howe'er the form express
The Sense of that the artist thinks or feels.
And wonderful it is how life reveals
The great theme near at hand, did we but press
Our lives less fiercely, and our souls possess,
When stirred, until the fitting word congeals.
Art should not fail among us. All have eyes
Which bring the star-sown heavens nightly home,
And there are ever winds about the world.
And no man but hath felt the mysteries
Of birth and wedlock and death's solemn gloam,
Or seen the petals of a rose uncurled.
V
Of Tragedy the essence and the goal
Is Vindication. Fear and pity close
The tale with mourning, but the issue shows
The moral order master of man's soul.
And as its slow and solemn waters roll
Thunderingly through the scenes, a sense there grows
Of some high Presence working in these throes,
Whose Being is the topic and the whole.
Thus not these personal griefs alone comprise
The theme of Tragedy, that theme more vast
Than its own content, deeper than the sighs
Of the doomed Titan hounded home at last—
The Universe in action, and the cries
Of Cosmic Vengeance closing with the Past.
VI
"Gehorsam." It is seldom that one hears
The German tongue commended. Yet I find
No spell more swift, more potent to unbind
The spirit's, shades in some fine phrase that clears
An entrance to the import of the years,
Where speech, unwinding as thought's coils unwind,
Makes landfall, and companioning man's mind,
Ends in the Innermost, whereto he steers.
And many a haunting solitary sound
In that strange tongue, with doubling content fraught,
Booms at the ear of conscience, whose profound
Responses in that energy are caught,
And Teuton loyalty, that holds its ground,
Sweeps Europe still, and sets a world at naught.
VII
Two other words contrasting well distil
In two clear drops of sound significant,
And flavoured to the thought, the crowning want
That mars our enterprise—the English will,
Steadfast of purpose, but unsteady still
In the particular. Strange humours haunt
The earnestness of battle, and we flaunt
The eccentric in us even as we kill.
A nobly erring pride is here, disdain
Of death — and duty, when that duty chimes
Not with our liking; and our stubbornness
Wants sternness in it to perfect the grain.
Of late to tragic heights the contrast climbs,
Which "Ernst" and "Eigensinnigkeit“ express.
VIII
Compel them to be free! A true word there
Thou minted'st, Rousseau - half the human race
Still unaspiring to that crowning grace,
Still disinclined the easy yoke to wear.
Oh, that at length our people would but dare
To look their cancer fiercely in the face,
Consenting on the foul and rotting place
The short sharp anguish of the knife to bear.
For there are powers upon us that still sap
Our liberty and drain our manhood dry,
Which if we clear not speedily, mayhap
Our twilight follows and the end is nigh;
Or else there rise a Strong One who will clap
The Teuton iron on us, and we die.
IX
As when along a level land we pace,
The scene, from where our forward-moving feet
Touch ground, to where the earth and heaven greet,
Seems to revolve in some vast wheel's embrace,
Whose spoke-wise turning slow the eye can trace
From near-by hedges, wayside trees, that fleet
With rick and steading by, till all lines meet
And motion dwindles in far distant space —
There haply some majestic mountain mass
By contrast travels with us as we go,
And doth across the spirit, as we pass,
The feeling of its omnipresence throw –
So o'er man's fleeting and particular fate
For ever omnipresent broods the State.
X
Unto man's spirit thou art closely bound
By natural drift and consanguinity,
But more by long companionship, the tie
That holds you twain together tightly wound
First in his infancy, where thou art found
Like some great watchdog that doth panting lie
Stretched by his infant master, his dull eye
Wakeful, his sharp ear cocked at every sound.
Nay, for the Bond is closer, 'twas thy face
Bent over him at birth; thy kindly pains
Steadied his childish feet. Nor can we trace
What in his blood derives not from thy veins
By long transfusion unprecipitate,
Alive, organically intimate.
XI
Suppose a race (the vision first I saw
Among the dark stern reasonings of Kant)
Resolved its past for ever to recant,
And from its island borders to withdraw:
No man shall move — I heard that doom with awe —
Until the wretched, last, lorn misereant
By shameful death full reparation grant
To the offended majesty of Law.
So as man's coming race prepares to leave
The Island of its Present, where to-day
Europe in crime lies sweltering, and to cleave
A fresh path through the portals of the Day,
At History's bar the nations duly lined
Await their judgment. Some remain behind.
XII
One thing upon the tablet of the mind
By fire should be imprinted. Nations stand
Only as to the touch of that great Hand
Their substance answers, which when it outlined
A cosmos on the waters, and designed
Earth's granite frame, and sundered sea and land,
Laid in man's heart a Law, more deeply planned
Than that of nations, compassing his kind.
And in that Law eternal stands revealed
How by self-abnegation man at length
Comes to himself, how to the meek is sealed
The habitable earth, how human strength
Is perfected in weakness, into dross
Earth's glory sinks confronted with Christ's Cross.
XIII
Protector of the spirit, who by night
With hands bent round it lanthorn-like dost frame
Against the wind a shelter for its flame,
Thyself a thing of spirit and a light,
The Commonwealth! Yet in thy sovereign right
Thou may'st not unrebuked, unchallenged claim
To be the First and Last, a holier Name
Than thine intoning from a higher height.
For blood is on thy hand and on thy head,
And war's black cloud upon thy Jeep dark brow;
And in thy shadow Socrates lies dead.
And though awhile it needs must be that thou
For man's unrighteousness shalt legislate,
Man's righteousness will yet become thy Fate.