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Rh winding by devious tracks about the shoulder of the mountain. They came from far away, from Amador or Placer, laden with silver in "old cigar boxes." They discharged their load at Silverado, in the hour of sleep; and before the morning they were gone again with their mysterious drivers to their unknown source. In this way, twenty thousand pounds' worth of silver was smuggled in under cover of night, in these old cigar boxes; mixed with Silverado mineral; carted down to the mill; crushed, amalgamated, and refined, and despatched to the city as the proper product of the mine. Stock-jobbing, if it can cover such expenses, must be a profitable business in San Francisco. I give these two versions as I got them. But I place little reliance on either, my belief in history having been greatly shaken. For it chanced that I had come to dwell in Silverado at a critical hour; great events in its history were about to happen—did happen, as I am led to believe; nay, and it will be seen that I played a part in that revolution myself. And yet from first to last I never had a glimmer of an idea what was going on; and even now, after full reflection, profess myself at sea. That there was some obscure intrigue of the cigarbox order, and that I, in the character of a wooden puppet, set pen to paper in the interest of somebody, so much, and no more, is certain.


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236 Silverado, then under my immediate sway, belonged to one whom I will call a Mr. Ronalds. I only knew him through the extraordinarily distorting medium of local gossip, now as a momentous jobber; now as a dupe to point an adage; and again, and much more probably, as an ordinary Christian gentleman like you or me, who had opened a mine and worked it for awhile with better and worse fortune. So, through a defective window-pane, you may see the passer-by shoot up into a hunch-backed giant, or dwindle into a pot-bellied dwarf. To Ronalds, at least, the mine belonged; but the notice by which he held it would run out upon the 3Oth of June—or rather, as I suppose, it had run out already, and the month of grace would expire upon that day, after which any American citizen might post a notice of his own, and make Silverado his. This, with a sort of quiet slyness, Rufe told me at an early period of our acquaintance. There was no silver, of course; the mine "wasn't worth nothing, Mr. Stevens," but there was a deal of old iron and wood around, and to gain possession of this old wood and iron, and get a right to the water, Rufe proposed, if I had no objections, to "jump the claim."

Of course, I had no objection. But I was filled with wonder. If all he wanted was the wood and

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Retrospect

title: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Retrospect


text:
Page:The Amateur Emigrant-The Silverado Squatters.djvu/257

Rh iron, what, in the name of fortune, was to prevent him taking them?" "His right there was none to dispute." He might lay hands on all to-morrow, as the wild cats had laid hands upon our knives and hatchet. Besides, was this mass of heavy mining plant worth transportation? If it was, why had not the rightful owners carted it away? If it was, would they not preserve their title to these movables, even after they had lost their title to the mine? And if it were not, what the better was Rufe? Nothing would grow at Silverado; there was even no wood to cut; beyond a sense of property, there was nothing to be gained. Lastly, was it at all credible that Ronalds would forget what Rufe remembered? The days of grace were not yet over: any fine morning he might appear, paper in hand, and enter for another year on his inheritance. However, it was none of my business; all seemed legal; Rufe or Ronalds, all was one to me. On the morning of the 27th, Mrs. Hanson appeared with the milk as usual, in her sun-bonnet. The time would be out on Tuesday, she reminded us, and bade me be in readiness to play my part, though I had no idea what it was to be. And suppose Ronalds came? we asked. She received the idea with derision, laughing aloud with all her fine teeth. He could not find the mine to save his life,


text: Lyrics of Life (1909)/The Pilgrim

title: Lyrics of Life (1909)/The Pilgrim


text:
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238 it appeared, without Rufe to guide him. Last year, when he came, they heard him "up and down the road a hollerin' and a raisin' Cain." And at last he had to come to the Hansons in despair, and bid Rufe, "Jump into your pants and shoes, and show me where this old mine is, anyway!" Seeing that Ronalds had laid out so much money in the spot, and that a beaten road led right up to the bottom of the dump, I thought this a remarkable example. The sense of locality must be singularly in abeyance in the case of Ronalds. That same evening, supper comfortably over, Joe Strong busy at work on a drawing of the dump and the opposite hills, we were all out on the platform together, sitting there, under the tented heavens, with the same sense of privacy as if we had been cabined in a parlour, when the sound of brisk footsteps came mounting up the path. We pricked bur ears at this, for the tread seemed lighter and firmer than was usual with our country neighbours. And presently, sure enough, two town gentlemen, with cigars and kid gloves, came debouching past the house. They looked in that place like a blasphemy. "Good-evening," they said. For none of us had stirred; we all sat stiff with wonder. "Good-evening," I returned; and then, to put them at their ease, "A stiff climb," I added.


text: Lyrics of Life (1909)/An American at Lincoln


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Rh "Yes," replied the leader; "but we have to thank you for this path."

I did not like the man's tone. None of us liked it. He did not seem embarrassed by the meeting, but threw up his remarks like favours, and strode magisterially by us towards the shaft and tunnel. Presently we heard his voice raised to his companion. "We drifted every sort of way, but couldn't strike the ledge." Then again: "It pinched out here." And once more: "Every miner that ever worked upon it says there's bound to be a ledge somewhere." These were the snatches of his talk that reached us, and they had a damning significance. We, the lords of Silverado, had come face to face with our superior. It is the worst of all quaint and of all cheap ways of life that they bring us at last to the pinch of some humiliation. I liked well enough to be a squatter when there was none but Hanson by; before Ronalds, I will own, I somewhat quailed. I hastened to do him fealty, said I gathered he was the Squattee, and apologised. He threatened me with ejection, in a manner grimly pleasant—more pleasant to him, I fancy, than to me; and then he passed off into praises of the former state of Silverado. "It was the busiest little mining town you ever saw": a population of between a thousand and fifteen hundred souls, the engine in full blast,


text: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Two Brothers

title: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Two Brothers


text: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Child-Fancies

title: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Child-Fancies


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240 the mill newly erected; nothing going but champagne, and hope the order of the day. Ninety thousand dollars came out; a hundred and forty thousand were put in, making a net loss of fifty thousand. The last days, I gathered, the days of John Stanley, were not so bright; the champagne had ceased to flow, the population was already moving elsewhere, and Silverado had begun to wither in the branch before it was cut at the root. The last shot that was fired knocked over the stove chimney, and made that hole in the roof of our barrack, through which the sun was wont to visit slug-a-beds towards afternoon. A noisy last shot, to inaugurate the days of silence. Throughout this interview, my conscience was a good deal exercised; and I was moved to throw myself on my knees and own the intended treachery. But then I had Hanson to consider. I was in much the same position as Old Rowley, that royal humourist, whom "the rogue had taken into his confidence." And again, here was Ronalds on the spot. He must know the day of the month as well as Hanson and I. If a broad hint were necessary, he had the broadest in the world. For a large board had been nailed by the crown prince on the very front of our house, between the door and window, painted in cinnabar—the pigment of the country—with doggrel rhymes and


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title: Portal:Law/Subclasses


text: Lyrics of Life (1909)/The Young Wife

title: Lyrics of Life (1909)/The Young Wife


text: Lyrics of Life (1909)/John Hay

title: Lyrics of Life (1909)/John Hay


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Rh pictures, and announcing, in terms unnecessarily figurative, that the trick was already played, the claim already jumped, and Master Sam the legitimate successor of Mr. Ronalds. But no, nothing could save that man; quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat. As he came so he went, and left his rights depending.

Late at night, by Silverado reckoning, and after we were all abed, Mrs. Hanson returned to give us the newest of her news. It was like a scene in a ship's steerage: all of us abed in our different tiers, the single candle struggling with the darkness, and this plump, handsome woman, seated on an upturned valise beside the bunks, talking and showing her fine teeth, and laughing till the rafters rang. Any ship, to be sure, with a hundredth part as many holes in it as our barrack, must long ago have gone to her last port. Up to that time I had always imagined Mrs. Hanson's loquacity to be mere incontinence, that she said what was uppermost for the pleasure of speaking, and laughed and laughed again as a kind of musical accompaniment. But I now found there was an art in it. I found it less communicative than silence itself. I wished to know why Ronalds had come; how he had found his way without Rufe; and why, being on the spot, he had not refreshed his title. She talked interminably on,


text: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Däi Nippon

title: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Däi Nippon


text:
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242 but her replies were never answers. She fled under a cloud of words; and when I had made sure that she was purposely eluding me, I dropped the subject in my turn, and let her rattle where she would. She had come to tell us that, instead of waiting for Tuesday, the claim was to be jumped on the morrow. How? If the time were not out, it was impossible. Why? If Ronalds had come and gone, and done nothing, there was the less cause for hurry. But again I could reach no satisfaction. The claim was to be jumped next morning, that was all that she would condescend upon. And yet it was not jumped the next morning, nor yet the next, and a whole week had come and gone before we heard more of this exploit. That day week, however, a day of great heat, Hanson, with a little roll of paper in his hand, and the eternal pipe alight; Breedlove, his large, dull friend, to act, I suppose, as witness; Mrs. Hanson, in her Sunday best; and all the children, from the oldest to the youngest;—arrived in a procession, tailing one behind another up the path. Caliban was absent, but he had been chary of his friendly visits since the row; and with that exception, the whole family was gathered together as for a marriage or a christening. Strong was sitting at work, in the shade of the dwarf madronas near the forge; and they planted themselves about


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Rh him in a circle, one on a stone, another on the waggon rails, a third on a piece of plank. Gradually the children stole away up the cañon to where there was another chute, somewhat smaller than the one across the dump; and down this chute, for the rest of the afternoon, they poured one avalanche of stones after another, waking the echoes of the glen. Meantime we elders sat together on the platform, Hanson and his friend smoking in silence like Indian sachems, Mrs. Hanson rattling on as usual with an adroit volubility, saying nothing, but keeping the party at their ease like a courtly hostess.

Not a word occurred about the business of the day. Once, twice, and thrice I tried to slide the subject in, but was discouraged by the stoic apathy of Rufe, and beaten down before the pouring verbiage of his wife. There is nothing of the Indian brave about me, and I began to grill with impatience. At last, like a highway robber, I cornered Hanson, and bade him stand and deliver his business. Thereupon he gravely rose, as though to hint that this was not a proper place, nor the subject one suitable for squaws, and I, following his example, led him up the plank into our barrack. There he bestowed himself on a box, and unrolled his papers with fastidious deliberation. There were two sheets of note-paper, and an old mining notice,


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244 dated May 3Oth, 1879, part print, part manuscript, and the latter much obliterated by the rains. It was by this identical piece of paper that the mine had been held last year. For thirteen months it had endured the weather and the change of seasons on a cairn behind the shoulder of the cañon; and it was now my business, spreading it before me on the table, and sitting on a valise, to copy its terms with some necessary changes, twice over on the two sheets of note-paper. One was then to be placed on the same cairn—a "mound of rocks" the notice put it; and the other to be lodged for registration. Rufe watched me, silently smoking, till I came to the place for the locator's name at the end of the first copy; and when I proposed that he should sign, I thought I saw a scare in his eye. "I don't think that'll be necessary," he said slowly; "just you write it down." Perhaps this mighty hunter, who was the most active member of the local school board, could not write. There would be nothing strange in that. The constable of Calistoga is, and has been for years, a bed-ridden man, and, if I remember rightly, blind. He had more need of the emoluments than another, it was explained; and it was easy for him to "depytise," with a strong accent on the last. So friendly and so free are popular institutions.


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Rh When I had done my scrivening, Hanson strolled out, and addressed Breedlove, "Will you step up here a bit?" and after they had disappeared a little while into the chaparral and madrona thicket, they came back again, minus a notice, and the deed was done. The claim was jumped; a tract of mountainside, fifteen hundred feet long by six hundred wide, with all the earth's precious bowels, had passed from Ronalds to Hanson, and, in the passage, changed its name from the "Mammoth" to the Calistoga." I had tried to get Rufe to call it after his wife, after himself, and after Garfield, the Republican Presidential candidate of the hour—since then elected, and, alas! dead—but all was in vain. The claim had once been called the Calistoga before, and he seemed to feel safety in returning to that.

And so the history of that mine became once more plunged in darkness, lit only by some monster pyrotechnical displays of gossip. And perhaps the most curious feature of the whole matter is this: that we should have dwelt in this quiet corner of the mountains, with not a dozen neighbours, and yet struggled all the while, like desperate swimmers, in this sea of falsities and contradictions. Wherever a man is, there will be a lie.


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MUST try to convey some notion of our life, of how the days passed and what pleasure we took in them, of what there was to do and how we set about doing it, in our mountain hermitage. The house, after we had repaired the worst of the damages, and filled in some of the doors and windows with white cotton cloth, became a healthy and a pleasant dwelling-place, always airy and dry, and haunted by the outdoor perfumes of the glen. Within, it had the look of habitation, the human look. You had only to go into the third room, which we did not use, and see its stones, its sifting earth, its tumbled litter; and then return to our lodging, with the beds made, the plates on the rack, the pail of bright water behind the door, the stove crackling in a corner, and perhaps the table roughly laid against a meal,—and man's order, the little clean spots that he creates to dwell in, were at once contrasted with the rich passivity of nature. And yet our house was everywhere so wrecked and shattered, the air came and went so freely, the sun


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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society

Epigraph
Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων διῆλθον ἀγέλας. . . τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον, . . ..

I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last, Attempting one more labour, in a trice, Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.

Contents

 * Lines 1-648
 * Lines 649-1162
 * Lines 1163-1617
 * Lines 1618-2155


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Rh found so many portholes, the golden outdoor glow shone in so many open chinks, that we enjoyed, at the same time, some of the comforts of a roof and much of the gaiety and brightness of al fresco life. A single shower of rain, to be sure, and we should have been drowned out like mice. But ours was a Californian summer, and an earthquake was a far likelier accident than a shower of rain.

Trustful in this fine weather, we kept the house for kitchen and bedroom, and used the platform as our summer parlour. The sense of privacy, as I have said already, was complete. We could look over the dump on miles of forest and rough hilltop; our eyes commanded some of Napa Valley, where the train ran, and the little country townships sat so close together along the line of the rail. But here there was no man to intrude. None but the Hansons were our visitors. Even they came but at long intervals, or twice daily, at a stated hour, with milk. So our days, as they were never interrupted, drew out to the greater length; hour melted insensibly into hour; the household duties, though they were many, and some of them laborious, dwindled into mere islets of business in a sea of sunny daytime; and it appears to me, looking back, as though the far greater part of our life at Silverado had been passed, propped upon an elbow, or seated on a


text: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Kindred

title: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Kindred


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248 plank, listening to the silence that there is among the hills. My work, it is true, was over early in the morning. I rose before any one else, lit the stove, put on the water to boil, and strolled forth upon the platform to wait till it was ready. Silverado would then be still in shadow, the sun shining on the mountain higher up. A clean smell of trees, a smell of the earth at morning, hung in the air. Regularly, every day, there was a single bird, not singing, but awkwardly chirruping among the green madronas, and the sound was cheerful, natural, and stirring. It did not hold the attention, nor interrupt the thread of meditation, like a blackbird or a nightingale; it was mere woodland prattle, of which the mind was conscious like a perfume. The freshness of these morning seasons remained with me far on into the day. As soon as the kettle boiled, I made porridge and coffee; and that, beyond the literal drawing of water, and the preparation of kindling, which it would be hyperbolical to call the hewing of wood, ended my domestic duties for the day. Thenceforth my wife laboured single-handed in the palace, and I lay or wandered on the platform at my own sweet will. The little corner near the forge, where we found a refuge under


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United States Code/Title 33/Chapter 27

Title 33 — Navigation and Navigable Waters — Ocean Dumping

title: United States Code/Title 33/Chapter 27


text: Lyrics of Life (1909)/Cruel Love—Anacreontic


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Rh the madronas from the unsparing early sun, is indeed connected in my mind with some nightmare encounters over Euclid, and the Latin Grammar. These were known as Sam's lessons. He was supposed to be the victim and the sufferer; but here there must have been some misconception, for whereas I generally retired to bed after one of these engagements, he was no sooner set free than he dashed up to the Chinaman's house, where he had installed a printing-press, that great element of civilisation, and the sound of his labours would be faintly audible about the cañon half the day. To walk at all was a laborious business; the foot sank and slid, the boots were cut to pieces, among sharp, uneven, rolling stones. When we crossed the platform in any direction, it was usual to lay a course, following as much as possible the line of waggon rails. Thus, if water were to be drawn, the water-carrier left the house along some tilting planks that we had laid down, and not laid down very well. These carried him to that great highroad, the railway; and the railway served him as far as to the head of the shaft. But from thence to the spring and back again he made the best of his unaided way, staggering among the stones, and wading in low growth of the calycanthus, where the rattlesnakes lay hissing at his


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250. Yet I liked to draw water. It was pleasant to dip the grey metal pail into the clean, colourless, cool water; pleasant to carry it back, with the water lipping at the edge, and a broken sunbeam quivering in the midst. But the extreme roughness of the walking confined us in common practice to the platform, and indeed to those parts of it that were most easily accessible along the line of rails. The rails came straight forward from the shaft, here and there overgrown with little green bushes, but still entire, and still carrying a truck, which it was Sam's delight to trundle to and fro by the hour with various ladings. About midway down the platform, the railroad trended to the right, leaving our house and coasting along the far side within a few yards of the madronas and the forge, and not far off the latter, ended in a sort of platform on the edge of the dump. There, in old days, the trucks were tipped, and their load sent thundering down the chute. There, besides, was the only spot where we could approach the margin of the dump. Anywhere else, you took your life in your right hand when you came within a yard and a half to peer over. For at any moment the dump might begin to slide and carry you down and bury you below its ruins. Indeed, the neighbourhood of an old mine is a place beset with dangers. For as still


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Rh as Silverado was, at any moment the report of rotten wood might tell us that the platform had fallen into the shaft; the dump might begin to pour into the road below; or a wedge slip in the great upright seam, and hundreds of tons of mountain bury the scene of our encampment. I have already compared the dump to a rampart, built certainly by some rude people, and for prehistoric wars. It was likewise a frontier. All below was green and woodland, the tall pines soaring one above another, each with a firm outline and full spread of bough. All above was arid, rocky, and bald. The great spout of broken mineral, that had dammed the cañon up, was a creature of man's handiwork, its material dug out with a pick and powder, and spread by the service of the trucks. But nature herself, in that upper district, seemed to have had an eye to nothing besides mining; and even the natural hillside was all sliding gravel and precarious boulder. Close at the margin of the well leaves would decay to skeletons and mummies, which at length some stronger gust would carry clear of the cañon and scatter in the subjacent woods. Even moisture and decaying vegetable matter could not, with all nature's alchemy, concoct enough soil to nourish a few poor grasses. It is the same, they say, in the neighbourhood of all silver mines; the nature of that


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252 precious rock being stubborn with quartz and poisonous with cinnabar. Both were plenty in our Silverado. The stones sparkled white in the sunshine with quartz; they were all stained red with cinnabar. Here, doubtless, came the Indians of yore to paint their faces for the war-path; and cinnabar, if I remember rightly, was one of the few articles of Indian commerce. Now, Sam had it in his undisturbed possession, to pound down and slake, and paint his rude designs with. But to me it had always a fine flavour of poetry, compounded out of Indian story and Hawthornden's allusion: Yet this is but half the picture; our Silverado platform has another side to it. Though there was no soil, and scarce a blade of grass, yet out of these tumbled gravel-heaps and broken boulders, a flower garden bloomed as at home in a conservatory. Calycanthus crept, like a hardy weed, all over our rough parlour, choking the railway, and pushing forth its rusty, aromatic cones from between two blocks of shattered mineral. Azaleas made a big snow-bed just above the well. The shoulder of the hill waved white with


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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society/I

You have seen better days, dear? So have I — And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well, Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same, And wished and had their trouble for their pains. Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline, And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square? Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age, Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads, And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, — Jealous that the good trick which served the turn Have justice rendered it, nor class one day With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,— What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say, (Because night draws on, and the sands increase, And desert-whispers grow a prophecy) Tell all to Corinth of her own accord. Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Laïs' sake, Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose, And thinks a man of sixty at the prime? Good! It shall be! Revealment of myself! But listen, for we must co-operate; I don't drink tea: permit me the cigar!

First, how to make the matter plain, of course — What was the law by which I lived. Let 's see: Ay, we must take one instant of my life Spent sitting by your side in this neat room: Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh! Here's paper on the table, pen and ink: Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose! See! having sat an hour, I'm rested now, Therefore want work: and spy no better work For eye and hand and mind that guides them both, During this instant, than to draw my pen From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus — Which I at last reach, thus, and here's my line Five inches long and tolerably straight: Better to draw than leave undrawn, I think, Fitter to do than let alone, I hold, Though better, fitter, by but one degree. Therefore it was that, rather than sit still Simply, my right-hand drew it while my left Pulled smooth and pinched the moustache to a point.

Now I permit your plump lips to unpurse: "So far, one possibly may understand "Without recourse to witchcraft!" True, my dear. Thus folks begin with Euclid, — finish, how? Trying to square the circle! — at any rate, Solving abstruser problems than this first "How find the nearest way 'twixt point and point." Deal but with moral mathematics so — Master one merest moment's work of mine, Even this practising with pen and ink, — Demonstrate why I rather plied the quill Than left the space a blank, — you gain a fact, And God knows what a fact's worth! So proceed By inference from just this moral fact — I don't say, to that plaguy quadrature "What the whole man meant, whom you wish you knew," But, what meant certain things he did of old, Which puzzled Europe, — why, you'll find them plain, This way, not otherwise: I guarantee, Understand one, you comprehend the rest. Rays from all round converge to any point: Study the point then ere you track the rays! The size o' the circle's nothing; subdivide Earth, and earth's smallest grain of mustard-seed, You count as many parts, small matching large, If you can use the mind's eye: otherwise, Material optics, being gross at best, Prefer the large and leave our mind the small — And pray how many folks have minds can see? Certainly you — and somebody in Thrace Whose name escapes me at the moment. You — Lend me your mind then! Analyse with me This instance of the line 'twixt blot and blot I rather chose to draw than leave a blank, Things else being equal. You are taught thereby That 't is my nature, when I am at ease, Rather than idle out my life too long, To want to do a thing — to put a thought, Whether a great thought or a little one, Into an act, as nearly as may be. Make what is absolutely new — I can't, Mar what is made already well enough — I won't: but turn to best account the thing That 's half-made — that I can. Two blots, you saw I knew how to extend into a line Symmetric on the sheet they blurred before — Such little act sufficed, this time, such thought.

Now, we'll extend rays, widen out the verge, Describe a larger circle; leave this first Clod of an instance we began with, rise To the complete world many clods effect. Only continue patient while I throw, Delver-like, spadeful after spadeful up, Just as truths come, the subsoil of me, mould Whence spring my moods: your object, — just to find, Alike from handlift and from barrow-load, What salts and silts may constitute the earth — If it be proper stuff to blow man glass, Or bake him pottery, bear him oaks or wheat — What's born of me, in brief; which found, all's known. If it were genius did the digging-job, Logic would speedily sift its product smooth And leave the crude truths bare for poetry; But I'm no poet, and am stiff i' the back. What one spread fails to bring, another may. In goes the shovel and out comes scoop — as here!

I live to please myself. I recognize Power passing mine, immeasurable, God — Above me, whom He made, as heaven beyond Earth — to use figures which assist our sense. I know that He is there as I am here, By the same proof, which seems no proof at all, It so exceeds familiar forms of proof. Why "there," not "here"? Because, when I say "there," I treat the feeling with distincter shape That space exists between us: I, — not He, — Live, think, do human work here — no machine, His will moves, but a being by myself, His, and not He who made me for a work, Watches my working, judges its effect, But does not interpose. He did so once, And probably will again some time — not now, Life being the minute of mankind, not God's, In a certain sense, like time before and time After man's earthly life, so far as man Needs apprehend the matter. Am I clear? Suppose I bid a courier take to-night (. . . Once for all, let me talk as if I smoked Yet in the Residenz, a personage: I must still represent the thing I was, Galvanically make dead muscle play, Or how shall I illustrate muscle's use?) I could then, last July, bid courier take Message for me, post-haste, a thousand miles. I bid him, since I have the right to bid, And, my part done so far, his part begins; He starts with due equipment, will and power, Means he may use, misuse, not use at all, At his discretion, at his peril too. I leave him to himself: but, journey done, I count the minutes, call for the result In quickness and the courier quality, Weigh its worth, and then punish or reward According to proved service; not before. Meantime, he sleeps through noontide, rides till dawn, Sticks to the straight road, tries the crooked path, Measures and manages resource, trusts, doubts Advisers by the wayside, does his best At his discretion, lags or launches forth, (He knows and I know) at his peril too. You see? Exactly thus men stand to God: I with my courier, God with me. Just so I have His bidding to perform; but mind And body, all of me, though made and meant For that sole service, must consult, concert With my own self and nobody beside, How to effect the same: God helps not else. 'T is I who, with my stock of craft and strength, Choose the directer cut across the hedge, Or keep the foot-track that respects a crop. Lie down and rest, rise up and run, — live spare, Feed free, — all that 's my business: but, arrive, Deliver message, bring the answer back, And make my bow, I must: then God will speak, Praise me or haply blame as service proves. To other men, to each and everyone, Another law! what likelier? God, perchance, Grants each new man, by some as new a mode, Intercommunication with Himself, Wreaking on finiteness infinitude; By such a series of effects, gives each Last His own imprint: old yet ever new The process: 't is the way of Deity. How it succeeds, He knows: I only know That varied modes of creatureship abound, Implying just as varied intercourse For each with the creator of them all. Each has his own mind and no other's mode. What mode may yours be? I shall sympathize! No doubt, you, good young lady that you are, Despite a natural naughtiness or two, Turn eyes up like a Pradier Magdalen And see an outspread providential hand Above the owl's-wing aigrette — guard and guide — Visibly o'er your path, about your bed, Through all your practisings with London-town. It points, you go; it stays fixed, and you stop; You quicken its procedure by a word Spoken, a thought in silence, prayer and praise. Well, I believe that such a hand may stoop, And such appeals to it may stave off harm, Pacify the grim guardian of this Square, And stand you in good stead on quarter-day: Quite possible in your case; not in mine. "Ah, but I choose to make the difference, Find the emancipation?" No, I hope! If I deceive myself, take noon for night, Please to become determinedly blind To the true ordinance of human life, Through mere presumption — that is my affair, And truly a grave one; but as grave I think Your affair, yours, the specially observed, — Each favoured person that perceives his path Pointed him, inch by inch, and looks above For guidance, through the mazes of this world, In what we call its meanest life-career — Not how to manage Europe properly, But how keep open shop, and yet pay rent, Rear household, and make both ends meet, the same. I say, such man is no less tasked than I To duly take the path appointed him By whatsoever sign he recognize. Our insincerity on both our heads! No matter what the object of a life, Small work or large, — the making thrive a shop, Or seeing that an empire take no harm, — There are known fruits to judge obedience by. You've read a ton's weight, now, of newspaper — Lives of me, gabble about the kind of prince — You know my work i' the rough; I ask you, then, Do I appear subordinated less To hand-impulsion, one prime push for all, Than little lives of men, the multitude That cried out, every quarter of an hour, For fresh instructions, did or did not work, And praised in the odd minutes?

Eh, my dear? Such is the reason why I acquiesced In doing what seemed best for me to do, So as to please myself on the great scale, Having regard to immortality No less than life — did that which head and heart Prescribed my hand, in measure with its means Of doing — used my special stock of power — Not from the aforesaid head and heart alone, But every sort of helpful circumstance, Some problematic and some nondescript: All regulated by the single care I' the last resort — that I made thoroughly serve The when and how, toiled where was need, reposed As resolutely to the proper point, Braved sorrow, courted joy, to just one end: Namely, that just the creature I was bound To be, I should become, nor thwart at all God's purpose in creation. I conceive No other duty possible to man, — Highest mind, lowest mind, — no other law By which to judge life failure or success: What folks call being saved or cast away.

Such was my rule of life; I worked my best Subject to ultimate judgment, God's not man's. Well then, this settled, — take your tea, I beg, And meditate the fact, 'twixt sip and sip, — This settled — why I pleased myself, you saw, By turning blot and blot into a line, O' the little scale, — we'll try now (as your tongue Tries the concluding sugar-drop) what's meant To please me most o' the great scale. Why, just now, With nothing else to do within my reach, Did I prefer making two blots one line To making yet another separate Third blot, and leaving those I found unlinked? It meant, I like to use the thing I find, Rather than strive at unfound novelty: I make the best of the old, nor try for new. Such will to act, such choice of action's way, Constitute — when at work on the great scale, Driven to their farthest natural consequence By all the help from all the means — my own Particular faculty of serving God, Instinct for putting power to exercise Upon some wish and want o' the time, I prove Possible to mankind as best I may. This constitutes my mission, — grant the phrase, — Namely, to rule men — men within my reach, To order, influence and dispose them so As render solid and stabilify Mankind in particles, the light and loose, For their good and my pleasure in the act. Such good accomplished proves twice good to me — Good for its own sake, as the just and right, And, in the effecting also, good again To me its agent, tasked as suits my taste.

Is this much easy to be understood At first glance? Now begin the steady gaze!

My rank — (if I must tell you simple truth — Telling were else not worth the whiff o' the weed I lose for the tale's sake) — dear, my rank i' the world Is hard to know and name precisely: err I may, but scarcely over-estimate My style and title. Do I class with men Most useful to their fellows? Possibly, — Therefore, in some sort, best; but, greatest mind And rarest nature? Evidently no. A conservator, call me, if you please, Not a creator nor destroyer: one Who keeps the world safe. I profess to trace The broken circle of society, Dim actual order, I can redescribe Not only where some segment silver-true Stays clear, but where the breaks of black commence Baffling you all who want the eye to probe — As I make out yon problematic thin White paring of your thumb-nail outside there, Above the plaster-monarch on his steed — See an inch, name an ell, and prophecy O' the rest that ought to follow, the round moon Now hiding in the night of things: that round, I labour to demonstrate moon enough For the month's purpose, — that society, Render efficient for the age's need: Preserving you in either case the old, Nor aiming at a new and greater thing, A sun for moon, a future to be made By first abolishing the present law: No such proud task for me by any means! History shows you men whose master-touch Not so much modifies as makes anew: Minds that transmute nor need restore at all. A breath of God made manifest in flesh Subjects the world to change, from time to time, Alters the whole conditions of our race Abruptly, not by unperceived degrees Nor play of elements already there, But quite new leaven, leavening the lump, And liker, so, the natural process. See! Where winter reigned for ages — by a turn I' the time, some star-change, (ask geologists) The ice-tracts split, clash, splinter and disperse, And there's an end of immobility, Silence, and all that tinted pageant, base To pinnacle, one flush from fairy-land Dead-asleep and deserted somewhere, — see! — As a fresh sun, wave, spring and joy outburst. Or else the earth it is, time starts from trance, Her mountains tremble into fire, her plains Heave blinded by confusion: what result? New teeming growth, surprises of strange life Impossible before, a world broke up And re-made, order gained by law destroyed. Not otherwise, in our society Follow like portents, all as absolute Regenerations: they have birth at rare Uncertain unexpected intervals O' the world, by ministry impossible Before and after fulness of the days: Some dervish desert-spectre, swordsman, saint, Law-giver, lyrist, — Oh, we know the names! Quite other these than I. Our time requires No such strange potentate, — who else would dawn, — No fresh force till the old have spent itself. Such seems the natural economy. To shoot a beam into the dark, assists: To make that beam do fuller service, spread And utilize such bounty to the height, That assists also, — and that work is mine. I recognize, contemplate, and approve The general compact of society, Not simply as I see effected good, But good i' the germ, each chance that's possible I' the plan traced so far: all results, in short, For better or worse of the operation due To those exceptional natures, unlike mine, Who, helping, thwarting, conscious, unaware, Did somehow manage to so far describe This diagram left ready to my hand, Waiting my turn of trial. I see success, See failure, see what makes or mars throughout. How shall I else but help complete this plan Of which I know the purpose and approve, By letting stay therein what seems to stand, And adding good thereto of easier reach To-day than yesterday?

So much, no more! Whereon, "No more than that?" — inquire aggrieved Half of my critics: "nothing new at all? The old plan saved, instead of a sponged slate And fresh-drawn figure?" — while, "So much as that?" Object their fellows of the other faith: "Leave uneffaced the crazy labyrinth Of alteration and amendment, lines Which every dabster felt in duty bound To signalize his power of pen and ink By adding to a plan once plain enough? Why keep each fool's bequeathment, scratch and blurr Which overscrawl and underscore the piece — Nay, strengthen them by touches of your own?"

Well, that 's my mission, so I serve the world, Figure as man o' the moment, — in default Of somebody inspired to strike such change Into society — from round to square, The ellipsis to the rhomboid, how you please, As suits the size and shape o' the world he finds. But this I can, — and nobody my peer, — Do the best with the least change possible: Carry the incompleteness on, a stage, Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth, And weakness strong: wherein if I succeed, It will not prove the worst achievement, sure, In the eyes at least of one man, one I look Nowise to catch in critic company: To-wit, the man inspired, the genius' self Destined to come and change things thoroughly. He, at least, finds his business simplified. Distinguishes the done from undone, reads Plainly what meant and did not mean this time We live in, and I work on, and transmit To such successor: he will operate On good hard substance, not mere shade and shine. Let all my critics, born to idleness And impotency, get their good, and have Their hooting at the giver: I am deaf — Who find great good in this society, Great gain, the purchase of great labour. Touch The work I may and must, but — reverent In every fall o' the finger-tip, no doubt. Perhaps I find all good there's warrant for I' the world as yet: nay, to the end of time, — Since evil never means part company With mankind, only shift side and change shape. I find advance i' the main, and notably The Present an improvement on the Past, And promise for the Future — which shall prove Only the Present with its rough made smooth, Its indistinctness emphasized; I hope No better, nothing newer for mankind, But something equably smoothed everywhere, Good, reconciled with hardly-quite-as-good, Instead of good and bad each jostling each. "And that's all?" Ay, and quite enough for me! We have toiled so long to gain what gain I find I' the Present, — let us keep it! We shall toil So long before we gain — if gain God grant — A Future with one touch of difference I' the heart of things, and not their outside face, — Let us not risk the whiff of my cigar For Fourier, Comte and all that ends in smoke!

This I see clearest probably of men With power to act and influence, now alive: Juster than they to the true state of things; In consequence, more tolerant that, side By side, shall co-exist and thrive alike In the age, the various sorts of happiness Moral, mark! — not material — moods o' the mind Suited to man and man his opposite: Say, minor modes of movement — hence to there, Or thence to here, or simply round about — So long as each toe spares its neighbour's kibe, Nor spoils the major march and main advance. The love of peace, care for the family, Contentment with what's bad but might be worse — Good movements these! and good, too, discontent, So long as that spurs good, which might be best, Into becoming better, anyhow: Good — pride of country, putting hearth and home I' the back-ground, out of undue prominence: Good — yearning after change, strife, victory, And triumph. Each shall have its orbit marked, But no more, — none impede the other's path In this wide world, — though each and all alike, Save for me, fain would spread itself through space And leave its fellow not an inch of way. I rule and regulate the course, excite, Restrain: because the whole machine should march Impelled by those diversely-moving parts, Each blind to aught beside its little bent. Out of the turnings round and round inside, Comes that straightforward world-advance, I want, And none of them supposes God wants too And gets through just their hindrance and my help. I think that to have held the balance straight For twenty years, say, weighing claim and claim, And giving each its due, no less no more, This was good service to humanity, Right usage of my power in head and heart, And reasonable piety beside. Keep those three points in mind while judging me! You stand, perhaps, for some one man, not men, — Represent this or the other interest, Nor mind the general welfare, — so, impugn My practice and dispute my value: why? You man of faith, I did not tread the world Into a paste, and thereof make a smooth Uniform mound whereon to plant your flag, The lily-white, above the blood and brains! Nor yet did I, you man of faithlessness, So roll things to the level which you love, That you could stand at ease there and survey The universal Nothing undisgraced By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire I' the distance! Neither friend would I content, Nor, as the world were simply meant for him, Thrust out his fellow and mend God's mistake. Why, you two fools, — my dear friends all the same, — Is it some change o' the world and nothing else Contents you? Should whatever was, not be? How thanklessly you view things! There 's the root Of the evil, source of the entire mistake: You see no worth i' the world, nature and life, Unless we change what is to what may be, Which means, — may be, i' the brain of one of you! "Reject what is?" — all capabilities — Nay, you may style them chances if you choose — All chances, then, of happiness that lie Open to anybody that is born, Tumbles into this life and out again, — All that may happen, good and evil too, I' the space between, to each adventurer Upon this 'sixty, Anno Domini: A life to live — and such a life! a world To learn, one's lifetime in, — and such a world! However did the foolish pass for wise By calling life a burden, man a fly Or worm or what's most insignificant? "O littleness of man!" deplores the bard; And then, for fear the Powers should punish him, "O grandeur of the visible universe Our human littleness contrasts withal! O sun, O moon, ye mountains and thou sea, Thou emblem of immensity, thou this, That and the other, — what impertinence In man to eat and drink and walk about And have his little notions of his own, The while some wave sheds foam upon the shore!" First of all, 't is a lie some three-times thick: The bard, — this sort of speech being poetry, — The bard puts mankind well outside himself And then begins instructing them: "This way I and my friend the sea conceive of you! What would you give to think such thoughts as ours Of you and the sea together?" Down they go On the humbled knees of them: at once they draw Distinction, recognize no mate of theirs In one, despite his mock humility, So plain a match for what he plays with. Next, The turn of the great ocean-play-fellow, When the bard, leaving Bond Street very far From ear-shot, cares not to ventriloquize, But tells the sea its home-truths: "You, my match? You, all this terror and inmiensity And what not? Shall I tell you what you are? Just fit to hitch into a stanza, so Wake up and set in motion who's asleep O' the other side of you, in England, else Unaware, as folk pace their Bond Street now, Somebody here despises them so much! Between us, — they are the ultimate! to them And their perception go these lordly thoughts: Since what were ocean — mane and tail, to boot — Mused I not here, how make thoughts thinkable? Start forth my stanza and astound the world! Back, billows, to your insignificance! Deep, you are done with!"

Learn, my gifted friend, There are two things i' the world, still wiser folk Accept — intelligence and sympathy. You pant about unutterable power I' the ocean, all you feel but cannot speak? Why, that's the plainest speech about it all. You did not feel what was not to be felt. Well, then, all else but what man feels is naught — The wash o' the liquor that o'erbrims the cup Called man, and runs to waste adown his side, Perhaps to feed a cataract, — who cares? I'll tell you: all the more I know mankind, The more I thank God, like my grandmother, For making me a little lower than The angels, honour-clothed and glory-crowned: This is the honour, — that no thing I know, Feel or conceive, but I can make my own Somehow, by use of hand or head or heart: This is the glory, — that in all conceived, Or felt or known, I recognize a mind Not mine but like mine, — for the double joy, — Making all things for me and me for Him. There's folly for you at this time of day! So think it! and enjoy your ignorance Of what — no matter for the worthy's name — Wisdom set working in a noble heart, When he, who was earth's best geometer Up to that time of day, consigned his life With its results into one matchless book, The triumph of the human mind so far, All in geometry man yet could do: And then wrote on the dedication-page In place of name the universe applauds, "But, God, what a geometer art Thou!" I suppose Heaven is, through Eternity, The equalizing, ever and anon, In momentary rapture, great with small, Omniscience with intelligency, God With man, — the thunder-glow from pole to pole Abolishing, a blissful moment-space, Great cloud alike and small cloud, in one fire — As sure to ebb as sure again to flow When the new receptivity deserves The new completion. There's the Heaven for me. And I say, therefore, to live out one's life I' the world here, with the chance, — whether by pain Or pleasure be the process, long or short The time, august or mean the circumstance To human eye, — of learning how set foot Decidedly on some one path to Heaven, Touch segment in the circle whence all lines Lead to the centre equally, red lines Or black lines, so they but produce themselves — This, I do say, — and here my sermon ends, — This makes it worth our while to tenderly Handle a state of things which mend we might, Mar we may, but which meanwhile helps so far. Therefore my end is — save society!

"And that's all?" twangs the never-failing taunt O' the foe — "No novelty, creativeness, Mark of the master that renews the age?" "Nay, all that?" rather will demur my judge I look to hear some day, nor friend nor foe — "Did you attain, then, to perceive that God Knew what He undertook when He made things?" Ay: that my task was to co-operate Rather than play the rival, chop and change The order whence comes all the good we know, With this, — good's last expression to our sense, — That there's a further good conceivable Beyond the utmost earth can realize: And, therefore, that to change the agency, The evil whereby good is brought about — Try to make good do good as evil does — Were just as if a chemist, wanting white, And knowing black ingredients bred the dye, Insisted these too should be white forsooth! Correct the evil, mitigate your best, Blend mild with harsh, and soften black to gray If gray may follow with no detriment To the eventual perfect purity! But as for hazarding the main result By hoping to anticipate one half In the intermediate process, — no, my friends! This bad world, I experience and approve; Your good world, — with no pity, courage, hope, Fear, sorrow, joy, — devotedness, in short, Which I account the ultimate of man, Of which there's not one day nor hour but brings In flower or fruit, some sample of success, Out of this same society I save — None of it for me! That I might have none, I rapped your tampering knuckles twenty years. Such was the task imposed me, such my end.


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Rh heath. In the crannies of the ledge and about the spurs of the tall pine, a red flowering stone-plant hung in clusters. Even the low, thorny chaparral was thick with pea-like blossom. Close at the foot of our path nutmegs prospered, delightful to the sight and smell. At sunrise, and again late at night, the scent of the sweet bay-trees filled the cañon, and the down-blowing night wind must have borne it hundreds of feet into the outer air.

All this vegetation, to be sure, was stunted. The madrona was here no bigger than the manzanita; the bay was but a stripling shrub; the very pines, with four or five exceptions in all our upper canon, were not so tall as myself, or but a little taller, and the most of them came lower than my waist. For a prosperous forest tree, we must look below, where the glen was crowded with green spires. But for flowers and ravishing perfume, we had none to envy: our heap of road-metal was thick with bloom, like a hawthorn in the front of June; our red, baking angle in the mountain, a laboratory of poignant scents. It was an endless wonder to my mind, as I dreamed about the platform, following the progress of the shadows, where the madrona with its leaves, the azalea and calycanthus with their blossoms, could find moisture to support such thick, wet, waxy growths, or the


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258–295]

Having come near, or pulled at the dead body.

Then rose high words among us sentinels

With bickering noise accusing each his mate,

And it seemed like to come to blows, with none

To hinder. For the hand that thus had wrought

Was any of ours, and none; the guilty man

Escaped all knowledge. And we were prepared

To lift hot iron with our bare palms; to walk

Through fire, and swear by all the Gods at once

That we were guiltless, ay, and ignorant

Of who had plotted or performed this thing.

When further search seemed bootless, at the last

One spake, whose words bowed all our heads to the earth

With fear. We knew not what to answer him,

Nor how to do it and prosper. He advised

So grave a matter must not be concealed,

But instantly reported to the King.

Well, this prevailed, and the lot fell on me,

Unlucky man! to be the ministrant

Of this fair service. So I am present here,

Against my will and yours, I am sure of that.

None love the bringer of unwelcome news.

. My lord, a thought keeps whispering in my breast,

Some Power divine hath interposed in this.

. Cease, ere thou quite enrage me, and appear

Foolish as thou art old. Talk not to me

Of Gods who have taken thought for this dead man!

Say, was it for his benefits to them

They hid his corse, and honoured him so highly,

Who came to set on fire their pillared shrines,

With all the riches of their offerings,

And to make nothing of their land and laws?

Or, hast thou seen them honouring villany?

That cannot be. Long time the cause of this

Hath come to me in secret murmurings

From malcontents of Thebes, who under yoke

Turned restive, and would not accept my sway.

Well know I, these have bribed the watchmen here

To do this for some fee. For nought hath grown


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had it been, my belovèd,

Had Fate united us sooner,—

In the bright days when our hearts

First dreamed of loving?—

When—a thrice exquisite vision—

Hope, all her lute-strings unbroken,

Smilingly beckoned us on—

Wooed us to follow?—

When our youth, eager, expectant,—

Trusting the north as the south wind,

Hardly, its pulses a-throb,

Staid life's unfolding?

Had I been more to you, dearer—

Bearing my myrtle and roses—

Than, as I came, crowned with rue,

Weighted with sorrow,

Seeing both light and its shadow,

Taught both of truth and illusion,

Knowing earth's rapture and pain,—

Sharing earth's travail?


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 64 More had I been to you—dearer?...

Deep in my heart a voice answers,

Healing the sense of unworth,

Whispering comfort:—

Love takes no counsel of prudence;

Wherefore men, timid and doubting,

Marvelling oft at his choice,

Charge him with blindness;

But—this believe!—not Apollo,

Clothed in his glory celestial,

Bears such a light in his breast

As that which Eros

Holds in the heart of his darkness,

Guards as a torch never failing,

Given to guide him where waits

His sole desire!"


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a man set forth at morning,

Journeying with eager footstep,

Onward over fields new-wakened,

Where the dew lay on the blossoms,

Like to softly gleaming opals.

All the earth, refreshed by slumber,

In the early light and tender

Wore a green, benignant beauty;

And his heart sang high within him,

As the birds sang in the branches.

On he sped with fond impatience,—

While the world took on new wonder,—

Till he came unto a river

Where there waiting stood an angel,

Dark-browed, but with look celestial.

Then, appalled, the pilgrim started:—

Death! Awaitest thou my coming—

Here, where least I thought to meet thee?

It is Love that I am seeking!"

Very gently smiled the angel,

Dark-browed, with the look celestial:


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 Copyright, 1895

Copyright, 1905


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 Rh I am Love,—thyself hast named me;

Yet thou fearest! Lo! I leave thee,

Till as now, thou come to find me."

Once again the man, at sunrise,

Journeyed forth,—his step less buoyant,—

Passing over fields new-wakened,

Where the dew lay on the blossoms

Like to softly gleaming opals.

Once again Earth, fresh from slumber,

In the early light and tender

Wore her green and mystic beauty;

Yet his heart sang not within him

As the birds sang in the branches.

Onward still, without impatience,

Through a world whose charm half pained him,

Journeying,—behold!—the river

And the long-forgotten angel—

Dark-browed, with the look celestial!

As of old, the pilgrim started,

And his pale cheek flushed with anger:

Death, thy pledge! Thou hast betrayed me!

Naught have I and thou in common:

It is Life that I am seeking!"


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410

 (See also )


text:
United States Code/Title 16/Chapter 33

Title 16 — Conservation — Coastal Zone Management

title: United States Code/Title 16/Chapter 33


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 68 With transfiguring smile the angel,

Whose whole look now showed celestial,

Answered:—"Is it Life thou seekest?

Be at rest, thou weary pilgrim!

Seek no further: thou hast found me."


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NE of the closest friends of my husband's youth was a clever young man whose life, up to that time, had been mostly spent in hospitals. Embittered by poverty and suffering, his turbulent spirit revolted against law and society, and he had become an ardent socialist. I remember meeting, in his house, a party of Russian anarchists, Stepniak among them, who greeted him as "brother," shouting and laughing like schoolboys on a holiday, and declaring that if they could only meet my husband face to face they would soon make a convert of him. Indeed, up to a certain point, he sympathized with the socialists. He could not think of the innocent victims of civilization—the men who only asked for work, and could get none, while their children were starving—without raging against the existing order of things; while his own comfortable circumstances filled him with shame when he contemplated the hardships of those less fortunate than himself. But, unlike his friend, he


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vi could suggest no remedy; the assassination of individuals and bomb-throwing seeming to him not only barbaric, but silly and futile. While he could see no royal road for others, the path for himself showed plainly enough before him, and it was his duty to swerve neither to the right nor the left. He believed he had no rights, only undeserved indulgences. He must not eat unearned bread, but must pay the world, in some fashion, for what it gave him,—first, materially, then in kindness, sympathy, and love. Class distinctions, so strictly observed in England, he could not tolerate and never gave the slightest heed to their limitations. "Ladies?" he said in reply to an observation by a visitor, "one of the truest ladies in Bournemouth, Mrs. Waats, is at this moment washing my study windows." Once, coming upon a crowd of young roughs who were tormenting a wretched drunken creature of the streets, he pushed his way through them, and amid their jeers offered his arm to the woman and escorted her to the place she called home. "Don Quixote," he once said to my son, with a startled look, "why, I am Don Quixote!" Too much ease frightened him; he would occasionally insist on some sharp discomfort, such as sleeping on a mat on the floor, or dining on a ship's biscuit, to awaken him, as he said, to realities; and nothing pleased him more than to


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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society/II

Now for the means thereto. Ah, confidence — Keep we together or part company? This is the critical minute! "Such my end?" Certainly; how could it be otherwise? Can there be question which was the right task — To save or to destroy society? Why, even prove that, by some miracle, Destruction were the proper work to choose, And that a torch best remedies what's wrong I' the temple, whence the long procession wound Of powers and beauties, earth's achievements all. The human strength that strove and overthrew, — The human love that, weak itself, crowned strength, — The instinct crying "God is whence I came!" — The reason laying down the law "And such His will i' the world must be!" — the leap and shout Of genius "For I hold His very thoughts, The meaning of the mind of Him!" — nay, more The ingenuities, each active force That turning in a circle on itselt Looks neither up nor down but keeps the spot. Mere creature-like and, for religion, works, Works only and works ever, makes and shapes And changes, still wrings more of good from less, Still stamps some bad out, where was worst before. So leaves the handiwork, the act and deed. Were it but house and land and wealth, to show Here was a creature perfect in the kind — Whether as bee, beaver, or behemoth, What's the importance? he has done his work For work's sake, worked well, earned a creature's praise; — I say, concede that same fane, whence deploys Age after age, all this humanity, Diverse but ever dear, out of the dark Behind the altar into the broad day By the portal — enter, and, concede there mocks Each lover of free motion and much space A perplexed length of apse and aisle and nave, — Pillared roof and carved screen, and what care I? That irk the movement and impede the march, — Nay, possibly, bring flat upon his nose At some odd break-neck angle, by some freak Of old-world artistry, that personage Who, could he but have kept his skirts from grief And catching at the hooks and crooks about, Had stepped out on the daylight of our time Plainly the man of the age, — still, still, I bar Excessive conflagration in the case. "Shake the flame freely!" shout the multitude: The architect approves I stuck my torch Inside a good stout lantern, hung its light Above the hooks and crooks, and ended so. To save society was well: the means Whereby to save it, — there begins the doubt Permitted you, imperative on me; Were mine the best means? Did I work aright With powers appointed me? — since powers denied Concern me nothing.

Well, my work reviewed Fairly, leaves more hope than discouragement. First, there's the deed done: what I found, I leave, — What tottered, I kept stable: if it stand One month, without sustainment, still thank me The twenty years' sustainer! Now, observe, Sustaining is no brilliant self-display Like knocking down or even setting up: Much bustle these necessitate; and still To vulgar eye, the mightier of the myth Is Hercules, who substitutes his own For Atlas' shoulder and supports the globe A whole day, — not the passive and obscure Atlas who bore, ere Hercules was born, And is to go on bearing that same load When Hercules turns ash on Œta's top. 'T is the transition-stage, the tug and strain. That strike men: standing still is stupid-like. My pressure was too constant on the whole For any part's eruption into space Mid sparkles, crackling, and much praise of me. I saw that, in the ordinary life, Many of the little make a mass of men Important beyond greatness here and there; As certainly as, in life exceptional, When old things terminate and new commence, A solitary great man's worth the world. God takes the business into His own hands At such time: who creates the novel flower Contrives to guard and give it breathing-room: I merely tend the corn-field, care for crop, And weed no acre thin to let emerge What prodigy may stifle there perchance, — No, though my eye have noted where he lurks. Oh those mute myriads that spoke loud to me — The eyes that craved to see the light, the mouths That sought the daily bread and nothing more, The hands that supplicated exercise, Men that had wives, and women that had babes, And all these making suit to only live! Was I to turn aside from husbandry, Leave hope of harvest for the corn, my care, To play at horticulture, rear some rose Or poppy into perfect leaf and bloom When, mid the furrows, up was pleased to sprout Some man, cause, system, special interest I ought to study, stop the world meanwhile? "But I am Liberty, Philanthropy, Enhghtenment, or Patriotism, the power Whereby you are to stand or fall!" cries each: "Mine and mine only be the flag you flaunt!" And, when I venture to object "Meantime, What of yon myriads with no flag at all — My crop which, who flaunts flag must tread across?" "Now, this it is to have a puny mind!" Admire my mental prodigies: "down — down — Ever at home o' the level and the low. There bides he brooding! Could he look above, With less of the owl and more of the eagle eye, He'd see there's no way helps the little cause Like the attainment of the great. Dare first The chief emprise; dispel yon cloud between The sun and us; nor fear that, though our heads Find earlier warmth and comfort from his ray, What Hes about our feet, the multitude, Will fail of benefaction presently. Come now, let each of us awhile cry truce To special interests, make common cause Against the adversary — or perchance Mere dullard to his own plain interest! Which of us will you choose? — since needs must be Some one o' the warring causes you incline To hold, i' the main, has right and should prevail; Why not adopt and give it prevalence? Choose strict Faith or lax Incredulity, — King, Caste and Cultus — or the Rights of Man, Sovereignty of each Proudhon o'er himself, And all that follows in just consequence! Go free the stranger from a foreign yoke; Or stay, concentrate energy at home; Succeed! — when he deserves, the stranger will. Comply with the Great Nation's impulse, print By force of arms, — since reason pleads in vain, And, mid the sweet compulsion, pity weeps, — Hohenstiel-Schwangau on the universe! Snub the Great Nation, cure the impulsive itch With smartest fillip on a restless nose Was ever launched by thumb and finger! Bid Hohenstiel-Schwangau first repeal the tax On pig-tails and pomatum and then mind Abstruser matters for next century! Is your choice made? Why then, act up to choice! Leave the illogical touch now here now there I' the way of work, the tantalizing help First to this then the other opposite: The blowing hot and cold, sham policy, Sure ague of the mind and nothing more, Disease of the perception or the Will, That fain would hide in a fine name! Your choice, Speak it out and condemn yourself thereby!"

Well, Leicester-square is not the Residenz: Instead of shrugging shoulder, turning friend The deaf ear, with a wink to the police — I'll answer — by a question, wisdom's mode. How many years, o' the average, do men Live in this world? Some score, say computists. Quintuple me that term and give mankind The likely hundred, and with all my heart I'll take your task upon me, work your way, Concentrate energy on some one cause: Since, counseller, I also have my cause, My flag, my faith in its effect, my hope In its eventual triumph for the good O' the world. And once upon a time, when I Was like all you, mere voice and nothing more, Myself took wings, soared sun-ward, and thence sang "Look where I live i' the loft, come up to me, Groundlings, nor grovel longer I gain this height. And prove you breathe here better than below! Why, what emancipation far and wide Will follow in a trice! They too can soar, Each tenant of the earth's circumference Claiming to elevate humanity, They also must attain such altitude, Live in the luminous circle that surrounds The planet, not the leaden orb itself. Press out, each point, from surface to yon verge Which one has gained and guaranteed your realm!" Ay, still my fragments wander, music-fraught, Sighs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and mine For ever! Crumbled arch, crushed aqueduct, Alive with tremors in the shaggy growth Of wild-wood, crevice-sown, that triumphs there Imparting exultation to the hills! Sweep of the swathe when only the winds walk And waft my words above the grassy sea Under the blinding blue that basks o'er Rome, — Hear ye not still — "Be Italy again?" And ye, what strikes the panic to your heart? Decrepit council-chambers, — where some lamp Drives the unbroken black three paces off From where the greybeards huddle in debate, Dim cowls and capes, and midmost glimmers one Like tarnished gold, and what they say is doubt. And what they think is fear, and what suspends The breath in them is not the plaster-patch Time disengages from the painted wall Where Rafael moulderingly bids adieu, Nor tick of the insect turning tapestry To dust, which a queen's finger traced of old; But some word, resonant, redoubtable. Of who once felt upon his head a hand Whereof the head now apprehends his foot. "Light in Rome, Law in Rome, and Liberty O' the soul in Rome — the free Church, the free State! Stamp out the nature that's best typified By its embodiment in Peter's Dome, The scorpion-body with the greedy pair Of outstretched nippers, either colonnade Agape for the advance of heads and hearts!" There's one cause for you! one and only one. For I am vocal through the universe, I' the work-shop, manufactory, exchange And market-place, sea-port and custom-house O' the frontier: listen if the echoes die — "Unfettered commerce! Power to speak and hear, And print and read! The universal vote! Its rights for labour!" This, with much beside, I spoke when I was voice and nothing more, But altogether such an one as you My censors. "Voice, and nothing more, indeed!" Re-echoes round me: "that's the censure, there's Involved the ruin of you soon or late! Voice, — when its promise beat the empty air: And nothing more, — when solid earth's your stage. And we desiderate performance, deed For word, the realizing all you dreamed In the old days: now, for deed, we find at door O' the council-chamber posted, mute as mouse, Hohenstiel-Schwangau, sentry and safeguard O' the greybeards all a-chuckle, cowl to cape. Who challenge Judas, — that 's endearment's style, — To stop their mouths or let escape grimace, While they keep cursing Italy and him. The power to speak, hear, print and read is ours? Ay, we learn where and how, when clapped inside A convict-transport bound for cool Cayenne! The universal vote we have: its urn, We also have where votes drop, fingered-o'er By the universal Prefect. Say, Trade's free And Toil turned master out o' the slave it was: What then? These feed man's stomach, but his soul Craves finer fare, nor lives by bread alone. As somebody says somewhere. Hence you stand Proved and recorded either false or weak, Faulty in promise or performance: which?" Neither, I hope. Once pedestalled on earth, To act not speak, I found earth was not air. I saw that multitude of mine, and not The nakedness and nullity of air Fit only for a voice to float in free. Such eyes I saw that craved the light alone. Such mouths that wanted bread and nothing else, Such hands that supplicated handiwork, Men with the wives, and women with the babes, Yet all these pleading just to live, not die! Did I believe one whit less in belief. Take truth for falsehood, wish the voice revoked That told the truth to heaven for earth to hear? No, this should be, and shall; but when and how? At what expense to these who average Your twenty years of life, my computists? "Not bread alone" but bread before all else For these: the bodily want serve first, said I; If earth-space and the life-time help not here, Where is the good of body having been? But, helping body, if we somewhat baulk The soul of finer fare, such food's to find Elsewhere and afterward — all indicates. Even this self-same fact that soul can starve Yet body still exist its twenty years: While, stint the body, there's an end at once O' the revel in the fancy that Rome's free. And superstition's fettered, and one prints Whate'er one pleases and who pleases reads The same, and speaks out and is spoken to. And divers hundred thousand fools may vote A vote untampered with by one wise man, And so elect Barabbas deputy In lieu of his concurrent. I who trace The purpose written on the face of things, For my behoof and guidance — (whoso needs No such sustainment, sees beneath my signs, Proves, what I take for writing, penmanship, Scribble and flourish with no sense for me O' the sort I solemnly go spelling out, — Let him! there 's certain work of mine to show Alongside his work: which gives warranty Of shrewder vision in the workman — judge!) I who trace Providence without a break I' the plan of things, drop plumb on this plain print Of an intention with a view to good, That man is made in sympathy with man At outset of existence, so to speak; But in dissociation, more and more, Man from his fellow, as their lives advance In culture; still humanity, that's born A mass, keeps flying off, fining away Ever into a multitude of points, And ends in isolation, each from each: Peerless above i' the sky, the pinnacle, — Absolute contact, fusion, all below At the base of being. How comes this about? This stamp of God characterizing man And nothing else but man in the universe — That, while he feels with man (to use man's speech) I' the little things of life, its fleshly wants Of food and rest and health and happiness, Its simplest spirit-motions, loves and hates, Hopes, fears, soul-cravings on the ignoblest scale, O' the fellow-creature, — owns the bond at base, — He tends to freedom and divergency In the upward progress, plays the pinnacle When life's at greatest (grant again the phrase! Because there's neither great nor small in life.) "Consult thou for thy kind that have the eyes To see, the mouths to eat, the hands to work, Men with the wives, and women with the babes!" Prompts Nature. "Care thou for thyself alone I' the conduct of the mind God made thee with! Think, as if man had never thought before! Act, as if all creation hung attent On the acting of such faculty as thine, To take prime pattern from thy masterpiece!" Nature prompts also: neither law obeyed To the uttermost by any heart and soul We know or have in record: both of them Acknowledged blindly by whatever man We ever knew or heard of in this world. "Will you have why and wherefore, and the fact Made plain as pikestaff?" modern Science asks. "That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lump Once on a time; he kept an after course Through fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast, Till he attained to be an ape at last Or last but one. And if this doctrine shock In aught the natural pride". . . Friend, banish fear, The natural humility replies! Do you suppose, even I, poor potentate, Hohenstiel-Schwangau, who once ruled the roast, — I was born able at all points to ply My tools? or did I have to learn my trade, Practise as exile ere perform as prince? The world knows something of my ups and downs: But grant me time, give me the management And manufacture of a model me. Me fifty-fold, a prince without a flaw, — Why, there's no social grade, the sordidest, My embryo potentate should blink and scape. King, all the better he was cobbler once, He should know, sitting on the throne, how tastes Life to who sweeps the doorway. But life's hard, Occasion rare; you cut probation short, And, being half-instructed, on the stage You shuffle through your part as best you may, And bless your stars, as I do. God takes time. I like the thought He should have lodged me once I' the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement. The mansion and the palace; made me learn The feel o' the first, before I found myself Loftier i' the last, not more emancipate From first to last of lodging, I was I, And not at all the place that harboured me. Do I refuse to follow farther yet I' the backwardness, repine if tree and flower, Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusc? As well account that way for many a thrill Of kinship, I confess to, with the powers Called Nature: animate, inanimate. In parts or in the whole, there's something there Man-like that somehow meets the man in me. My pulse goes altogether with the heart O' the Persian, that old Xerxes, when he stayed His march to conquest of the world, a day I' the desert, for the sake of one superb Plane-tree which queened it there in solitude: Giving her neck its necklace, and each arm Its armlet, suiting soft waist, snowy side. With cincture and apparel. Yes, I lodged In those successive tenements; perchance Taste yet the straitness of them while I stretch Limb and enjoy new liberty the more. And some abodes are lost or ruinous; Some, patched-up and pieced out, and so transformed They still accommodate the traveller His day of life-time. O you count the links, Descry no bar of the unbroken man? Yes, — and who welds a lump of ore, suppose He likes to make a chain and not a bar. And reach by link on link, link small, link large, Out to the due length — why, there's forethought still Outside o' the series, forging at one end. While at the other there's — no matter what The kind of critical intelligence Believing that last link had last but one For parent, and no link was, first of all, Fitted to anvil, hammered into shape. Else, I accept the doctrine, and deduce This duty, that I recognize mankind, In all its height and depth and length and breadth. Mankind i' the main have little wants, not large: I, being of will and power to help, i' the main, Mankind, must help the least wants first. My friend, That is, my foe, without such power and will, May plausibly concentrate all he wields, And do his best at helping some large want, Exceptionally noble cause, that's seen Subordinate enough from where I stand. As he helps, I helped once, when like himself. Unable to help better, work more wide; And so would work with heart and hand to-day, Did only computists confess a fault, And multiply the single score by five, Five only, give man's life its hundred years. Change life, in me shall follow change to match! Time were then, to work here, there, everywhere, By turns and try experiment at ease! Full time to mend as well as mar: why wait The slow and sober uprise all around O' the building? Let us run up, right to roof. Some sudden marvel, piece of perfectness, And testify what we intend the whole! Is the world losing patience? "Wait!" say we: "There's time: no generation needs to die Unsolaced; you've a century in store!" But, no: I sadly let the voices wing Their way i' the upper vacancy, nor test Truth on this solid as I promised once. Well, and what is there to be sad about? The world's the world, life's life, and nothing else. 'T is part of life, a property to prize. That those o' the higher sort engaged i' the world, Should fancy they can change its ill to good. Wrong to right, ugliness to beauty: find Enough success in fancy turning fact. To keep the sanguine kind in countenance And justify the hope that busies them: Failure enough, — to who can follow change Beyond their vision, see new good prove ill I' the consequence, see blacks and whites of life Shift square indeed, but leave the chequered face Unchanged i' the main, — failure enough for such. To bid ambition keep the whole from change, As their best service. I hope naught beside. No, my brave thinkers, whom I recognize, Gladly, myself the first, as, in a sense, All that our world's worth, flower and fruit of man! Such minds myself award supremacy Over the common insignificance, When only Mind's in question, — Body bows To quite another government, you know. Be Kant crowned king o' the castle in the air! Hans Slouch, — his own, and children's mouths to feed I' the hovel on the ground, — wants meat, nor chews "The Critique of Pure Reason" in exchange. But, now, — suppose I could allow your claims And quite change life to please you, — would it please? Would life comport with change and still be life? Ask, now, a doctor for a remedy: There's his prescription. Bid him point you out Which of the five or six ingredients saves The sick man. "Such the efficacity? Then why not dare and do things in one dose Simple and pure, all virtue, no alloy Of the idle drop and powder?" What's his word? The efficacity, neat, were neutralized: It wants dispersing and retarding, — nay Is put upon its mettle, plays its part Precisely through such hindrance everywhere, Finds some mysterious give and take i' the case, Some gain by opposition, he foregoes Should he unfetter the medicament. So with this thought of yours that fain would work Free in the world: it wants just what it finds — The ignorance, stupidity, the hate, Envy and malice and uncharitableness That bar your passage, break the flow of you Down from those happy heights where many a cloud Combined to give you birth and bid you be The royalest of rivers: on you glide Silverly till you reach the summit-edge, Then over, on to all that ignorance. Stupidity, hate, envy, bluffs and blocks. Posted to fret you into foam and noise. What of it? Up you mount in minute mist, And bridge the chasm that crushed your quietude, A spirit-rainbow, earthborn jewelry Outsparkling the insipid firmament Blue above Terni and its orange-trees. Do not mistake me! You, too, have your rights! Hans must not burn Kant's house above his head, Because he cannot understand Kant's book: And still less must Hans' pastor bum Kant's self Because Kant understands some books too well. But, justice seen to on this little point, Answer me, is it manly, is it sage To stop and struggle with arrangements here It took so many lives, so much of toil, To tinker up into efficiency? Can't you contrive to operate at once, — Since time is short and art is long, — to show Your quality i' the world, whatever you boast, Without this fractious call on folks to crush The world together just to set you free, Admire the capers you will cut perchance, Nor mind the mischief to your neighbours?


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Rh risk his life or health to serve another. Yet he never succeeded in wholly subduing the "old Adam" within him. Meanness or falsity or cruelty set his eyes blazing, and his language on such occasions became far from parliamentary. Naturally his first visit to America, a land without class distinctions, was to him an event of extraordinary interest. The privations he endured as an amateur emigrant caused him much less suffering than his friends, who could not imagine themselves in a similar position, supposed. It was not the first time he had associated with the working-man on terms of equality; nor did it occur to him that it was a condescension on his part to join with his fellow-passengers in their attempts to make the time pass pleasantly, or to do for them what little kindly offices came in his way. One thing he did resent with bitterness—the visits of the first-class passengers, who came out of curiosity into the steerage, looking about as though they were passing through a menagerie. He never forgave "your wife, my good man?" "Why," he would ask, "should I be her good man any more than she my good woman? Her question, and manner of putting it, made me understand a great many things." I remember, when we were living in Hyères, his receiving a letter from England that enclosed a


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