He knows how much of what men paint themselves Would blister in the light of what they are;He sees how much of what was great now shares An eminence transformed and ordinary;He knows too much of what the world has hushed In others, to be loud now for himself;He knows now at what height low enemies May reach his heart, and high friends let him fall;But what not even such as he may know Bedevils him the worst: his lark may sing At heaven's gate how he will, and for as long As joy may listen; but HE sees no gate, Save one whereat the spent clay waits a little Before the churchyard has it, and the worm.
Not long ago, late in an afternoon, I came on him unseen down Lambeth way, And on my life I was afear'd of him:
He gloomed and mumbled like a soul from Tophet, His hands behind him and his head bent solemn.
"What is it now," said I, -- "another woman?"That made him sorry for me, and he smiled.
"No, Ben," he mused; "it's Nothing.It's all Nothing.
We come, we go; and when we're done, we're done;Spiders and flies -- we're mostly one or t'other --We come, we go; and when we're done, we're done.""By God, you sing that song as if you knew it!"Said I, by way of cheering him; "what ails ye?""I think I must have come down here to think,"Says he to that, and pulls his little beard;"Your fly will serve as well as anybody, And what's his hour? He flies, and flies, and flies, And in his fly's mind has a brave appearance;And then your spider gets him in her net, And eats him out, and hangs him up to dry.
That's Nature, the kind mother of us all.
And then your slattern housemaid swings her broom, And where's your spider? And that's Nature, also.
It's Nature, and it's Nothing.It's all Nothing.
It's all a world where bugs and emperors Go singularly back to the same dust, Each in his time; and the old, ordered stars That sang together, Ben, will sing the same Old stave to-morrow."When he talks like that, There's nothing for a human man to do But lead him to some grateful nook like this Where we be now, and there to make him drink.
He'll drink, for love of me, and then be sick;A sad sign always in a man of parts, And always very ominous.The great Should be as large in liquor as in love, --And our great friend is not so large in either:
One disaffects him, and the other fails him;Whatso he drinks that has an antic in it, He's wondering what's to pay in his insides;And while his eyes are on the Cyprian He's fribbling all the time with that damned House.
We laugh here at his thrift, but after all It may be thrift that saves him from the devil;God gave it, anyhow, -- and we'll suppose He knew the compound of his handiwork.
To-day the clouds are with him, but anon He'll out of 'em enough to shake the tree Of life itself and bring down fruit unheard-of, --And, throwing in the bruised and whole together, Prepare a wine to make us drunk with wonder;And if he live, there'll be a sunset spell Thrown over him as over a glassed lake That yesterday was all a black wild water.
God send he live to give us, if no more, What now's a-rampage in him, and exhibit, With a decent half-allegiance to the ages An earnest of at least a casual eye Turned once on what he owes to Gutenberg, And to the fealty of more centuries Than are as yet a picture in our vision.
"There's time enough, -- I'll do it when I'm old, And we're immortal men," he says to that;And then he says to me, "Ben, what's `immortal'?
Think you by any force of ordination It may be nothing of a sort more noisy Than a small oblivion of component ashes That of a dream-addicted world was once A moving atomy much like your friend here?"Nothing will help that man.To make him laugh, I said then he was a mad mountebank, --And by the Lord I nearer made him cry.
I could have eat an eft then, on my knees, Tail, claws, and all of him; for I had stung The king of men, who had no sting for me, And I had hurt him in his memories;And I say now, as I shall say again, I love the man this side idolatry.
He'll do it when he's old, he says.I wonder.
He may not be so ancient as all that.
For such as he, the thing that is to do Will do itself, -- but there's a reckoning;The sessions that are now too much his own, The roiling inward of a stilled outside, The churning out of all those blood-fed lines, The nights of many schemes and little sleep, The full brain hammered hot with too much thinking, The vexed heart over-worn with too much aching, --This weary jangling of conjoined affairs Made out of elements that have no end, And all confused at once, I understand, Is not what makes a man to live forever.
O no, not now! He'll not be going now:
There'll be time yet for God knows what explosions Before he goes.He'll stay awhile.Just wait:
Just wait a year or two for Cleopatra, For she's to be a balsam and a comfort;And that's not all a jape of mine now, either.
For granted once the old way of Apollo Sings in a man, he may then, if he's able, Strike unafraid whatever strings he will Upon the last and wildest of new lyres;Nor out of his new magic, though it hymn The shrieks of dungeoned hell, shall he create A madness or a gloom to shut quite out A cleaving daylight, and a last great calm Triumphant over shipwreck and all storms.
He might have given Aristotle creeps, But surely would have given him his `katharsis'.
He'll not be going yet.There's too much yet Unsung within the man.But when he goes, I'd stake ye coin o' the realm his only care For a phantom world he sounded and found wanting Will be a portion here, a portion there, Of this or that thing or some other thing That has a patent and intrinsical Equivalence in those egregious shillings.
And yet he knows, God help him! Tell me, now, If ever there was anything let loose On earth by gods or devils heretofore Like this mad, careful, proud, indifferent Shakespeare!
Where was it, if it ever was? By heaven, 'Twas never yet in Rhodes or Pergamon --In Thebes or Nineveh, a thing like this!
No thing like this was ever out of England;And that he knows.I wonder if he cares.
Perhaps he does....O Lord, that House in Stratford!