To little boastful Thames; where buttercups
Streak the white daisy pasture and moorhens
Cluck in the rising sedge. In India you
Exiled at your own home as I at mine,
Aghast at the long cruelty of tradition
At so much pain yet to be harvested
With the old instruments. In England I
Bruised, battered, crushed often in mind and spirit
But soon revived again like the torn grass
When, after battle, broken guns and caissons
Are hauled off and the black swoln corpses burnt.
I, the historian from hour to hour
As you are, though few letters pass between us
(For these things are beyond the scope of words)
Of such calamities as whelm us both,
The dragon darkness that piece-meal devours us,
The sun that sucks our life; and of those rare
Moments of peace when nothing hurts or broods
When music sounds across the tranquil fields
And light falls golden.
You with no ambition
As I have none, nor the few friends we share,
Except this only, to have no ambition;
With no sure knowledge but that knowledge changes
Beyond all local proof or local disproof;
With no support but friendship that makes light
Of broad dividing seas, broad continents,
That thrives on absence, that denies the force
Of scandal, contrariety, jealousies,
Friendship that springs unsown by precedent
Or purpose from the salted fields of hate,
That swells and ripens, drawing greater strength
Not only from sweet air but from soured earth.
Wait now a little longer by your peepul:
It is my willow if you make it so,
For I rest here by Ganges. Then in waiting
Watch the clear morning waters for a sign,
And when you see it, laugh, and I’ll see mine.
THE MARMOSITE’S MISCELLANY
[1] As I happened one day in a World Exhibition,
I watched a troop of monkeys in a wire cage.
They seemed little troubled by their cramped condition,
Agreeing to regard it as a needful stage,
And not too unhappy, of life’s pilgrimage.
They had monkey nuts in plenty (a nut is a nut)
And privacy at nightfall when the gates shut.
[2] Among those nimble monkeys, an old Marmosite.
I knew him at once for a creature of thought.
He moved a piece of looking-glass in the sunlight,
And smiled a little sadly as his fellows caught
At the bright round reflection and scuffled and fought,
But when he extinguished it with a sly paw,
Pretended to be tussling for a tassel of straw.
[3] ‘The critics,’ I remarked; ‘The critics,’ he agreed.
‘I was a scholar’s monkey. I read his books through.
My reading reminds me how sadly they need
These constant adventures after something new.
On us, then, as artists, on myself and you,
Devolves the dull task of springing the surprise,
Of aiding their digestions by sharp exercise.’
[4] I was astounded to hear the creature’s voice,
But there at Larissa, that Thessalian town,
Things happen most oddly by chance or by choice:
The least confusion shown would prove me a clown.
I talked to him calmly, I took his words down:
If any doubt my story, here is proof indeed,
The monkey’s views in long-hand for the world to read.
[5] ‘How can you bear it, Marmosite, in this cribbed cage,
Exposed to the gaze of the garrulous crowd?
Five minutes for me would provoke such a rage
I would rattle the bars, I would scream aloud.’
‘I earn my living by it,’ he answered and bowed.
‘I find it no hardship; after all, I see
At least as much of mankind as they do of me.’
[6] I questioned him further. ‘Learned Marmosite,
Confess, are you agnostic, are you atheist,
Or have you honest faith in any creed or rite?
Do arguments amuse you, does the Idealist
Combating, thrust with twist, the bald Materialist?’
He answered: ‘In Joe Miller recorded we find,
“What is Mind? No matter. What is Matter? Never mind.”
[7] ‘I am a mere monkey, having no soul,
But a heart and a head, and they console me much:
With no immoral appetites to keep in control.
I read the learned journals in Spanish or Dutch,
I adorn, may I say? whatever I touch.
Theology beguiles me in my soulless state,
And I mouth metaphysics early and late.
[8] ‘What the locusts of Athens could not devour,
What passed the Alexandrian caterpillar’s teeth,
The rank spiny grass and the remotest flower
That the canker-worm of Germany doubted beneath,
I am garlanding together in a glorious wreath
To fletcherize at leisure: one day you’ll see
I shall be proved the palmer-worm of Philosophy.
[9] ‘I would pour out my musings from A to final Z
Into your cordial ear were time not so brief –
The moody machinations of my heated head,
But one letter even shall afford relief.
And Truth is not constant, it conies like a thief,
It blooms for a moment like the wild rose,
Then storms break above it, and away it goes.
[10] ‘M shall be the letter to head my confession,
M stands in the middle of the learned line,
M is the magistrate of the mental session,
He titles the triumvirs myself, me and mine,
He mediates in all things common or divine,
He stewards the multiplicity of a rich house,
Mousetraps and muchness, like the Dormouse.’
[11] ‘Sing then, merry monkey, of the Muses’ choir,
Of Mormons and Mandarins, of Moll-Cut-the-Purse,
Of Moses and his Ministry to the Cloud of Fire,
Of many other matters both better and worse –
Let them all be threaded and strung in your verse.
Let M be the Movement, the Magnet, the Magician,
The Monk, the Merry Andrew, the Mathematician.’
[12] He said: ‘I cock my mirror above the cage wires,
And through the side window what visions I see!
The whole world of men and their dismal desires,
Fortune tellers, feather ticklers, the crystal sea,
Corky angels twanging the tunes of Tennessee,
Pearly gates, golden streets, a cokernut shy,
The moral peepshow pandering to the prurient eye.
[13] ‘I can see men moving in the Great Maze,
Who reaches the middle expects a rich prize:
Dead-ends confound them and returning ways.
Some trust in a system, some close their eyes,
Some hack at the hedges, some report it wise
To camp at a crosspath, staunchly to sit,
“Let the prize come to them, not they to it.”
[14] ‘Melchizedek had neither father nor mother,
He was the first cartographer of the Great Maze.
Moses was the next, I read of no other
Who pierced the holy puzzle in those dark days.
Melchizedek was mute, but Moses could raise
Apparitions of the Inmate, a mad Minotaur
From Horeb’s holy mountain his precepts to roar.
[15] ‘Mnevis in the likenes
s of a Golden Calf
Disputing for power with Jehovah the Just,
Moses takes Mnevis and hews him in half,
Burns him with charcoal and grinds him to dust,
The Hebrews drink Mnevis, drink him they must.
Inwardly rotting, they decline and die:
Moses was the Minister of the Most High.
[16] ‘Moloch, Mars, Modo and many more again
Swore vengeance for Mnevis on Jehovah’s power.
Michael did battle on the Heavenly plain,
He broke them to rout in a ruinous hour.
In that Pyrrhic victory fell the fine flower
Of the guardian angels, without number then,
Who police the appetites and desires of men.
[17] ‘Magic and Mockery sprang up like weeds,
Obscuring the clean track that Moses had shown.
Philosophers and poets scattered the seeds
Of idling and argument, no sooner sown
Than topping the hedges with buds overblown,
And flowering into sciences from whose fruit rose
A race of demi-demons, Jehovah’s new foes.
[18] ‘The Messiah came down as a sweet dispensation
To redeem the ravages of that Great War.
He went, as was fittest, to Jehovah’s nation
With a hairy herald trumping before.
Many a baleful insult this Messiah bore.
He was a mild martyr where His Father was wroth,
But Man was a monster, blaspheming both.
[19] ‘He was the son of Mary, in a manger born;
Between two malefactors on a mount He died,
For the pains of sinful man His heart sadly torn.
The world must bow and wonder, or woe betide!
To hear of His humility and the Priests’ pride.
Yet I can view Him calmly in a clearer light:
The Messiah died for Man and not for Marmosite.
[20] ‘I met a titled Manchu, a tall Mandarin.
He intended his sons for a Missionary School.
He was a pagan rooted in ancestral sin,
But a man of discernment, no wise a fool.
He wanted them generals to conquer and rule.
On the Methodist Mission his heart was long set:
“The Christians are the boldest with the bayonet.”
[21] ‘Let us pass to Mahomet, the mouthpiece of God;
The Moors and the Mongols know his name well.
In Arabian Mecca Mahomet’s feet trod,
Superstition trembled when he tolled the bell.
He unriddled the Maze, his books clearly tell.
More learned than Moses, more holy than Christ,
And every honest Mussulman loves sherbet iced.
[22] ‘Of Muggleton, the tailor, and his inward Light!
He stood for the one God, great and unfriended!
None who came before him had led men aright.
He charted the Maze before he had ended:
What Muggleton ordained could not be amended.
All were duly damned but for one saving grace,
They must yield to Muggleton the Messiah’s place.
[23] ‘Were I a merry tailor I would bless his commission,
A staunch Muggletonian, true to my trade.
With state or with church I would make no condition,
In the public pillory chanting unafraid:
On my dumb tailor’s goose his hand would be laid,
To testify in Latin, to glory and groan,
“Quam verus propheta Lodowick Muggleton.”
[24] ‘The Mormons bear witness to the golden plates,
To the glasses of crystal set on Smith’s nose.
Mormon and Mosiah guiding their fates,
They made the salt Wilderness bloom like the rose.
They had little mercy on their Gentile foes,
They massacred their warriors once and again,
The Midianite militia on the parched plain.
[25] ‘Morgan was a Buccaneer on the Spanish Main,
Vice-Admiral to Mansvelt of the pirate fleet;
Mansvelt was murdered, beginning Morgan’s reign.
He was a fierce fighter, he knew no defeat,
He delighted in torture, he drank arrack neat,
He captured Panama with its jewels and plate,
But made small pretension to prophetic state.
[26] ‘Mull’d Sack was a rogue deserving the Wreath.
He began chimney sweeper at Mary-le-Bow,
He picked Cromwell’s pocket upon Hounslow Heath;
But thence to Cologne, little favour to show,
He robbed from King Charles all his bags at a blow.
His mistress, a merchant’s wife, lived in Mark’s Lane.
He pretended no piety, his plunders were plain.
[27] ‘Moll-Cut-the-Purse was Mercury’s bitch,
Prostitute, procuress, pickpocket, thief;
On the spoils of the public she grew very rich,
Wasting no time in repentance and grief.
A pipe of tobacco was her joy in chief.
Morgan, Mull’d Sack and this Moll-Cut-the-Purse
Dishonoured the prophets, but died none the worse.
[28] ‘In the Middle Ages it was memento mori.
Vivere memento, is the modern cry.
“We are all one kindred” was the old story,
The Struggle for Existence gives that the lie,
Competition is loud at the Cokernut shy.
What with Marx and Malthus and the Millionaires,
The Angel of Death has been kicked down the stairs.
[29] ‘Movements are judged by their monied results;
The days of Revelation are not yet done.
The Middle West and Manchester welcome new cults,
Mary Baker Eddy enjoys a rich run,
There are millions to be made in a new form of fun,
Uncovering a cypher, say, in Matthew or Mark
For the sacrifice of bull-calves in the pitch dark.’
[30] ‘Mischievous monkey, do not tell me more.
What further you imagine, I do not dare think.
Have you, then, no principles to praise and adore?
Is folly your food, and is laughter your drink?’
He answered me gravely, without a smile or blink:
‘Go-cart in the Lexicon has an honoured place,
Being next before God, with a lien on His Grace.
[31] ‘Principles I have, but only one or two,
Firm enough foundation for a busy mind.
First to reverence God, but not from any pew;
No Frankenstein monster of a furious mind.
If God be Omnipotent, can a creature find
Satisfaction in serving a Classification,
A singling out of qualities, God in separation?
[32] ‘Next, to myself and my neighbours at once
I owe this respect without favour or fear,
That he may be a doctor, I a mere dunce,
He may be a pauper, a Pope, or a peer,
But unless as an equal I shall not go near.
I will not kiss his great toe except he kiss mine,
Nor swell in self-importance at his flattering whine.
[33] ‘The maunderings of the maniac signifying nothing
I hold in respect; I hear his tale out.
Thought comes often clad in the strangest clothing.
So Kekulé, the chemist, watched the weird rout
Of eager atom-serpents winding in and out,
And walzing tail to mouth; in that absurd guise
Appeared benzene and anilin, their drugs and their dyes.
[34] ‘The Moon is the Mistress of escape and pity,
Her regions are portalled by an ivory gate.
There are fruit-plats and fountains in her silver city,
With honeysuckle hedges where true lovers mate,
With u
ndisputed thrones where beggars hold state,
With smooth hills and fields where in freedom may run
All men maimed and manacled by the cruel sun.
[35] ‘Her madness is musical, kindly her mood,
She is Dian no more when the sun quits the skies.
She is the happy Venus of the hushed wood.
So artless Actaeon may banquet his eyes
At the crisp hair curling on her naked thighs,
At her shapely shoulders, her breasts and her knees,
She will kiss him pleasantly under tall trees.’
PART II
[36] ‘You ask me of the Muses. What shall I say?
To talk of my friends is no easy affair.
They treat me, be sure, in a cousinly way;
I coax them, I tease them, I tangle their hair.
Melpomené, my favourite, finds me a chair.
She tempts me with tit-bits in a tasty row.
I am like a learned parrot she loved long ago.
[37] ‘Often I mock them, “you mannerly minxes,
The way you dress for drawing-rooms makes me laugh loud.
To see your flowing skirts, your front like the Sphinx’s.
You stop your fine noses at the foetid crowd.
I flush and I tremble to see you so proud.”
“Aristotle has invited us to afternoon tea.
You are jealous, my marmosite,” smiles Melpomené.
[38] ‘Last night as the Muses and I sat together,
Conversing in riddles from reason remote,
I begged pretty Pegasus for a wing feather,
I cut it to a quill and in a book wrote.
Melpomené was drowsy, she took little note.
Then a copy of Erewhon on the table near
Provoked me to the poem in parts you shall hear.
[39] ‘I title it The Safe, Erewhon Redivivus,
The odd phantasmagoria of a restless night.
We poets drift about where the mad winds drive us;
We shoot our urgent arrows far out of sight,
Only when we find them can we guess their flight.
This, then, is Samuel Butler, moving alive,
Vicariously nerved in nineteen twenty-five.
THE SAFE, OR EREWHON REDIVIVUS
[40] ‘I was dreaming a dream that was not of Merry May,
With Flora and Venus and white lambs at play.
Nor yet of plague and famine, oil wells aflame.
But across a world in little,
An arras strained and brittle
The rending progression of an angry Name.
[41] ‘Blunden wore the sunset hues of a stranded bream,
A shoal of Oxford minnows followed upstream,
Edward Marsh was poised on the edge of a sofa,
Hardy dribbled his umbrella,
Belloc danced a tarantella,