FullReads

So, drawing comfortable breath again,
You weigh and find, whatever more or less
I boast of my ideal realized 80
Is nothing in the balance when opposed
To your ideal, your grand simple life,
Of which you will not realize one jot.
I am much, you are nothing; you would be all,
I would be merely much: you beat me there.

No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why!
The common problem, yours, mine, every one’s,
Is–not to fancy what were fair in life
Provided it could be–but, finding first
What may be, then find how to make it fair 90
Up to our means: a very different thing!
No abstract intellectual plan of life
Quite irrespective of life’s plainest laws,
But one, a man, who is man and nothing more,
May lead within a world which (by your leave)
Is Rome or London, not Fool’s-paradise.
Embellish Rome, idealize away,
Make paradise of London if you can,
You’re welcome, nay, you’re wise.

A simile!
We mortals cross the ocean of this world 100
Each in his average cabin of a life;
The best’s not big, the worst yields elbow-room.
Now for our six months’ voyage–how prepare?
You come on shipboard with a landsman’s list
Of things he calls convenient: so they are!
An India screen is pretty furniture,
A piano-forte is a fine resource,
All Balzac’s novels occupy one shelf,
The new edition fifty volumes long;
And little Greek books, with the funny type 110
They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next:
Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes!
And Parma’s pride, the Jerome, let us add!
‘T were pleasant could Correggio’s fleeting glow
Hang full in face of one where’er one roams,
Since he more than the others brings with him
Italy’s self–the marvellous Modenese!–
Yet was not on your list before, perhaps.
–Alas, friend, here’s the agent . . . is ‘t the name?
The captain, or whoever’s master here– 120
You see him screw his face up; what’s his cry
Ere you set foot on shipboard? “Six feet square!”
If you won’t understand what six feet mean,
Compute and purchase stores accordingly–
And if, in pique because he overhauls
Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board
Bare–why, you cut a figure at the first
While sympathetic landsmen see you off;
Not afterward, when long ere half seas over,
You peep up from your utterly naked boards 130
Into some snug and well-appointed berth,
Like mine for instance (try the cooler jug–
Put back the other, but don’t jog the ice!)
And mortified you mutter “Well and good;
He sits enjoying his sea-furniture;
‘Tis stout and proper, and there’s store of it;
Though I’ve the better notion, all agree,
Of fitting rooms up. Hang the carpenter,
Neat ship-shape fixings and contrivances–
I would have brought my Jerome, frame and all!” 140
And meantime you bring nothing: never mind–
You’ve proved your artist-nature: what you don’t
You might bring, so despise me, as I say.