FullReads

–Except it’s yours! Admire me as these may,
You don’t. But whom at least do you admire?
Present your own perfection, your ideal,
Your pattern man for a minute–oh, make haste,
Is it Napoleon you would have us grow?
Concede the means; allow his head and hand,
(A large concession, clever as you are)
Good! In our common primal element
Of unbelief (we can’t believe, you know– 440
We’re still at that admission, recollect!)
Where do you find–apart from, towering o’er
The secondary temporary aims
Which satisfy the gross taste you despise–
Where do you find his star?–his crazy trust
God knows through what or in what? it’s alive
And shines and leads him, and that’s all we want.
Have we aught in our sober night shall point
Such ends as his were, and direct the means
Of working out our purpose straight as his, 450
Nor bring a moment’s trouble on success
With after-care to justify the same?
–Be a Napoleon, and yet disbelieve–
Why, the man’s mad, friend, take his light away!
What’s the vague good o’ the world, for which you dare
With comfort to yourself blow millions up?
We neither of us see it! we do see
The blown-up millions–spatter of their brains
And writhing of their bowels and so forth,
In that bewildering entanglement 460
Of horrible eventualities
Past calculation to the end of time!
Can I mistake for some clear word of God
(Which were my ample warrant for it all)
His puff of hazy instinct, idle talk,
“The State, that’s I,” quack-nonsense about crowns,
And (when one beats the man to his last hold)
A vague idea of setting things to rights,
Policing people efficaciously,
More to their profit, most of all to his own; 470
The whole to end that dismallest of ends
By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church,
And resurrection of the old regime?
Would I, who hope to live a dozen years,
Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such?
No: for, concede me but the merest chance
Doubt may be wrong–there’s judgment, life to come
With just that chance, I dare not. Doubt proves right?
This present life is all?–you offer me
Its dozen noisy years, without a chance 480
That wedding an archduchess, wearing lace,
And getting called by divers new-coined names,
Will drive off ugly thoughts and let me dine,
Sleep, read and chat in quiet as I like!
Therefore I will not.

Take another case;
Fit up the cabin yet another way.
What say you to the poets? shall we write
Hamlet, Othello–make the world our own,
Without a risk to run of either sort?
I can’t!–to put the strongest reason first. 490
“But try,” you urge, “the trying shall suffice;
The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life:
Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!”
Spare my self-knowledge–there’s no fooling me!
If I prefer remaining my poor self,
I say so not in self-dispraise but praise.
If I’m a Shakespeare, let the well alone;
Why should I try to be what now I am?
If I’m no Shakespeare, as too probable–
His power and consciousness and self-delight 500
And all we want in common, shall I find–
Trying forever? while on points of taste
Wherewith, to speak it humbly, he and I
Are dowered alike–I’ll ask you, I or he,
Which in our two lives realizes most?
Much, he imagined–somewhat, I possess.
He had the imagination; stick to that!
Let him say, “In the face of my soul’s works
Your world is worthless and I touch it not
Lest I should wrong them”–I’ll withdraw my plea. 510
But does he say so? look upon his life!
Himself, who only can, gives judgment there.
He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces
To build the trimmest house in Stratford town;
Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of things,
Giulio Romano’s pictures, Dowland’s lute;
Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too,
And none more, had he seen its entry once,
Than “Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal.”
Why then should I who play that personage, 520
The very Pandulph Shakespeare’s fancy made,
Be told that had the poet chanced to start
From where I stand now (some degree like mine
Being just the goal he ran his race to reach)
He would have run the whole race back, forsooth,
And left being Pandulph, to begin write plays?
Ah, the earth’s best can be but the earth’s best!
Did Shakespeare live, he could but sit at home
And get himself in dreams the Vatican,
Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls, 530
And English books, none equal to his own,
Which I read, bound in gold (he never did).
–Terni’s fall, Naples’ bay and Gothard’s top–
Eh, friend? I could not fancy one of these;
But, as I pour this claret, there they are:
I’ve gained them–crossed St. Gothard last July
With ten mules to the carriage and a bed
Slung inside; is my hap the worse for that?
We want the same things, Shakespeare and myself,
And what I want, I have: he, gifted more, 540
Could fancy he too had them when he liked,
But not so thoroughly that, if fate allowed,
He would not have them …also in my sense.
We play one game; I send the ball aloft
No less adroitly that of fifty strokes
Scarce five go o’er the wall so wide and high
Which sends them back to me: I wish and get.
He struck balls higher and with better skill,
But at a poor fence level with his head,
And hit–his Stratford house, a coat of arms, 550
Successful dealings in his grain and wool–
While I receive heaven’s incense in my nose
And style myself the cousin of Queen Bess.
Ask him, if this life’s all, who wins the game?