The sum of all is - yes, my doubt is great, My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough. I have read much, thought much, experienced much, Yet would die rather than avow my fear 50 With the rough purblind mass we seek to We are their lords, or they are free of us, And thrown into the balance, turns the How we may lead a comfortable life, Of course you are remarking all this How narrowly and grossly I view life, The masses, and regard complacently I do. I act for, talk for, live for this world now, As this world prizes action, life and talk: May be to make the next life more intense? ΤΟ Do you know, I have often had a dream It shoots with corresponding foolery Halfway into the next still, on and off! 20 As when a traveller, bound from North to South, Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in In France spurns flannel: where's its Linen goes next, and last the skin itself, When, through his journey, was the fool I'm at case now, friend; worldly in this world, I take and like its way of life; I think My brothers, who administer the means, 30 Live better for my comfort that's good too; And God, if he pronounce upon such life, What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life If, like the candid person you appear, As I of mine, live up to its full law Put natural religion to the test Down to the root of all that checks your will Whoso embraced a woman in the field, Want, but the true thing with what proves its truth, To wit, a relation from that thing to me, Touching from head to foot which Sa touch I feel, And with it take the rest, this life of ours! - Not as I state it, who (you please Disfigure such a life and call it names. But ignorance and weakness have rights There needs no crucial effort to find truth If here or there or anywhere about: see, And if we can't, be glad we've earned at least The right, by one laborious proof the more, To graze in peace earth's pleasant pasturage. Men are not angels, neither are they brutes: Something we may see, all we cannot see. What need of lying? I say, I see all, And swear to each detail the most minute 10 In what I think a Pan's face you, mere cloud: I swear I hear him speak and see him For fear, if once I drop the emphasis, "Pastor est tui Dominus." You find 20 In this the pleasant pasture of our life Much you may eat without the least offence, Much you don't eat because your maw objects, Much you would eat but that your fellow- Open great eyes at you and even butt, them; You weigh your pleasure with their butts and bleats And strike the balance. Sometimes certain fears 30 Restrain you, real checks since you find them so; Sometimes you please yourself and nothing checks: And thus you graze through life with not one lie, And like it best. But do you, in truth's name? If so, you beat which means you are not I Who needs must make earth mine and feed my fill Not simply unbutted at, unbickered with, But motioned to the velvet of the sward By those obsequious wethers' very selves. Look at me, sir; my age is double yours: 40 At yours, I knew beforehand, so enjoyed, While writing all the same my articles On music, poetry, the fictile vase Found at Albano, chess, Anacreon's Greek. But you the highest honour in your life, The thing you'll crown yourself with, all your days, Is dining here and drinking this last 6c glass I pour you out in sign of amity Judge what's my estimation by the fact, The world would brand the lie my "the bishop's an arch "And knave perhaps, but not so frank a 70 fool." Whereas I should not dare for both my ears Breathe one such syllable, smile one such smile, Before the chaplain who reflects myself My shade's so much more potent than your flesh. What's your reward, self-abnegating friend? Stood you confessed of those exceptional A zealot with a mad ideal in reach, war, An artist whose religion is his art He chose to represent as fixtures there, While certain hell-deep instincts, man's 10 "The Slum and Cellar, or Whitechapel life "Limned after dark!" it made me laugh, I know, And pleased a month, and brought you in ten pounds. - Success I recognise and compliment, And therefore give you, if you choose, three words (The card and pencil-scratch is quite Which whether here, in Dublin or New Will get you, prompt as at my eyebrow's Such terms as never you aspired to get In all our own reviews and some not ours. 20 Go write your lively sketches! be the first "Blougram, or The Eccentric Confi 30 dence" Or better simply say, "The Outwardbound." Why, men as soon would throw teeth in my As copy and quote the infamy chalked broad About me on the church-door opposite. You will not wait for that experience though, For Blougram, he believed, say, half 40 The other portion, as he shaped it thus To place hell at the bottom of the earth) "On the whole," he thought, “I justify "On every point where cavillers like this "Oppugn my life: he tries one kind of fence, "I close, he's worsted, that's enough for him. 50 Another way than Blougram's purpose "As certain also of your own poets have said "— To Protus in his Tyranny: much health! They give thy letter to me, even now: 89 468 MEN AND WOMEN 10 For so shall men remark, in such an act For vulgar souls, by ruling and the rest. 20 Climbed with the eye to cheer the architect, Didst ne'er engage in work for mere work's sake Hadst ever in thy heart the luring hope Thou first of men mightst look out to the The vulgar saw thy tower, thou sawest the I I know the true proportions of a man Inventing one. In brief, all arts are mine; We of these latter days, with greater mind Look not so great, beside their simple way, for ours. Being, as I find much reason to conceive, Endure effacement by another part? See, in the chequered pavement opposite, 70 The portions of mankind; and after, so, 8c Have reached, thou sayest well, each at The outside verge that rounds our faculty; It takes but little water just to touch rest In due succession: but the finer air |