Arthur Hugh Clough

“ Shrills not his trumpet of ‘To Horse, To Horse!’
But consults columns in a Railway Guide;
A demigod of figures; an Achilles
Of computation;
A verier Mercury, express come down
To do the world with swift arithmetic.
Well, one could bear with that, were the end ours,
One’s choice and the correlative of the soul;
To drudge were then sweet service. But indeed
The earth moves slowly, if it move at all,
And by the general, not the single force
Of the link’d members of the vast machine.
In all these crowded rooms of industry. ”

“ Life little loves, ’tis true, this peevish piety;
E’en they with whom it thinks to be securest
Your most religious, delicatest, purest
Discern, and show as pious people can
Their feeling that you are not quite a man.
Still the thing has its place; and, with sagacity,
Much might be done by one of your capacity.
A virtuous attachment formed judiciously
Would come, one sees, uncommonly propitiously:
Turn you but your affections the right way,
And what mayn’t happen none of us can say
For, in despite of devils and of mothers,
Your good young men make catches, too, like others. ”

“ Go right on, and close behind thee
There shall follow still and find thee,
Help, sure help.
SCENE VIII.—-In the Piazza.
Di. Not for thy service, thou imperious fiend
Not to do thy work, or the like of thine;
Not to please thee, O base and fallen spirit!
But One Most High, Most True, whom without thee
It seems I cannot.
O the misery
That one must truck and pactise with the world
To gain the ’vantage-ground to assail it from;
To set upon the Giant one must first,
O perfidy! have eat the Giant’s bread. ”

“ And how one ought never to think of one’s self,
And how pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking—
My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! ”

“ Instinct turns instinct out, and thought
Wheels round on thought. To bleed for others’ wrongs
In vindication of a cause, to draw
The sword of the Lord and Gideon oh, that seems
The flower and top of life! But fight because
Some poor misconstruing trifler haps to say
I lie, when I do not lie,
Why should I? Call you this a cause? I can’t. ”

“ That I won’t suffer. Yet it is the law;
’Tis this makes action always. But for this
We ne’er should act at all; and act we must.
Why quarrel with the fashion of a fact
Which, one way, must be, one time, why not now? ”

“ Where are the great, whom thou would’st wisl to praise thee?
Where are the pure, whom thou would’st choose to love thee?
Where are the brave, to stand supreme above thee,
Whose high commands would cheer, whose chiding, raise thee? ”

“ At Naples, truly, as the preface tells,
Last year, in the Toledo; it came on me,
And did me good at once. At Naples then,
At Venice now. Ah! and I think at Venice
Christ is not risen either.
Sp. Nay,
Such things don’t fall out every day:
Having once happened, as we know,
In Palestine so long ago,
How should it now at Venice here?
Where people, true enough, appear
To appreciate more and understand
Their ices, and their Austrian band,
And dark-eyed girls. ”

“ In me were fixed, and in me must abide.
When the enemy is near thee,
Call on us!
In our hands we will upbear thee,
He shall neither scathe nor scare thee,
He shall fly thee, and shall fear thee. ”

“ Life it is beautiful wholly, and could we eliminate only
‘This interfering, enslaving, o’ermastering demon of craving,
This wicked tempter inside us to ruin still eager to guide us,
Life were beatitude, action a possible pure satisfaction.
Sp. (Hexameters, by all that’s odious,
Beshod with rhyme to run melodious!)
Di. All as I go on my way I behold them consorting and coupling;
Faithful it seemeth, and fond; very fond, very possibly faithful;
All as I go on my way with a pleasure sincere and unmingled.
Life it is beautiful truly, my brothers, I grant it you duly ”

“ One’s own dress, too one’s manner, what one ‘s doing
And saying, all assist to one’s renewing.
I love to see, in these their fitting places,
The bows, the forms, and all you call grimaces.
I heartily could wish we’d kept some more of them,
However much we talk about the bore of them.
Fact is, your awkward parvenus are shy at it,
Afraid to look like waiters if they try at it.
‘Tis sad to what democracy is leading
Give me your Eighteenth Century for high breeding. ”

“ That lent rough life sweet Sunday-seeming rests,
Making earth heaven like. Welcome, wicked world,
The hardening heart, the calculating brain
Narrowing its doors to thought, the lying lips,
The calm-dissembling eyes; the greedy flesh,
The world, the Devil—welcome, welcome, welcome!
Sp. (from within) . This stern necessity of things
On every side our being rings;
Our sallying eager actions fall
Vainly against that iron wall.
Where once her finger points the way,
The wise thinks only to obey ”

“ But God can act the Devil when He chooses.
Farewell! But, verbum sapienti satis—
I do not make this revelation gratis.
Farewell: beware!
Di. Ill spirits can quote holy books I knew;
What will they not say? what not dare to do?
Sp. Beware, beware!
Di. What, loitering still? Still, O foul spirit, there?
Go hence, I tell thee, go! I will beware.
(Alone) . It must be then. I feel it in my soul ”

“ The main effect is admirable clearly.
‘Good manners,’ said our great-aunts, ‘next to piety:’
And so, my friend, hurrah for good society!
SCENE IV. On the Piazza.
Sp. Insulted! By the living Lord!
He laid his hand upon his sword.
‘Fort,’ did he say? a German brute,
With neither heart nor brains to shoot.
Di. What does he mean? he’s wrong, I had done nothing.
’Twas a mistake more his, I am sure, than mine.
He is quite wrong I feel it. Come, let us go.
Sp. Go up to him! you must, that’s flat.
Be threatened by a beast like that!
Di. He’s violent; what can I do against him? ”

“ And almost every one when age,
Disease, or sorrows strike him,
Inclines to think there is a God,
Or something very like Him.
But eccoci! with our barchetta,
Here at the Sant’ Elisabetta.
Di. Vineyards and maize, that’s pleasant for sore eyes.
Sp. And on the island’s other side,
The place where Murray’s faithful Guide
Informs us Byron used to ride.
Di. The trellised vines! enchanting! Sandhills, ho!
The sea, at last the sea the real broad sea
Beautiful! and a glorious breeze upon it.
Sp. Look back; one catches at this station
Lagoon and sea in combination. ”

“ In regulating manner. Whether these things
Be right, I do not know: I only know ’tis
To lose one’s youth too early. Oh, not yet
Not yet I make the sacrifice.
Sp. Du tout!
To give up nature’s just what would not do. ”

“ Beguile, betray thee to our wrong!
On to the landing, onward. Nay,
Sweet dream, a little longer stay!
On to the landing; here. And, ah!
Life is not as the gondola.
Sp. Tre ore. So. The Parthenone
Is it? you haunt for your limone. ”

“ Di. For grosser evils their gross remedies
The laws afford us; let us be content;
For finer wounds the law would, if it could,
Find medicine too; it cannot, let us bear;
For sufferance is the badge of all men’s tribes.
Sp. Because we can’t do all we would,
Does it follow, to do nothing’s good?
No way to help the law’s rough sense
By equities of self-defence?
Well, for yourself it may be nice
To serve vulgarity and vice:
Must sisters, too, and wives and mothers,
Fare like their patient sons and brothers?
Di. He that loves sister, mother, more than me
Sp. ”