Sir Ronald Ross

“ Europe, A.D. 500.
The World beheld them and adored—adored,
And fear’d, and sought to slay them; for
The battle-brood of gods is battle-born.
But they endured; nor in the thunder found
Harm, or the bolt of death.
And God look’d down and spake, and thro’ the Earth
The murmur ran, terranean like the shock
When central earthquakes jar, until the Deep
Foams tingling to the icèd poles ”

“ Especially our duty at present is to better our present foothold; to investigate; to comprehend the forces of nature; to set our state rationally in order; to stamp down disease in body, mind, and government; to lighten the monstrous misery of our fellows, not by windy dogmas, but by calm science. The sufferings of the world are due to this, that we despise those plain earthly teachers, reason, work, and discipline. Lost in many speculations, we leave our house disordered, unkept, and dirty. ”

“ Thou seëst the heavens, and earth, and marts and towers
Of teeming man; the battle smoke that lours
Above the nations where they strive below;⁠—
The gleam of golden cohorts and the cloud
Of shrieking peoples yielding to the brink⁠—
The gleam, the gold, the agony, the rage;
The civic virtue of a race unbow’d;
The reeling empire, lost in license, sink;
And chattering pigmies of a later age.
1881-2.
Science
Science
I would rejoice in iron arms with those
Who, nobly in the scorn of recompense,
Have dared to follow Truth alone, and thence
To teach the truth—nor fear’d the rage that rose. ”

“ In 1881 I joined the military medical service of India, and was called upon to serve during the next seven years in Madras, Bangalore, Burma, and the Andaman Islands. Having abundant leisure, I occupied most of it in the study of various sciences and arts, in all of which I attempted some works to the best of my ability. For this I make no excuse to my conscience, since to my mind art and science are the same, and efforts in both, however poor the result may be, are to be commended more than idleness. ”

“ That high philosophy
Shall ever counsel men
To mend this mindless state
In which, as in the East,
We drift on floods of fate,
As helpless as the beast,
Then here the issue is—
Look on this land and weep—
A race as ruin’d as this,
A misery as deep.
II
Seeing how pent we are
Within our human ways,
That save in ceaseless war
We cannot spend our days,
In struggle each with each
To get a breathing space,
While Heaven, out of reach,
Looks on with scornful face ”

“ Near the end of the seven years, however, I began to be drawn toward certain thoughts which from the first had occurred to me in my profession, especially as to the cause of the widespread sickness and of the great misery and decadence of the people of India. Racked by poverty, swept by epidemics, housed in hovels, ruled by superstitions, they presented the spectacle of an ancient civilisation fallen for centuries into decay. One saw there both physical and mental degeneration. Since the time of the early mathematicians science had died ”

“ Made mad with inner ire.
III
Who cries! The night is black
As death and not as night;
The world is fallen back
To nothing; sound and light
And moon and stars and skies,
Thunder and lightning—all
Gone, gone! Not even cries
The cricket in the hall,
The dog without. At last
The end of all the hours.
Was that a Spirit pass’d
Between the slamming doors?
We slept not yet we wake!
Was it a voice that cried,
‘Awake, ye sleepless; wake,
Ye deathless who have died’?
No voice. No light, no sound.
It was the fancy that
At midnight makes rebound
Of thoughts we labour at
At mid-day. ”

“ The poem, such as it is, is not a diary in verse, but rather the figure of a work and of a philosophy. . . . I find I cannot rise with those who would soar above reason in the chase of something supernal. Infinities and absolutes are still beyond us; though we may hope to come nearer to them some day by the patient study of little things. Our first duty is the opposite of that which many prophets enjoin upon us—or so I think. We must not accept any speculations merely because they now appear pleasant, flattering, or ennobling to us. We must be content to creep upwards step by step ”

“ We indulge too much in dreams; in politics which organise not prosperity but contention; in philosophies which expressly teach irrationalism, fakirism, and nescience. The poor fakir seated begging by the roadside; with his visions—and his sores! Such is man. . . . An old philosophy this—like the opposite one. The poem gathers itself under it and attempts to use the great symbols of that wonderful Land, the drought, the doubt, the pains of self, the arid labour, the horrors of whole nations diseased, the crime of Nescience, parodying God’s words, and the victory of His thunder and rain. ”

“ Never hath freedom’s cry
The stifling stillness cleaved;
The hopeless millions die
That yet have never lived.
No noble god of earth,
Man can but snatch and eat;
Starvation murders worth,
Wealth makes the beast complete. ”

“ Appointed for our tears
This term of exile. Lo,
Life is but nothing thus:
Old friendships perishèd;
Not hand in hand with us
The dying father dead;
Narrow’d the mind that should
Thro’ all experience range
And grow ”

“ Here was the living picture of the fate which destroyed Greece, Rome, and Spain; and I saw in it the work of nescience—the opposite of science. . . . Returning to Britain in 1888, I qualified myself for pathological researches, and about 1890 or 1891 entered upon a careful study of malarial fever, in the hope of finding out accurately how it is caused and may be prevented. ”

“ That some dim distant light may haply break.
. . . . . .
The painful faces ask, can we not cure?
We answer, No, not yet; we seek the laws.
O God, reveal thro’ all this thing obscure
The unseen, small, but million-murdering cause.
Bangalore, 1890-3. ”

“ Thy wisdom we wot not nor ever shall we know;
But from Thy high throne, O God, Thy voice and Thy thunder
In utterance reïterate give glory and strength.
Finis
Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation has been corrected without note. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Other errors have been corrected as noted below. Original list of Contents at the beginning contained only listings for Parts in the section IN EXILE so links for individual poem titles have been added for reader convenience. ”

“ Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
PREFACE These verses were written in India between the years 1881 and 1899, mostly during my researches on malaria. Friends who have read that part of them which is called In Exile complained that they could not easily follow the movement of it; and as I am now publishing the poems together with a text-book on malaria—and also because I desire very strongly to rid my mind of this subject which has occupied it for twenty years—I take the opportunity to give such explanation of the work as I can find expression for. ”