Svatopluk Čech

“ As o’er his fluttering wing, with purple flaming,
Light’s tracery glints, he preens his emerald side,
The woodland peacock flashing through the gloom,
A glowing meteor, irridescent-eyed:
The butterfly there poises on the bloom,
A winged fire aloft the apes in guise
Of demons scare repose, in bough and trailer
Entanglement ensconced, with dismal cries:
Lower head-downward fly, hang by the tail or
Swarm, lightning-like, o’er tree trunks, swarm or scatter:
Daring upon festooned lianas swing
In attitudes grotesque: while all sides ring,
Above, below, with endless buzz and chatter. ”

“ And thus the king in thunder tones saluted:
“Long live our monarch, mighty Hanuman”
Then, not a moment waiting for his guidance,
Like the wild huntsman’s pack of phantoms chiding
Through wintry woods, that mass of apes roll, gliding
O’er branch and creeper, skip and hop and fly, dance
Through the dense thickets, leap from trees to trees
In one wild avalanche of deafening roar, all
Converging to where into depths of seas
The old wood’s selvage peers from cliffs of coral. ”

“ The grace and softness of each supple motion,
In every one it wakens warm devotion
Whose natural sense of beauty’s not abortive.
Its use for life on trees can’t be denied,
’Tis sanctioned, too, by countless generations.
Sires, grandsires, gloried in this train’s gyrations:
’Twas Hanuman the Mighty’s joy and pride
E’en fairest stars through night’s autumnal trail
In lines of glittering light a sparkling tail:
And this choice decoration—we’re to flout it
Merely because mankind is now without it? ”

“ How Hanuman depict in fitting manner
That mighty change in all things, high and low,
Wherewith, great Peter’s compeer, at a blow
O’er Apedom thou didst hoist fair culture’s banner!
How deftly wert thou skilled to use the stores
The ship’s broad shoulders brought thee to thy shores;
Those side scenes, costumes and a hundred trifles,
Of which is built our real world’s scenic rival’s:
With these thou hadst in thy still forest grove meant
To found a world, of well bred apes the sure hope,
Whose polish fine and cultivated movement
Should more than run abreast with that of Europe. ”

“ You, sure, forgetting there of apes the land is,
Had cried: “Lo! Pricop, one of thy prime dandies!”
As to ape lady lionesses say,
Who’d paint the lily or their charms pourtray?
Those gorgeous silks, those “parures” so transcendent,
The subtle movement of those fine, dusk hands,
When, like a love-net, many a fan resplendent
Its wavering curves and chequered ribs expands,
And listening to the soft and bird-like cluttering
You think of other fair ones’ half-lisped kisses
By moonlit Moldau, or the foreign spluttering
Of malapropos by raw school-girl misses. ”

“ Long time in peace the ape empire bloomed, progressing,
His work’s success the king with pleasure filled,
Only at times the parrot plague distilled
A drop of wormwood in his cup of blessing.
These spottled dolts we all know have the failing
To mimic what they hear with dismal wailing.
Thus it befel one graceless bird kept screeching
“Humanity,” here “Culture” one went preaching,
Here “Progress,” “Freedom,” through the leaf-wove thatch whirred,
There “Ideal” the fools squalled on and on,
And clumps of parrots pealed their favourite catchword
In chorus: “Ci—Civilization.” ”

“ For charlatans are more at home and able
Where all clear outlines ’neath a dappled haze
Subtract themselves from critics’ serious gaze.
But let us soberly review this fable:
I honour Hanuman, his fame assert,
Truth, though, will ne’er diminish his desert;
In Rama, in man’s form, god being embodied,
And not in ape, to man the preference gave.
This man a warrior was, with whom a brave
But mere ally, the apish hero plodded.
Apes’ prior claims! ’tis a mere craze that haunts him,
And in the magic bridge he vainly vaunts him ”

“ How temptingly its luscious load stoops o’er ’em!
Each ape-mouth’s watering, and—hi cockalorum!
The vanguard’s pulling down the promised branches,
But all at once recoils upon its haunches
In panic terror, thunder-struck, half-dying,
And with a squeal the ranks are tumbling, flying,
For ugh! it is transformed, that fruity banquet
To vampires which, by hinder claws suspended
In drowsy slumber, fruit-like forms protended,
Swathed in their olive pinions’ oil-skin blanket.
But now, in wild nocturnal rigs is wheeling
On dusk-brown bats’ wings o’er the army’s squealing. ”

“ Bread trees, bananas, banyans and filling
Fast with live fruits that dangle from the ceiling.
Lo! all the branches round are swaying, spinning
With swarms grotesque of bodies frizzed and furry,
And with a hundred monkey masks are grinning:
Down by the pendent, spreading creepers hurry
Groups thicker yet, and from its trellis dangling,
Down swings another heavy vintage wrangling.
How fix in words that hubbub and those japes,
Buzz, chatter, shrieks, the Parliament of apes
Rent all the wood with proffering its delight
At the lost king’s return: and, heavenly sight! ”

“ We’re only skilled to skip and climb and gobble.
On us, no ray of Progress e’er intrudes,
Nor poetry nor music us ennoble.
To us, the theatre’s scarce e’en a name;
And as for politics, saloons—O! Brahm!
What wonder if those apes of progress—or rest
E’en the mere name ape’s now tabooed as shocking.
The cultured race of man, then, looks down mocking
Upon his uncouth brethren of the forest:
Nay, ’tis but yesterday Cam’s glorious son dared,
After long ages, scornful, had denied it,
To own the kinship, by his great heart guided,
And what a storm of protest ’gainst him thundered! ”

“ A troop of apes has scrambled up the plane tree
That stiffens ’mid the palms—a lonely sentry,
And one strong arm points furthest out to seaward.
From this, in shorter time than takes to write it,
Of apes and cat-apes swings a girdle dappled,
Upon the branch, with feet and tail united.
The first, head prone to earth, is firmly grappled,
And, with both hands, the ape below it claspeth
Fast by the tail; this ape a third’s tail graspeth ”

“ With groves of palms and creepers’ starry bowers,
Such as a tropic flora’s bounty showers.
There apes bent double weed without cessation,
And now grand transformation scenes enthral
The eye, disposed at random here and there,
Bushes cut out in cardboard, flowers as rare,
E’en an old-fashioned fountain ’mid them all
Flings painted water-jets to heights aerial,
Here in these canvas grounds our Hanuman
Loved to parade, revolving many a plan,
Upon his brow a crowd of cares imperial,
And these, behind the rose—that one of paper—
He sometimes banished with an agile caper. ”

“ Is graved on History’s slabs in deathless glory.
And once e’en man our prior claim confessed:
That half-divine Ind deems our race, the shrines
Scattered from Simla to the sea attest,
Where choirs of apes religious life refines.
Oh! just let us live on as lived our sires.
The mango fruit—what sweeter in the wide world?
And life on boughs with scented blooms, this pied world
Of woods—what nearer to the heart’s desires?
’Tis just sheer folly and not worth a tittle,
This progress, science, culture and the rest of it—
For me this mango stone outweighs the best of it. ”

“ Child breast of infant apes of either gender
To read how that exemplar to all ages,
With his bold army, in a battle gory,
That has no counterpart in History’s pages,
Covered his name with everlasting glory:
How with a charge that shook earth’s broad foundations,
And frightened all the tigers of the grove,
O’er Vindragupta’s dread fortifications,
He boldly raised his flag to heaven above!
VIII.
Thus in glory and contentment
Flourished long the apish State,
But on Hanuman the shadow
Of a shadow often sate. ”

“ The dappled mass a dance demoniac weaves:
The dust-cloud with it spins—a shaft of smoke,
Now high in air the eddying spires have leapt,
And now collapsed in yonder branching oak,
And all below is like a meadow swept.
Thus all that royal host of foot and mounted,
A goodly throng, in uniforms uncounted,
Jumbled at once in one wild, motley bustle,
Seething, confused, with many a squeal and tussle,
Flinging away its arms, o’er long boots falling,
In panic flight o’er tips of scabbards sprawling,
On toward the sheltering banyan, jostled, shambled ”

“ To have a folk just like the folk they copied,
And here the prince gave without stint or stop aid.
His realm in all had human regulations,
Ay, e’en a Constitution’s delectations,
He gave his apes the right, as Europe teaches,
In halls of delegates to make fine speeches,
Here deputies take thought about new taxes,
Bright flower of empire these, in peace and quiet:
Some, perhaps oppose: the Government relaxes:
And all refer the question to the Diet. ”

“ Grey eld with silver threads his scarce fur raying,
His face a map of wrinkles, stubborn, dour,
A mango fruit in one fist, th’ other playing
With the blue honors of his beard, and tightly
An aery tendril with the third embracing
Among the tropic creeper’s interlacing,
Wherein, as on a swing, he dangled lightly,
Now stretched his fourth hand to the monarch breeched,
And thus for rhetoric’s crown of laurels reached:
“I say out plain; I can’t assent, great sire,
That men than we—nay, we than men stand higher,
As stood our ancestors from earliest ages. ”

“ All we’re just as human kind,”
Sighed he, “when to our advancement
Human eyes are ever blind,
And when he who formed the nation
Cultured Europe’s admiration
Of his merits fails to find?”
So his apes he called in conclave
And harangued them from the throne:
“Heaven permitted this exalted
Rôle to me of apes alone,
And that apes, by my endeavour
Raised to human height, should ever
Art and science love and own.
“But ’tis meet to show to people
We’re no more a savage horde,
And a dignified position
Claim at Europe’s council board. ”

“ Spread from the palms’ slim crowns a feather frond
Massed into stately vault or ribbed network,
Here emerald blades, here fringe of fairy fretwork;
And amid all those feather-forms unending
Sportively night here battles with the daylight,
’Mid a myriad shadows, exquisitely blending,
Till, lower chased, she walks the dusky grey light,
Free and unchallenged, in perpetual shades
Where through her poisoned weeds entangled waste
Slime and morass and serpent root enlaced
No glance of curious day her gloom invades.
But up above light strings a hundred bows
And iris sparks. ”

“ Would warn him such things smacked of the degenerate.
Nay, they surpassed what Apery’s creed demands,
And only ate with feet and walked with hands.
How softly when late dusk their sports abated,
Up to the neck with figs and durians sated,
Beneath the star-wrought vault of heaven’s clear bowers,
On odorous boughs of trees wrought o’er with flowers,
Filled with some strange delight they sank to rest,
Oh! Mother Nature! on thy kindly breast. ”

“ And if of lotus bloom or parrot ever
Some lady ape a mild remark should venture,
Bent shell-like ear to ear each female censor,
“How naive! nu! she was never very clever!”
For well-bred apedom’s small talk to two themes is
Confined: the Bois de Boulogne and St. James’.
But ah! I see in soul, how o’er my fancies
Like snow-white butterfly that flits o’er roses
Too oft a tender hand o’er lips reposes—
Lips whose light ennui e’en their charm enhances. ”

“ Purge your whole essence from all human scoria.”
Under his guidance on the following day,
The true ape style of life resumed its sway,
O’er boughs and vines they wreathed their wood gymnastic;
The foot so long in boots benumbed and strained,
Once more it quick prehensile touch regained;
To unperverted ape-grins jowls grew plastic;
In perfect discords all the wood went squealing,
And shewed its grinning teeth from floor to ceiling,
Nay, tails were luted on with gum or mastic
To prove them perfect apes in form and feeling. ”

“ In their rigging, now of sportive apes a
Family their giddy dances run,
Sacred and descendants of the fabled
Hanuman, with whom the great one Vishnu,
Taking on himself the form of Rama,
Lanek, isle of giants, proudly won.
Here, in former times, these sacred monkeys
In a lordly church were fondly cherished
By the tender care of pious Hindoos,
’Neath the goddess Durga’s patron hand:
But when Church and city fell to ruin,
By the guile of wicked foes deflowered,
They remained above the ruined city
Only dwellers in that lonely land. ”

“ Man’s foot, I’m told, constrains him to the mire,
While ours, instead, to heaven exalts us higher.
Yon foolish parrots reach yet higher regions;
Are we, for that, below those spottled pigeons?
The fashion of our feet—say, ’tis degenerate—
For climbing’s now adapted best, at any rate?
Yes; but we’ve no desire with squirrels, thrushes,
Henceforth to skip and hop o’er trees and bushes ”

“ To be the ancestor of such a guy.
’Tis well to reverence our great departed;
But when our comic side is thus paraded
In sire’s cast suits of fame, by sons degraded
Who clash their swords, themselves being chicken-hearted,
Like windbags puff themselves with those sires’ fame:
Methinks that fleas can boast themselves the same,
A lion tolerates in his royal mane,
That lion’s blood is circling in their vein! ”

“ In base degraded souls ’tis deep implanted
The will to bring all down to their soiled level;
In others, if the ideals they once vaunted
Their breath of scorn can tarnish, how they revel!
Thus e’en this worn-out riff-raff of the slum
Against the well-to-do beats loud the drum,
And neat, well-kept costumes with venom acrid
Reviles, and all things which to us are sacred. ”