536 Philosophy poems

’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed When not to be receives reproach of being, And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed Not by our feeling but by others' seeing. For why should others’ false adulterate eyes Give salutation to my sportive blood? Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, Which in their wills count bad that I think good? No, I am that I am; and they that level At my abuses reckon up their own: I may be straight though they themselves be bevel; By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown, Unless this general evil they maintain: All men are bad and in their badness reign.

Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy, With my extern the outward honouring, Or laid great bases for eternity, Which proves more short than waste or ruining; Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent, For compound sweet forgoing simple savour, Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent? No;—let me be obsequious in thy heart, And take thou my oblation, poor but free, Which is not mix’d with seconds, knows no art, But mutual render, only me for thee. Hence, thou suborn’d informer! a true soul, When most impeach’d, stands least in thy control.

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, [......] these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more. So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, And, Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one Talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide; “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Not that I always struck the proper mean Of what mankind must give for what they gain, But, when I think of those whom dull routine And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain, Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud Race through blue heaven on its joyful course Sigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed, I think I might have done a great deal worse; For I have ever gone untied and free, The stars and my high thoughts for company; Wet with the salt-spray and the mountain showers, I have had the sense of space and amplitude, And love in many places, silver-shoed, Has come and scattered all my path with flowers.

Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear To outward view of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot; Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun or moon or star throughout the year, Or man or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heav'n's hand or will, not bate a jot Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In liberty's defence, my noble task, Of which all Europe talks from side to side. This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask Content, though blind, had I no better guide.

Angiolieri's "S ' i' fosse foco" If I were fire, I'd burn the world away; If I were wind, I'd blow it down; If I were water, I'd let it drown; If I were God, I'd deep-six it today. If I were Pope, what would make me gay? To ransack every Christian town. If I were emperor, what would make my day? To see heads roll on the ground! If I were death, I'd run down my father; If I were life, I'd flee from him. As for dear mama, she gets the same. If I were Cecco, and that is my name, I'd take the pretty young girls to screw and leave the ugly old hags to you.

The Augsburg poet once said he had tacked an image of the Man of Doubt to the wall of his room. A Chinese print. The image asked: how ought one to act? I have a photo on my wall. Twenty years ago seven Chinese workers looked into my lens. They look wary or ironic or tense. They know I do not write for them. I know they didn’t live for me. Yet sometimes I feel I’m being asked for more candid words, more credible deeds, by their doubtfulness. In turn I ask their help in making visible the contradictions and identities among us. If there’s a point, it’s this.

Stronger than alcohol, more great than song, deep in whose reeds great elephants decay, I, an island, sail, and my shoes toss on a fragrant evening, fraught with sadness bristling hate. It’s true, I weep too much. Dawns break slow kisses on the eyelids of the sea, what other men sometimes have thought they’ve seen. And since then I’ve been bathing in the poem lifting her shadowy flowers up for me, and hurled by hurricanes to a birdless place the waving flags, nor pass by prison ships O let me burst, and I be lost at sea! and fall on my knees then, womanly.

I What is the flesh and blood compounded of But a few moments in the life of time? This prowling of the cells, litigious love, Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime. Consider the first settlers of our bone, Observe how busily they sued the dust, Estopped forever by the last dusted stone. It is a pity that two brothers must Perceive a canker of perennial flower To make them brothers in mortality: Perfect this treason to the murderous hour If you would win the hard identity Of brothers—a long race for men to run Nor quite achieved when the perfection’s won. II Near to me as perfection in the blood And more mysterious far, is this, my brother: A light vaulted into your solitude. It studied burns lest you its rage should smother. It is a flame obscure to any eyes, Most like the fire that warms the deepest grave (The cold grave is the deepest of our lies) To which our blood is the indentured slave: The fire that burns most secretly in you Does not expend you hidden and alone, The studious fire consumes not one, but two— Me also, marrowing the self-same bone. Our property in fire is death in life Flawing the rocky fundament with strife. III Then, brother, you would never think me vain Or rude, if I should mention dignity; Think little of it. Dignity’s the stain Of mortal sin that knows humility. Let me design the hour when you were born Since, if that’s vain, it’s only childlike so: Like an attempting frost on April corn Considerate death would hardly let you go. Reckon the cost—if you would validate Once more our slavery to circumstance Not by contempt of a prescriptive fate But in your bearing towards an hour of chance. It is a part so humble and so proud You’ll think but little of it in your shroud. IV The times have changed. Why do you make a fuss For privilege when there’s no law of form? Who of our kin was pusillanimous, A fine bull galloping into a storm? Why, none; unless you count it arrogance To cultivate humility in pride, To look but casually and half-askance On boots and spurs that went a devil’s ride. There was, remember, a Virginian Who took himself to be brute nature’s law, Cared little what men thought him, a tall man Who meditated calmly what he saw Until he freed his Negroes, lest he be Too strict with nature and than they less free. V Our elder brother whom we had not seen These twenty years until you brought him back From the cyclonic West, where he had been Sent by the shaking fury in the track We know so well, wound in these arteries: You, other brother, I have become strange To you, and you must study ways to seize Mortality, that knows how to derange Corpuscles for designs that it may choose; Your blood is altered by the sudden death Of one who of all persons could not use Life half so well as death. Let’s look beneath That life. Perhaps hers only is our rest— To study this, all lifetime may be best. VI The fire I praise was once perduring flame— Till it snuffs with our generation out; No matter, it’s all one, it’s but a name Not as late honeysuckle half so stout; So think upon it how the fire burns blue, Its hottest, when the flame is all but spent; Thank God the fuel is low, we’ll not renew That length of flame into our firmament; Think too the rooftree crackles and will fall On us, who saw the sacred fury’s height— Seated in her tall chair, with the black shawl From head to foot, burning with motherly light More spectral than November dusk could mix With sunset, to blaze on her pale crucifix. VII This message hastens lest we both go down Scattered, with no character, to death; Death is untutored, with an ignorant frown For precious identities of breath. But you perhaps will say confusion stood, A vulture, near the heart of all our kin: I’ve heard the echoes in a dark tangled wood Yet never saw I a face peering within. These evils being anonymities, We fulminate, in exile from the earth, Aged exclusions of blood memories— Those superstitions of explosive birth; Until there’ll be of us not anything But foolish death, who is confusion’s king. VIII Not power nor the casual hand of God Shall keep us whole in our dissevering air, It is a stink upon this pleasant sod So foul, the hovering buzzard sees it fair; I ask you will it end therefore tonight And the moth tease again the windy flame, Or spiders, eating their loves, hide in the night At last, drowsy with self-devouring shame? Call it the house of Atreus where we live— Which one of us the Greek perplexed with crime Questions the future: bring that lucid sieve To strain the appointed particles of time! Whether by Corinth or by Thebes we go The way is brief, but the fixed doom, not so. IX Captains of industry, your aimless power Awakens harsh velleities of time: Let you, brother, captaining your hour Be zealous that your numbers are all prime, Lest false division with sly mathematic Plunder the inner mansion of the blood, The Thracian, swollen with pride, besiege the Attic— Invader foraging the sacred wood: Yet the prime secret whose simplicity Your towering engine hammers to reduce, Though driven, holds that bulwark of the sea Which breached will turn unspeaking fury loose To drown out him who swears to rectify Infinity, that has nor ear nor eye.