Song Of The Cub

I know not what this may betoken,
That I feel so wondrous wise;
My dream of existence is broken
Since science has opened my eyes.
At the British Association
I heard the President’s speech,
And the methods and facts of creation
Seemed suddenly placed in my reach.

My life’s undivided devotion
To Science I solemnly vowed,
I’d dredge up the bed of the ocean,
I’d draw down the spark from the cloud.
To follow my thoughts as they go on,
Electrodes I’d place in my brain;
Nay, I'd swallow a live entozöon,
New feelings of life to obtain.

O where are those high feasts of Science?
O where are those words of the wise?
I hear but the roar of Red Lions,
I eat what their Jackal supplies.
I meant to lie so scientific,
But science seems turned into fun;
And this, with his roaring terrific,
That old red lion bath done.

Seventh Ode Of The Fourth Book Of Horace

All the snows have fled, and grass springs up on the meadows,
And there are leaves on the trees;
Earth has changed her looks, and turbulent rivers decreasing,
Slowly meander along;
Now, with the naked nymphs and her own twin sisters, Aglaïa
Gracefully dances in time.
But the Year, and the Hours which hurry along our existence,
Solemnly warn us to die.
Zephyr removes the frost, and Summer, soon destined to perish,
Treads in the footsteps of Spring,
After the joyous reign of Autumn, abounding in apples,
Shivering Winter returns.
Heavenly waste is repaired by the moon in her quick revo-lutions
But when we go to the grave,
Beside the pious Æneas, and rich old Tullus, and Ancus,
We are but dust and a shade.
Who knows if the gods above have determined whether to-morrow
We shall be living or dead.
Nothing will come to the greedy hands of your spendthrift successor
Which you have given away.
When you are gone to the grave, and Minos, sitting in judg-ment,
Utters your terrible doom,
Neither your rank nor your talents will bring you to life, O Torquatus,
Nor will affection avail;
Even the chaste Hippolytus was not released by Diana
From the infernal abyss,
Nor could Theseus break from his friend the rewards of presumption
Which the stern monarch imposed.

On St. David's Day

To Mrs. E.C. Morrieson


’Twas not chance but deep design,
Tho’ of whom I can't divine
Made the courtly Valentine
(Corpulent saint and bishop)
Such a time with Bob to stay:-—
Let me now in bardish way
On your own St. David’s day
Toss you a simple dish up.

’Tis a tale we learnt at school,—
Oft we broke domestic rule,
Standing till our brows were cool
In the forbidden lobby.
There we talked and there we laughed,
Till the townsfolk thought us daft,
What of that? a thorough draft
Was and is still my hobby.

To my tale: In ancient days,
Ere men left the good old ways,
Lived a lady whose just praise
Passes all fancied glory.
Rich was she in field and store,
Richer in the sons she bore,
How could she be honoured more?
Listen and hear the story.

On a high and festive day
When the chariots bright and gay
To the temple far away
Passed in majestic order,—
When the hour was nigh at hand,
She who should have led the band
Found no oxen at command,
Searching through all her border

Then her two sons brave and strong
Gut their limbs with band and thong,
And before the wondering throng
Drew their exulting mother.
Swift and steady, on they came;
At the temple loud acclaim
Greeted that illustrious dame,
Blest above every other.

Then, while triumph filled her breast,
Loud she prayed above the rest,
Give my sons whatever best
Man may receive from heavers.
To the shrine the brothers stept,
Low they bowed, they sunk, they slept,
Stillness o’er their brave limbs crept:—
Rest was the guerdon given.

Such the simple story told,
By a sage renowned of old,
To a king whose fabled gold
Could not procure him learning.
Heathen was the sage indeed,
Yet his tale we gladly read,
Thro’ his dark and doubtful creed
Glimpses of Truth discerning.

Now no more the altar's blaze
Glares athwart our worldly haze,
Warning men how evil ways
Lead to just tribulation.
Now no more the temple stands,
Pointing out to godless lands
That which is not made with hands,
Even the whole Creation.

Ask no more, then, "what is best,
How shall those you love be blest,"
Ask at once, eternal Rest,
Peace and assurance giving.
Rest of Life and not of death,
Rest in Love and Hope and Faith,
Till the God who gives their breath
Calls them to rest from living.

A Student's Evening Hymn

I.

Now no more the slanting rays
With the mountain summits dally,
Now no more in crimson blaze
Evening’s fleecy cloudless rally,
Soon shall Night front off the valley
Sweep that bright yet earthly haze,
And the stars most musically
Move in endless rounds of praise.


II.

While the world is growing dim,
And the Sun is slow descending
Past the far horizon’s rim,
Earth's low sky to heaven extending,
Let my feeble earth-notes, blending
With the songs of cherubim,
Through the same expanse ascending,
Thus renew my evening hymn.


III.

Thou that fill’st our waiting eyes
With the food of contemplation,
Setting in thy darkened skies
Signs of infinite creation,
Grant to nightly meditation
What the toilsome day denies—
Teach me in this earthly station
Heavenly Truth to realise.


IV.

Give me wisdom so to use
These brief hours of thoughtful leisure,
That I may no instant lose
In mere meditative pleasure,
But with strictest justice measure
All the ends my life pursues,
Lies to crush and truths to treasure,
Wrong to shun and Right to choose.


V.

Then, when unexpected Sleep,
O’er my long-closed eyelids stealing,
Opens up that lower deep
Where Existence has no feeling,
May sweet Calm, my languor healing,
Lend note strength at dawn to reap
All that Shadows, world-concealing,
For the bold enquirer keep.


VI.

Through the creatures Thou hast made
Show the brightness of Thy glory,
Be eternal Truth displayed
In their substance transitory,
Till green Earth and Ocean hoary,
Massy rock and tender blade
Tell the same unending story—
"We are Truth in Form arrayed."


VII.

When to study I retire,
And from books of ancient sages
Glean fresh sparks of buried fire
Lurking in their ample pages—
While the task my mind engages
Let old words new truths inspire-—
Truths that to all after-ages
Prompt the Thoughts that never tire.


VIII.

Yet if, led by shadows fair
I have uttered words of folly,
Let the kind absorbing air
Stifle every sound unholy.
So when Saints with Angels lowly
Join in heaven’s unceasing prayer,
Mine as certainly, though slowly,
May ascend and mingle there.


IX.

Teach me so Thy works to read
That my faith,—new strength accruing,—
May from world to world proceed,
Wisdom's fruitful search pursuing;
Till, thy truth my mind imbuing,
I proclaim the Eternal Creed,
Oft the glorious theme renewing
God our Lord is God indeed.


X.

Give me love aright to trace
Thine to everything created,
Preaching to a ransomed race
By Thy mercy renovated,
Till with all thy fulness sated
I behold thee face to face
And with Ardour unabated
Sing the glories of thy grace.

British Association, Notes Of The President's Address

In the very beginnings of science, the parsons, who managed things then,
Being handy with hammer and chisel, made gods in the likeness of men;
Till Commerce arose, and at length some men of exceptional power
Supplanted both demons and gods by the atoms, which last to this hour.
Yet they did not abolish the gods, but they sent them well out of the way,
With the rarest of nectar to drink, and blue fields of nothing to sway.
From nothing comes nothing, they told us, nought happens by chance, but by fate;
There is nothing but atoms and void, all else is mere whims out of date!
Then why should a man curry favour with beings who can-not exist,
To compass some petty promotion in nebulous kingdoms of mist?
But not by the rays of the sun, nor the glittering shafts of the day,
Must the fear of the gods be dispelled, but by words, and their wonderful play.
So treading a path all untrod, the poet-philosopher sings
Of the seeds of the mighty world—the first-beginnings of things;
How freely he scatters his atoms before the beginning of years;
How he clothes them with force as a garment, those small incompressible spheres!
Nor yet does he leave them hard-hearted—he dowers them with love and with hate,
Like spherical small British Asses in infinitesimal state;
Till just as that living Plato, whom foreigners nickname Plateau,
Drops oil in his whisky-and-water (for foreigners sweeten it so),
Each drop keeps apart from the other, enclosed in a flexible skin,
Till touched by the gentle emotion evolved by the prick of a pin:
Thus in atoms a simple collision excites a sensational thrill,
Evolved through all sorts of emotion, as sense, understanding, and will;
(For by laying their heads all together, the atoms, as coun-cillors do,
May combine to express an opinion to every one of them new).
There is nobody here, I should say, has felt true indignation at all,
Till an indignation meeting is held in the Ulster Hall;
Then gathers the wave of emotion, then noble feelings arise,
Till you all pass a resolution which takes every man by surprise.
Thus the pure elementary atom, the unit of mass and of thought,
By force of mere juxtaposition to life and sensation is brought;
So, down through untold generations, transmission of struc-tureless germs
Enables our race to inherit the thoughts of beasts, fishes, and worms.
We honour our fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grand-mothers too;
But how shall we honour the vista of ancestors now in our view?
First, then, let us honour the atom, so lively, so wise, and so small;
The atomists next let us praise, Epicurus, Lucretius, and all;
Let us damn with faint praise Bishop Butler, in whom many atoms combined
To form that remarkable structure, it pleased him to call—his mind.
Last, praise we the noble body to which, for the time, we belong,
Ere yet the swift whirl of the atoms has hurried us, ruth-less, along,
The British Association—like Leviathan worshipped by Hobbes,
The incarnation of wisdom, built up of our witless nobs,
Which will carry on endless discussions, when I, and prob-ably you,
Have melted in infinite azure—in English, till all is blue.

Lines Written Under The Conviction That It Is Not Wise To Read Mathematics In November After One’s Fire Is Out

In the sad November time,
When the leaf has left the lime,
And the Cam, with sludge and slime,
Plasters his ugly channel,
While, with sober step and slow,
Round about the marshes low,
Stiffening students stumping go
Shivering through their flannel.

Then to me in doleful mood
Rises up a question rude,
Asking what sufficient good
Comes of this mode of living?
Moping on from day to day,
Grinding up what will not "pay,"
Till the jaded brain gives way
Under its own misgiving.

Why should wretched Man employ
Years which Nature meant for joy,
Striving vainly to destroy
Freedom of thought and feeling?
Still the injured powers remain
Endless stores of hopeless pain,
When at last the vanquished brain
Languishes past all healing.

Where is then his wealth of mind --
All the schemes that Hope designed?
Gone, like spring, to leave behind
Indolent melancholy.
Thus he ends his helpless days,
Vex’t with thoughts of former praise --
Tell me, how are Wisdom’s ways
Better than senseless Folly?

Happier those whom trifles please,
Dreaming out a life of ease,
Sinking by unfelt degrees
Into annihilation.
Or the slave, to labour born,
Heedless of the freeman’s scorn,
Destined to be slowly worn
Down to the brute creation.

Thus a tempting spirit spoke,
As from troubled sleep I woke
To a morning thick with smoke,
Sunless and damp and chilly.
Then to sleep I turned once more,
Eyes inflamed and windpipe sore,
Dreaming dreams I dreamt before,
Only not quite so silly.

In my dream methought I strayed
Where a learned-looking maid
Stores of flimsy goods displayed,
Articles not worth wearing.
"These," she said, with solemn air,
"Are the robes that sages wear,
Warranted, when kept with care,
Never to need repairing."

Then unnumbered witlings, caught
By her wiles, the trappings bought,
And by labour, not by thought,
Honour and fame were earning.
While the men of wiser mind
Passed for blind among the blind;
Pedants left them far behind
In the career of learning.

"Those that fix their eager eyes
Ever on the nearest prize
Well may venture to despise
Loftier aspirations.
Pedantry is in demand!
Buy it up at second-hand,
Seek no more to understand
Profitless speculations."

Thus the gaudy gowns were sold,
Cast off sloughs of pedants old;
Proudly marched the students bold
Through the domain of error,
Till their trappings, false though fair,
Mouldered off and left them bare,
Clustering close in blank despair,
Nakedness, cold, and terror.

Then, I said, "These haughty Schools
Boast that by their formal rules
They produce more learned fools
Than could be well expected.
Learned fools they are indeed,
Learned in the books they read;
Fools whene’er they come to need
Wisdom, too long neglected.

"Oh! that men indeed were wise,
And would raise their purblind eyes
To the opening mysteries
Scattered around them ever.
Truth should spring from sterile ground,
Beauty beam from all around,
Right should then at last be found
Joining what none may sever."

Recollections Of A Dreamland

Rouse ye! torpid daylight-dreamers, cast your carking cares away!
As calm air to troubled water, so my night is to your day;
All the dreary day you labour, groping after common sense,
And your eyes ye will not open on the night's magnificence.
Ye would scow were I to tell you how a guiding radiance gleams
On the outer world of action from my inner world of dreams.

When, with mind released from study, late I lay note down to sleep,
From the midst of facts and figures, into boundless space I leap;
For the inner world grows wider as the outer disappears,
And the soul, retiring inward, finds itself beyond the spheres.
Then, to this unbroken sameness, some fantastic dream succeeds,
Vague emotions rise and ripen into thoughts and words and deeds.
Old impressions, long forgotten, range themselves in Time and Space,
Till I recollect the features of some once familiar place.
Then from valley into valley in my dreaming course I roam,
Till the wanderings of my fancy end, where they began, at home.
Calm it lies in morning twilight, while each streamlet far and wide
Still retains its hazy mantle, borrowed from the mountain's side;
Every knoll is now an island every wooded bank a shore,
To the lake of quiet vapour that has spread the valley o’er.
Sheep are couched on every hillock, waiting till the morning dawns,
Hares are on their early rambles, limping o’er the dewy lawns.
All within the house is silent, darkened all the chambers seem,
As with noiseless step I enter, gliding onwards in my dream.

What! has Time run out his cycle, do the years return again?
Are there treasure-caves in Dreamland where departed days remain?
I have leapt the bars of distance—left the life that late I led—
I remember years and labours as a tale that I have read;
Yet my heart is hot within me, for I feel the gentle power
Of the spirits that still love me, waiting for this sacred hour.
Yes,—I know the forms that meet me are but phantoms of the brain,
For they walk in mortal bodies, and they have not ceased from pain.
Oh! those signs of human weakness, left behind for ever now,
Dearer far to me than glories round a fancied seraph's brow.
Oh! the old familiar voices ! Oh! the patient waiting eyes!
Let me live with them in dreamland, while the world in slumber lies!
For by bonds of sacred honour will they guard my soul in sleep
From the spells of aimless fancies, that around my senses creep.
They will link the past and present into one continuous life,
While I feel their hope, their patience, nerve me for the daily strife.
For it is not all a fancy that our lives and theirs are one,
And we know that all we see is but an endless work begun.
Part is left in Nature's keeping, part is entered into rest,
Part remains to grow and ripen, hidden in some living breast.
What is ours we know not, either when we wake or when we sleep,
But we know that Love and Honour, day and night, are ours to keep.
What though Dreams be wandering fancies, by some lawless force entwined,
Empty bubbles, floating upwards through the current of the mind?
There are powers and thoughts within us, that we know not, till they rise
Through the stream of conscious action from where Self in secret lies.
But when Will and Sense are silent, by the thoughts that come and go,
We may trace the rocks and eddies in the hidden depths below.

Let me dream my dream till morning; let my mind run slow and clear,
Free from all the world's distraction, feeling that the Dead are near,
Let me wake, and see my duty lie before me straight and plain.
Let me rise refreshed, and ready to begin my work again.