PART III

WHEREIN IT IS SHOWN THAT THE MOST ARDENT SPIRITS ARE MORE ORNAMENTAL THAN USEFUL

Many a speculating wight Came by express-trains, day and night, To see if Knott would 'sell his right,' 550 Meaning to make the ghosts a sight— What they call a 'meenaygerie;' One threatened, if he would not 'trade,' His run of custom to invade, (He could not these sharp folks persuade That he was not, in some way, paid,) And stamp him as a plagiary, By coming down, at one fell swoop, With THE ORIGINAL KNOCKING TROUPE, Come recently from Hades, 560 Who (for a quarter-dollar heard) Would ne'er rap out a hasty word Whence any blame might be incurred From the most fastidious ladies; The late lamented Jesse Soule, To stir the ghosts up with a pole And be director of the whole, Who was engaged the rather For the rare merits he'd combine, Having been in the spirit line, 570 Which trade he only did resign, With general applause, to shine, Awful in mail of cotton fine, As ghost of Hamlet's father! Another a fair plan reveals Never yet hit on, which, he feels, To Knott's religious sense appeals— 'We'll have your house set up on wheels, A speculation pious; For music, we can shortly find 580 A barrel-organ that will grind Psalm-tunes—an instrument designed For the New England tour—refined From secular drosses, and inclined To an unworldly turn, (combined With no sectarian bias;) Then, travelling by stages slow, Under the style of Knott & Co., I would accompany the show As moral lecturer, the foe 590 Of Rationalism; while you could throw The rappings in, and make them go Strict Puritan principles, you know, (How do you make 'em? with your toe?) And the receipts which thence might flow, We could divide between us; Still more attractions to combine, Beside these services of mine, I will throw in a very fine (It would do nicely for a sign) 600 Original Titian's Venus.' Another offered handsome fees If Knott would get Demosthenes (Nay, his mere knuckles, for more ease) To rap a few short sentences; Or if, for want of proper keys, His Greek might make confusion, Then just to get a rap from Burke, To recommend a little work On Public Elocution. 610 Meanwhile, the spirits made replies To all the reverent whats and whys, Resolving doubts of every size, And giving seekers grave and wise, Who came to know their destinies, A rap-turous reception; When unbelievers void of grace Came to investigate the place, (Creatures of Sadducistic race, With grovelling intellects and base,) 620 They could not find the slightest trace To indicate deception; Indeed, it is declared by some That spirits (of this sort) are glum, Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb, And (out of self-respect) quite mum To skeptic natures cold and numb Who of this kind of Kingdom Come Have not a just conception: True, there were people who demurred 630 That, though the raps no doubt were heard Both under them and o'er them, Yet, somehow, when a search they made, They found Miss Jenny sore afraid, Or Jenny's lover, Doctor Slade, Equally awestruck and dismayed, Or Deborah, the chambermaid, Whose terrors not to be gainsaid In laughs hysteric were displayed, Was always there before them; This had its due effect with some Who straight departed, muttering, Hum! 642 Transparent hoax! and Gammon! But these were few: believing souls, Came, day by day, in larger shoals, As the ancients to the windy holes 'Neath Delphi's tripod brought their doles, Or to the shrine of Ammon.

The spirits seemed exceeding tame, Call whom you fancied, and he came; 650 The shades august of eldest fame You summoned with an awful ease; As grosser spirits gurgled out From chair and table with a spout, In Auerbach's cellar once, to flout The senses of the rabble rout, Where'er the gimlet twirled about Of cunning Mephistopheles, So did these spirits seem in store, Behind the wainscot or the door, Ready to thrill the being's core Of every enterprising bore 662 With their astounding glamour; Whatever ghost one wished to hear, By strange coincidence, was near To make the past or future clear (Sometimes in shocking grammar) By raps and taps, now there, now here— It seemed as if the spirit queer Of some departed auctioneer 670 Were doomed to practise by the year With the spirit of his hammer: Whate'er you asked was answered, yet One could not very deeply get Into the obliging spirits' debt, Because they used the alphabet In all communications, And new revealings (though sublime) Rapped out, one letter at a time, With boggles, hesitations, 680 Stoppings, beginnings o'er again, And getting matters into train, Could hardly overload the brain With too excessive rations, Since just to ask if two and two Really make four? or, How d' ye do? And get the fit replies thereto In the tramundane rat-tat-too, Might ask a whole day's patience.

'Twas strange ('mongst other things) to find 690 In what odd sets the ghosts combined, Happy forthwith to thump any Piece of intelligence inspired, The truth whereof had been inquired By some one of the company; For instance, Fielding, Mirabeau, Orator Henley, Cicero, Paley, John Ziska, Marivaux, Melancthon, Robertson, Junot, 699 Scaliger, Chesterfield, Rousseau, Hakluyt, Boccaccio, South, De Foe, Diaz, Josephus, Richard Roe, Odin, Arminius, Charles le gros, Tiresias, the late James Crow, Casabianca, Grose, Prideaux, Old Grimes, Young Norval, Swift, Brissot, Malmonides, the Chevalier D'O, Socrates, Fénelon, Job, Stow. The inventor of Elixir pro, Euripides, Spinoza, Poe, 710 Confucius, Hiram Smith, and Fo, Came (as it seemed, somewhat de trop) With a disembodied Esquimaux, To say that it was so and so, With Franklin's expedition; One testified to ice and snow, One that the mercury was low, One that his progress was quite slow, One that he much desired to go, One that the cook had frozen his toe, 720 (Dissented from by Dandolo, Wordsworth, Cynaegirus, Boileau, La Hontan, and Sir Thomas Roe,) One saw twelve white bears in a row, One saw eleven and a crow, With other things we could not know (Of great statistic value, though,) By our mere mortal vision.

Sometimes the spirits made mistakes, And seemed to play at ducks and drakes. 730 With bold inquiry's heaviest stakes In science or in mystery: They knew so little (and that wrong) Yet rapped it out so bold and strong, One would have said the unnumbered throng Had been Professors of History; What made it odder was, that those Who, you would naturally suppose, Could solve a question, if they chose, As easily as count their toes, 740 Were just the ones that blundered; One day, Ulysses happening down, A reader of Sir Thomas Browne And who (with him) had wondered What song it was the Sirens sang, Asked the shrewd Ithacan—bang! bang! With this response the chamber rang, 'I guess it was Old Hundred.' And Franklin, being asked to name The reason why the lightning came, 750 Replied, 'Because it thundered.'

On one sole point the ghosts agreed One fearful point, than which, indeed, Nothing could seem absurder; Poor Colonel Jones they all abused And finally downright accused The poor old man of murder; 'Twas thus; by dreadful raps was shown Some spirit's longing to make known A bloody fact, which he alone 760 Was privy to, (such ghosts more prone In Earth's affairs to meddle are;) Who are you? with awe-stricken looks, All ask: his airy knuckles he crooks, And raps, 'I was Eliab Snooks, That used to be a pedler; Some on ye still are on my books!' Whereat, to inconspicuous nooks, (More fearing this than common spooks) Shrank each indebted meddler; Further the vengeful ghost declared 771 That while his earthly life was spared, About the country he had fared, A duly licensed follower Of that much-wandering trade that wins Slow profit from the sale of tins And various kinds of hollow-ware; That Colonel Jones enticed him in, Pretending that he wanted tin, There slew him with a rolling-pin, Hid him in a potato-bin, 781 And (the same night) him ferried Across Great Pond to t'other shore, And there, on land of Widow Moore, Just where you turn to Larkin's store, Under a rock him buried; Some friends (who happened to be by) He called upon to testify That what he said was not a lie, And that he did not stir this 790 Foul matter, out of any spite But from a simple love of right;— Which statements the Nine Worthies, Rabbi Akiba, Charlemagne, Seth, Golley Gibber, General Wayne, Cambyses, Tasso, Tubal-Cain, The owner of a castle in Spain, Jehanghire, and the Widow of Nain, (The friends aforesaid,) made more plain And by loud raps attested; 800 To the same purport testified Plato, John Wilkes, and Colonel Pride Who knew said Snooks before he died, Had in his wares invested, Thought him entitled to belief And freely could concur, in brief, In everything the rest did.

Eliab this occasion seized, (Distinctly here the spirit sneezed,) To say that he should ne'er be eased 810 Till Jenny married whom she pleased, Free from all checks and urgin's, (This spirit dropt his final g's) And that, unless Knott quickly sees This done, the spirits to appease, They would come back his life to tease, As thick as mites in ancient cheese, And let his house on an endless lease To the ghosts (terrific rappers these And veritable Eumenides) 820 Of the Eleven Thousand Virgins!

Knott was perplexed and shook his head, He did not wish his child to wed With a suspected murderer, (For, true or false, the rumor spread,) But as for this roiled life he led, 'It would not answer,' so he said, 'To have it go no furderer.' At last, scarce knowing what it meant, Reluctantly he gave consent 830 That Jenny, since 'twas evident That she would follow her own bent, Should make her own election; For that appeared the only way These frightful noises to allay Which had already turned him gray And plunged him in dejection.

Accordingly, this artless maid Her father's ordinance obeyed, 839 And, all in whitest crape arrayed, (Miss Pulsifer the dresses made And wishes here the fact displayed That she still carries on the trade, The third door south from Bagg's Arcade,) A very faint 'I do' essayed And gave her hand to Hiram Slade, From which time forth, the ghosts were laid, And ne'er gave trouble after; But the Selectmen, be it known, Dug underneath the aforesaid stone, 850 Where the poor pedler's corpse was thrown, And found thereunder a jaw-bone, Though, when the crowner sat thereon, He nothing hatched, except alone Successive broods of laughter; It was a frail and dingy thing, In which a grinder or two did cling, In color like molasses, Which surgeons, called from far and wide. Upon the horror to decide, 860 Having put on their glasses, Reported thus: 'To judge by looks, These bones, by some queer hooks or crooks, May have belonged to Mr. Snooks, But, as men deepest read in books Are perfectly aware, bones, If buried fifty years or so, Lose their identity and grow From human bones to bare bones.'

Still, if to Jaalam you go down, You'll find two parties in the town, 871 One headed by Benaiah Brown, And one by Perez Tinkham; The first believe the ghosts all through And vow that they shall never rue The happy chance by which they knew That people in Jupiter are blue, And very fond of Irish stew, Two curious facts which Prince Lee Boo 879 Rapped clearly to a chosen few— Whereas the others think 'em A trick got up by Doctor Slade With Deborah the chambermaid And that sly cretur Jinny. That all the revelations wise, At which the Brownites made big eyes, Might have been given by Jared Keyes, A natural fool and ninny, And, last week, didn't Eliab Snooks Come back with never better looks, 890 As sharp as new-bought mackerel hooks, And bright as a new pin, eh? Good Parson Wilbur, too, avers (Though to be mixed in parish stirs Is worse than handling chestnut-burrs) That no case to his mind occurs Where spirits ever did converse, Save in a kind of guttural Erse, (So say the best authorities;) And that a charge by raps conveyed 900 Should be most scrupulously weighed And searched into, before it is Made public, since it may give pain That cannot soon be cured again, And one word may infix a stain Which ten cannot gloss over, Though speaking for his private part, He is rejoiced with all his heart Miss Knott missed not her lover.

FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM

I am a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam, And have some reason to surmise that I descend from Adam; But what's my pedigree to you? That I will soon unravel; I've sucked my Haddam-Eden dry, therefore desire to travel, And, as a natural consequence, presume I needn't say, I wish to write some letters home and have those letters p—— [I spare the word suggestive of those grim Next Morns that mount Clump, Clump, the stairways of the brain with—'Sir, my small account,' And, after every good we gain—Love, Fame, Wealth, Wisdom—still, As punctual as a cuckoo clock, hold up their little bill, 10 The garçons in our Café of Life, by dreaming us forgot— Sitting, like Homer's heroes, full and musing God knows what,— Till they say, bowing, S'il vous plait, voila, Messieurs, la note!] I would not hint at this so soon, but in our callous day, The Tollman Debt, who drops his bar across the world's highway, Great Cæsar in mid-march would stop, if Cæsar could not pay; Pilgriming's dearer than it was: men cannot travel now Scot-free from Dan to Beersheba upon a simple vow; Nay, as long back as Bess's time,—when Walsingham went over Ambassador to Cousin France, at Canterbury and Dover 20 He was so fleeced by innkeepers that, ere he quitted land, He wrote to the Prime Minister to take the knaves in hand. If I with staff and scallop-shell should try my way to win, Would Bonifaces quarrel as to who should take me in? Or would my pilgrim's progress end where Bunyan started his on, And my grand tour be round and round the backyard of a prison? I give you here a saying deep and therefore, haply true; 'Tis out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite as good as new: The question boath for men and meates longe voyages yt beginne Lyes in a notshell, rather saye lyes in a case of tinne. 20 But, though men may not travel now, as in the Middle Ages, With self-sustaining retinues of little gilt-edged pages, Yet one may manage pleasantly, where'er he likes to roam, By sending his small pages (at so much per small page) home; And if a staff and scallop-shell won't serve so well as then, Our outlay is about as small—just paper, ink, and pen. Be thankful! Humbugs never die, more than the wandering Jew; Bankrupt, they publish their own deaths, slink for a while from view, Then take an alias, change the sign, and the old trade renew; Indeed, 'tis wondrous how each Age, though laughing at the Past, 40 Insists on having its tight shoe made on the same old last; How it is sure its system would break up at once without The bunion which it will believe hereditary gout; How it takes all its swans for geese, nay, stranger yet and sadder, Sees in its treadmill's fruitless jog a heavenward Jacob's-ladder, Shouts, Lo, the Shining Heights are reached! One moment, more aspire! Trots into cramps its poor, dear legs, gets never an inch the higher, And like the others, ends with pipe and mug beside the fire. There, 'tween each doze, it whiffs and sips and watches with a sneer The green recruits that trudge and sweat where it had swinked whilere, 50 And sighs to think this soon spent zeal should be in simple truth, The only interval between old Fogyhood and Youth: 'Well,' thus it muses, 'well, what odds? 'Tis not for us to warn; 'Twill be the same when we are dead, and was ere we were born; Without the Treadmill, too, how grind our store of winter's corn? Had we no stock, nor twelve per cent received from Treadmill shares, We might … but these poor devils at last will get our easy chairs. High aims and hopes have great rewards, they, too, serene and snug, Shall one day have their soothing pipe and their enlivening mug; From Adam, empty-handed Youth hath always heard the hum 60 Of Good Times Coming, and will hear until the last day come; Young ears Hear forward, old ones back, and, while the earth rolls on, Full-handed Eld shall hear recede the steps of Good Times Gone; Ah what a cackle we set up whene'er an egg was laid! Cack-cack-cack-cackle! rang around, the scratch for worms was stayed, Cut-cut-ca-dah-cut! from this egg the coming cock shall stalk! The great New Era dawns, the age of Deeds and not of Talk! And every stupid hen of us hugged close his egg of chalk, Thought,—sure, I feel life stir within, each day with greater strength, When lo, the chick! from former chicks he differed not a jot, 70 But grew and crew and scratched and went, like those before, to pot!' So muse the dim Emeriti, and, mournful though it be, I must confess a kindred thought hath sometimes come to me, Who, though but just of forty turned, have heard the rumorous fame Of nine and ninety Coming Men, all—coming till they came. Pure Mephistopheles all this? the vulgar nature jeers? Good friend, while I was writing it, my eyes were dim with tears; Thrice happy he who cannot see, or who his eyes can shut, Life's deepest sorrow is contained in that small word there—But!

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We're pretty nearly crazy here with change and go ahead, 80 With flinging our caught bird away for two i' th' bush instead, With butting 'gainst the wall which we declare shall be a portal, And questioning Deeps that never yet have oped their lips to mortal; We're growing pale and hollow-eyed, and out of all condition, With mediums and prophetic chairs, and crickets with a mission, (The most astounding oracles since Balaam's donkey spoke,— 'Twould seem our furniture was all of Dodonean oak.) Make but the public laugh, be sure 'twill take you to be somebody; 'Twill wrench its button from your clutch, my densely earnest glum body; 'Tis good, this noble earnestness, good in its place, but why 90 Make great Achilles' shield the pan to bake a penny pie? Why, when we have a kitchen-range, insist that we shall stop, And bore clear down to central fires to broil our daily chop? Excalibur and Durandart are swords of price, but then Why draw them sternly when you wish to trim your nails or pen? Small gulf between the ape and man; you bridge it with your staff; But it will be impassable until the ape can laugh;— No, no, be common now and then, be sensible, be funny, And, as Siberians bait their traps for bears with pots of honey, From which ere they'll withdraw their snouts, they'll suffer many a club-lick, 100 So bait your moral figure-of-fours to catch the Orson public. Look how the dead leaves melt their way down through deep-drifted snow; They take the sun-warmth down with them—pearls could not conquer so; There is a moral here, you see: if you would preach, you must Steep all your truths in sunshine would you have them pierce the crust; Brave Jeremiah, you are grand and terrible, a sign And wonder, but were never quite a popular divine; Fancy the figure you would cut among the nuts and wine! I, on occasion, too, could preach, but hold it wiser far To give the public sermons it will take with its cigar, 110 And morals fugitive, and vague as are these smoke-wreaths light In which … I trace … a … let me see—bless me! 'tis out of sight.

* * * * *

There are some goodish things at sea; for instance, one can feel A grandeur in the silent man forever at the wheel, That bit of two-legged intellect, that particle of drill, Who the huge floundering hulk inspires with reason, brain, and will, And makes the ship, though skies are black and headwinds whistle loud, Obey her conscience there which feels the loadstar through the cloud; And when by lusty western gales the full-sailed barque is hurled, Towards the great moon which, setting on, the silent underworld, 120 Rounds luridly up to look on ours, and shoots a broadening line, Of palpitant light from crest to crest across the ridgy brine, Then from the bows look back and feel a thrill that never stales, In that full-bosomed, swan-white pomp of onward-yearning sails; Ah, when dear cousin Bull laments that you can't make a poem, Take him aboard a clipper-ship, young Jonathan, and show him A work of art that in its grace and grandeur may compare With any thing that any race has fashioned any where; 'Tis not a statue, grumbles John; nay, if you come to that, We think of Hyde Park Corner, and concede you beat us flat 130 With your equestrian statue to a Nose and a Cocked hat; But 'tis not a cathedral; well, e'en that we will allow, Both statues and cathedrals are anachronistic now; Your minsters, coz, the monuments of men who conquered you, You'd sell a bargain, if we'd take the deans and chapters too; No; mortal men build nowadays, as always heretofore, Good temples to the gods which they in very truth adore; The shepherds of this Broker Age, with all their willing flocks, Although they bow to stones no more, do bend the knee to stocks, And churches can't be beautiful though crowded, floor and gallery, 140 If people worship preacher, and if preacher worship salary; 'Tis well to look things in the face, the god o' the modern universe, Hermes, cares naught for halls of art and libraries of puny verse, If they don't sell, he notes them thus upon his ledger—say, per Contra to a loss of so much stone, best Russia duck and paper; And, after all, about this Art men talk a deal of fudge, Each nation has its path marked out, from which it must not budge; The Romans had as little art as Noah in his ark, Yet somehow on this globe contrived to make an epic mark; 149 Religion, painting, sculpture, song—for these they ran up jolly ticks With Greece and Egypt, but they were great artists in their politics, And if we make no minsters, John, nor epics, yet the Fates Are not entirely deaf to men who can build ships and states; The arts are never pioneers, but men have strength and health Who, called on suddenly, can improvise a commonwealth, Nay, can more easily go on and frame them by the dozen, Than you can make a dinner-speech, dear sympathizing cousin; And, though our restless Jonathan have not your graver bent, sure he Does represent this hand-to-mouth, pert, rapid nineteenth century; This is the Age of Scramble; men move faster than they did 160 When they pried up the imperial Past's deep-dusted coffin-lid, Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wire-leashed lightning now Replaces Delphos—men don't leave the steamer for the scow; What public, were they new to-day, would ever stop to read The Iliad, the Shanàmeh, or the Nibelungenlied? Their public's gone, the artist Greek, the lettered Shah, the hairy Graf— Folio and plesiosaur sleep well; we weary o'er a paragraph; The mind moves planet-like no more, it fizzes, cracks, and bustles; From end to end with journals dry the land o'ershadowed rustles, As with dead leaves a winter-beech, and, with their breath-roused jars 170 Amused, we care not if they hide the eternal skies and stars; Down to the general level of the Board of Brokers sinking, The Age takes in the newspapers, or, to say sooth unshrinking, The newspapers take in the Age, and stocks do all the thinking.

AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE

Somewhere in India, upon a time, (Read it not Injah, or you spoil the verse,) There dwelt two saints whose privilege sublime It was to sit and watch the world grow worse, Their only care (in that delicious clime) At proper intervals to pray and curse; Pracrit the dialect each prudent brother Used for himself, Damnonian for the other.

One half the time of each was spent in praying For blessings on his own unworthy head, 10 The other half in fearfully portraying Where certain folks would go when they were dead; This system of exchanges—there's no saying To what more solid barter 'twould have led, But that a river, vext with boils and swellings At rainy times, kept peace between their dwellings.

So they two played at wordy battledore And kept a curse forever in the air, Flying this way or that from shore to shore; Nor other labor did this holy pair, 20 Clothed and supported from the lavish store Which crowds lanigerous brought with daily care; They toiled not, neither did they spin; their bias Was tow'rd the harder task of being pious.

Each from his hut rushed six score times a day, Like a great canon of the Church full-rammed With cartridge theologic, (so to say,) Touched himself off, and then, recoiling, slammed His hovel's door behind him in away That to his foe said plainly,—you'll be damned; 30 And so like Potts and Wainwright, shrill and strong The two D—— D'd each other all day long.

One was a dancing Dervise, a Mohammedan, The other was a Hindoo, a gymnosophist; One kept his whatd'yecallit and his Ramadan, Laughing to scorn the sacred rites and laws of his Transfluvial rival, who, in turn, called Ahmed an Old top, and, as a clincher, shook across a fist With nails six inches long, yet lifted not His eyes from off his navel's mystic knot. 40

'Who whirls not round six thousand times an hour Will go,' screamed Ahmed, 'to the evil place; May he eat dirt, and may the dog and Giaour Defile the graves of him and all his race; Allah loves faithful souls and gives them power To spin till they are purple in the face; Some folks get you know what, but he that pure is Earns Paradise and ninety thousand houris.'

'Upon the silver mountain, South by East, Sits Brahma fed upon the sacred bean; 30 He loves those men whose nails are still increased, Who all their lives keep ugly, foul, and lean; 'Tis of his grace that not a bird or beast Adorned with claws like mine was ever seen; The suns and stars are Brahma's thoughts divine, Even as these trees I seem to see are mine.'

'Thou seem'st to see, indeed!' roared Ahmed back; 'Were I but once across this plaguy stream, With a stout sapling in my hand, one whack On those lank ribs would rid thee of that dream! 60 Thy Brahma-blasphemy is ipecac To my soul's stomach; couldst thou grasp the scheme Of true redemption, thou wouldst know that Deity Whirls by a kind of blessed spontaneity.

'And this it is which keeps our earth here going With all the stars.'—'Oh, vile! but there's a place Prepared for such; to think of Brahma throwing Worlds like a juggler's balls up into Space! Why, not so much as a smooth lotos blowing Is e'er allowed that silence to efface 70 Which broods round Brahma, and our earth, 'tis known, Rests on a tortoise, moveless as this stone.'

So they kept up their banning amoebæan, When suddenly came floating down the stream A youth whose face like an incarnate pæan Glowed, 'twas so full of grandeur and of gleam; 'If there be gods, then, doubtless, this must be one,' Thought both at once, and then began to scream, 'Surely, whate'er immortals know, thou knowest, Decide between us twain before thou goest!' 80

The youth was drifting in a slim canoe Most like a huge white water-lily's petal, But neither of our theologians knew Whereof 'twas made; whether of heavenly metal Seldseen, or of a vast pearl split in two And hollowed, was a point they could not settle; 'Twas good debate-seed, though, and bore large fruit In after years of many a tart dispute.

There were no wings upon the stranger's shoulders. And yet he seemed so capable of rising 90 That, had he soared like thistle-down, beholders Had thought the circumstance noways surprising; Enough that he remained, and, when the scolders Hailed him as umpire in their vocal prize-ring, The painter of his boat he lightly threw Around a lotos-stem, and brought her to.

The strange youth had a look as if he might Have trod far planets where the atmosphere (Of nobler temper) steeps the face with light, Just as our skins are tanned and freckled here; 100 His air was that of a cosmopolite In the wide universe from sphere to sphere; Perhaps he was (his face had such grave beauty) An officer of Saturn's guards off duty.

Both saints began to unfold their tales at once, Both wished their tales, like simial ones, prehensile, That they might seize his ear; fool! knave! and dunce! Flew zigzag back and forth, like strokes of pencil In a child's fingers; voluble as duns, They jabbered like the stones on that immense hill 110 In the Arabian Nights; until the stranger Began to think his ear-drums in some danger.

In general those who nothing have to say Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it; They turn and vary it in every way, Hashing it, stewing it, mincing it, ragouting it; Sometimes they keep it purposely at bay, Then let it slip to be again pursuing it; They drone it, groan it, whisper it and shout it, Refute it, flout it, swear to 't, prove it, doubt it. 120

Our saints had practised for some thirty years; Their talk, beginning with a single stem, Spread like a banyan, sending down live piers, Colonies of digression, and, in them, Germs of yet new dispersion; once by the ears, They could convey damnation in a hem, And blow the pinch of premise-priming off Long syllogistic batteries, with a cough.

Each had a theory that the human ear A providential tunnel was, which led 130 To a huge vacuum (and surely here They showed some knowledge of the general head,) For cant to be decanted through, a mere Auricular canal or mill-race fed All day and night, in sunshine and in shower, From their vast heads of milk-and-water-power.

The present being a peculiar case, Each with unwonted zeal the other scouted, Put his spurred hobby through its every pace, 139 Pished, pshawed, poohed, horribled, bahed, jeered, sneered, flouted, Sniffed, nonsensed, infideled, fudged, with his face Looked scorn too nicely shaded to be shouted, And, with each inch of person and of vesture, Contrived to hint some most disdainful gesture.

At length, when their breath's end was come about, And both could now and then just gasp 'impostor!' Holding their heads thrust menacingly out, As staggering cocks keep up their fighting posture, The stranger smiled and said, 'Beyond a doubt 'Tis fortunate, my friends, that you have lost your 150 United parts of speech, or it had been Impossible for me to get between.

'Produce! says Nature,—what have you produced? A new strait-waistcoat for the human mind; Are you not limbed, nerved, jointed, arteried, juiced, As other men? yet, faithless to your kind, Rather like noxious insects you are used To puncture life's fair fruit, beneath the rind Laying your creed-eggs, whence in time there spring Consumers new to eat and buzz and sting. 160

'Work! you have no conception how 'twill sweeten Your views of Life and Nature, God and Man; Had you been forced to earn what you have eaten, Your heaven had shown a less dyspeptic plan; At present your whole function is to eat ten And talk ten times as rapidly as you can; Were your shape true to cosmogonic laws, You would be nothing but a pair of jaws.

'Of all the useless beings in creation The earth could spare most easily you bakers 170 Of little clay gods, formed in shape and fashion Precisely in the image of their makers; Why it would almost move a saint to passion, To see these blind and deaf, the hourly breakers Of God's own image in their brother men, Set themselves up to tell the how, where, when,

'Of God's existence; one's digestion's worse— So makes a god of vengeance and of blood; Another,—but no matter, they reverse Creation's plan, out of their own vile mud 180 Pat up a god, and burn, drown, hang, or curse Whoever worships not; each keeps his stud Of texts which wait with saddle on and bridle To hunt down atheists to their ugly idol.

'This, I perceive, has been your occupation; You should have been more usefully employed; All men are bound to earn their daily ration, Where States make not that primal contract void By cramps and limits; simple devastation Is the worm's task, and what he has destroyed 190 His monument; creating is man's work, And that, too, something more than mist and murk.'

So having said, the youth was seen no more, And straightway our sage Brahmin, the philosopher, Cried, 'That was aimed at thee, thou endless bore, Idle and useless as the growth of moss over A rotting tree-trunk!' 'I would square that score Full soon,' replied the Dervise, 'could I cross over And catch thee by the beard. Thy nails I'd trim And make thee work, as was advised by him. 200

'Work? Am I not at work from morn till night Sounding the deeps of oracles umbilical Which for man's guidance never come to light, With all their various aptitudes, until I call?' 'And I, do I not twirl from left to right For conscience' sake? Is that no work? Thou silly gull, He had thee in his eye; 'twas Gabriel Sent to reward my faith, I know him well.'

'Twas Vishnu, thou vile whirligig!' and so The good old quarrel was begun anew; 210 One would have sworn the sky was black as sloe, Had but the other dared to call it blue; Nor were the followers who fed them slow To treat each other with their curses, too, Each hating t'other (moves it tears or laughter?) Because he thought him sure of hell hereafter.

At last some genius built a bridge of boats Over the stream, and Ahmed's zealots filed Across, upon a mission to (cut throats And) spread religion pure and undefiled; 220 They sowed the propagandist's wildest oats, Cutting off all, down to the smallest child, And came back, giving thanks for such fat mercies, To find their harvest gone past prayers or curses.

All gone except their saint's religious hops, Which he kept up with more than common flourish; But these, however satisfying crops For the inner man, were not enough to nourish The body politic, which quickly drops Reserve in such sad junctures, and turns currish; 230 So Ahmed soon got cursed for all the famine Where'er the popular voice could edge a damn in.

At first he pledged a miracle quite boldly. And, for a day or two, they growled and waited; But, finding that this kind of manna coldly Sat on their stomachs, they erelong berated The saint for still persisting in that old lie, Till soon the whole machine of saintship grated, Ran slow, creaked, stopped, and, wishing him in Tophet, They gathered strength enough to stone the prophet. 240

Some stronger ones contrived (by eatting leather, Their weaker friends, and one thing or another) The winter months of scarcity to weather; Among these was the late saint's younger brother, Who, in the spring, collecting them together, Persuaded them that Ahmed's holy pother Had wrought in their behalf, and that the place Of Saint should be continued to his race.

Accordingly, 'twas settled on the spot That Allah favored that peculiar breed; 250 Beside, as all were satisfied, 'twould not Be quite respectable to have the need Of public spiritual food forgot; And so the tribe, with proper forms, decreed That he, and, failing him, his next of kin, Forever for the people's good should spin.