^O 
 
 <5^'' 
 
 CT^EESE LIBRARY 
 
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 JNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Received V A/t^to^CC^y^ iR}^ Z^. 
 
 iccessions No, ^^J/,^^_ Shelf No. 
 
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I K 1 <^ 6^ K. 
 
PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU 
 
 SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 
 
 15V 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 SMITH, ELDER AND CO., LONDON. 
 iS7i. 
 
 ['/Vu- /v4'/// q/ Tranilaiion is rcsci\!eit.\ 
 
U(/(/(lOl 
 
"Tdpav (povtvaag, jAvpUov t dXXiov ttuviajv 
 SirjXOov dysXag . . . 
 TO Xoiadiov ce Tovd' trXrjv raXarj irovov, 
 . . . dojfia 9piyKoj(Tai kcikoIC' 
 
 I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd 
 To labour — tribes of labours ! Till, at last, 
 Attempting one more labour, in a trice, 
 Alack, with ills I croiuned the edifice. 
 
PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 
 
 You have seen hQiidrn^hf^nib^^^So have I — 
 And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth 
 As yours to lisp " You wish you knew me ! " Well, 
 Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same, 
 And wished and had their trouble for their pains. 
 Suppose my GEdipus should lurk at last 
 Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline, 
 
2 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square ? 
 
 Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age, 
 
 Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads, 
 
 And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, — 
 
 Jealous that the good trick which served the turn 
 
 Have justice rendered it, nor class one day 
 
 With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,- 
 
 What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say, 
 
 (Because night draws on, and the sands increase, 
 
 And desert-whispers grow a prophecy) 
 
 Tell all to Corinth of her own accord. 
 
 Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Lai's' sake, 
 
 Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose. 
 
 And thinks a man of sixty at the prime ? 
 
 Good ! It shall be! Revealment of myself! 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 
 
 But listen, for we must co-operate ; 
 
 I don't drink tea : permit me the cigar ! 
 
 First, how to make the matter plain, of course — 
 What was* the law by which I lived. Let 's see : 
 Ay, we must take one instant of my life 
 Spent sitting by your side in this neat room : 
 Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh ! 
 Here's paper on the table, pen and ink : 
 Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose ! 
 See ! having sat an hour, I 'm rested now, 
 Therefore want work : and spy no better work 
 For eye and hand and mind that guides them both, 
 During this instant, than to draw my pen 
 From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus — 
 
4 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Which I at last reach, thus, and here 's my line 
 Five inches long and tolerably straight : 
 Better to draw than leave undrawn, I think. 
 Fitter to do than let alone, I hold, 
 Though better, fitter, by but one degree. 
 Therefore it was that, rather than sit still 
 Simply, my right-hand drew it while my left 
 Pulled smooth and pinched the moustache to a point. 
 
 Now I permit your plump lips to unpurse : 
 
 ^^ So far, one possibly may understand 
 
 " Without recourse to witchcraft !" True, my dear. 
 
 Thus folks begin with Euclid, — finish, how ? 
 
 Trying to square the circle ! — at any rate, 
 
 Solving abstruser problems than this first 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 5 
 
 " How find the nearest way 'tvvixt point and point." 
 
 Deal but with moral mathematics so — 
 
 Master one merest moment's work of mine, 
 
 Even this practising with pen and ink, — 
 
 Demonstrate why I rather plied the quill 
 
 Than left the space a blank, — you gain a fact, 
 
 And God knows w^hat a fact 's worth ! So proceed 
 
 By inference from just this moral fact 
 
 — I don't say, to that plaguy quadrature 
 
 " What the whole man meant, whom you wish you knew," 
 
 But, what meant certain things he did of old, 
 
 Which puzzled Europe, — why, you '11 find them plain, 
 
 This way, not otherwise : I guarantee. 
 
 Understand one, you comprehend the rest. 
 
 Rays from all round converge to any point : 
 
6 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGA U, 
 
 Study the point then ere you track the rays ! 
 The size o' the circle 's nothing ; subdivide 
 Earth, and earth's smallest grain of mustard-seed, 
 You count as many parts, small matching large, 
 If you can use the mind's eye : otherwise, 
 Material optics, being gross at best, 
 Prefer the large and leave our mind the small — 
 And pray how many folks have minds can see ? 
 Certainly you — and somebody in Thrace 
 Whose name escapes me at the moment. You — 
 Lend me your mind then ! Analyse with me 
 This instance of the line 'twixt blot and blot 
 I rather chose to draw than leave a blank. 
 Things else being equal. You are taught thereby 
 That 't is my nature, when I am at ease, 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 
 
 Rather than idle out my life too long, 
 
 To want to do a thing — to put a thought, 
 
 Whether a great thought or a little one, 
 
 Into an act, as nearly as may be. 
 
 ;Make what is absolutely new — I can't, 
 
 Mar what is made already well enough — 
 
 I won't : but turn to best account the thing 
 
 That 's half-made — that I can. Two blots, you saw 
 
 I knew how to extend into a line 
 
 Symmetric on the sheet they blurred before — 
 
 Such little act sufficed, this time, such thought. 
 
 Now, we '11 extend rays, widen out the verge, 
 Describe a larger circle ; leave this first 
 Clod of an instance we began with, rise 
 
8 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 To the complete world many clods effect. 
 
 Only continue patient while I throw, 
 
 D elver-like, spadeful after spadeful up, 
 
 Just as truths come, the subsoil of me, mould 
 
 Whence spring my moods : your object, — ^just to find, 
 
 Alike from handlift and from barrow-load, 
 
 What salts and silts may constitute the earth — 
 
 If it be proper stuff to blow man glass. 
 
 Or bake him pottery, bear him oaks or wheat — 
 
 What 's born of me, in brief; which found, all's known. 
 
 If it were genius did the digging-job. 
 
 Logic would speedily sift its product smooth 
 
 And leave the crude truths bare for poetry ; 
 
 But I 'm no poet, and am stiff i' the back. 
 
 What one spread fails to bring, another may. 
 
SA VIOUR OF SOCIETY, 9 
 
 In goes the shovel and out comes scoop — as here ! 
 
 I live to please myself. I recognize 
 
 Power passing mine, immeasurable, God — 
 
 Above me, whom He made, as heaven beyond 
 
 Earth — to use figures which assist our sense. 
 
 I know that He is there as I am here. 
 
 By the same proof, which seems no proof at all, 
 
 It so exceeds familiar forms of proof. 
 
 Why " there," not " here " ? Because, when I say ^^ there," 
 
 I treat the feeling with distincter shape 
 
 That space exists between us : I, — not He, — 
 
 Live, think, do human work here — no machine. 
 
 His will moves, but a being by myself, 
 
 / 
 
 ■/■ 
 
 His, and not He who made me for a work, 
 
 2 
 
I o PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGA U, 
 
 Watches my working, judges its effect, 
 But does not interpose. He did so once, 
 And probably will again some time — not now, 
 Life being the minute of mankind, not God's, 
 In a certain sense, like time before and time 
 After man's earthly life, so far as man 
 Needs apprehend the matter. Am I clear ? 
 Suppose I bid a courier take to-night 
 ( . . . Once for all, let me talk as if I smoked 
 Yet in the Residenz, a personage : 
 I must still represent the thing I was, 
 Galvanically make dead muscle play. 
 Or how shall I illustrate muscle's use ?) 
 I could then, last July, bid courier take 
 Message for me, post-haste, a thousand miles. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 
 
 I bid him, since I have the right to bid, 
 
 And, my part done so far, his part begins ; 
 
 He starts with due equipment, will and power, 
 
 Means he may use, misuse, not use at all. 
 
 At his discretion, at his peril too. 
 
 I leave him to himself: but, journey done, 
 
 I count the minutes, call for the result 
 
 In quickness and the courier quality. 
 
 Weigh its worth, and then punish or reward 
 
 According to proved service ; not before. 
 
 Meantime, he sleeps through noontide, rides till dawn. 
 
 Sticks to the straight road, tries the crooked path. 
 
 Measures and manages resource, trusts, doubts 
 
 Advisers by the wayside, does his best 
 
 At his discretion, lags or launches forth, 
 
1 2 PRINCE IIOHENSTIEL-SCmVAXGA U, 
 
 (He knows and I know) at his peril too. 
 You see ? Exactly thus men stand to God : 
 I with my courier, God with me. Just so 
 I have His bidding to perform ; but mind 
 And body, all of me, though made and meant 
 For that sole service, must consult, concert 
 AVith my own self and nobody beside, 
 How to effect the same : God helps not else. 
 'T is I who, with my stock of craft and strength, 
 Choose the directer cut across the hedge. 
 Or keep the foot-track that respects a crop. 
 Lie down and rest, rise up and run, — live spare, 
 Feed free, — all that 's my business : but, arrive, 
 Deliver message, bring the answer back, 
 And make my bow, I must : then God will speak, 
 
m, SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, . 13 
 
 Praise me or haply blame as service proves. 
 
 To other men, to each and everyone, 
 
 Another law ! what likelier ? God, perchance, 
 
 Grants each new man, by some as new a mode. 
 
 Intercommunication with Himself, 
 
 Wreaking on finiteness infinitude j 
 
 By such a series of effects, gives each 
 
 Last His own imprint : old yet ever new 
 
 The process : *t is the way of Deity. 
 
 How it succeeds, He knows : I only know 
 
 That varied modes of creatureship abound, 
 
 Implying just as varied intercourse 
 
 For each with the creator of them all. 
 
 Each has his own mind and no other's mode. 
 
 What mode may yours be ? I shall sympathize 1 
 
14 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 No doubt, you, good young lady that you are, 
 
 Despite a natural naughtiness or two, 
 
 Turn eyes up like a Pradier Magdalen 
 
 And see an outspread providential hand 
 
 Above the owl's-wing aigrette — ^guard and guide — 
 
 Visibly o*er your path, about your bed, 
 
 Through all your practisings with London-town. 
 
 It points, you go ; it stays fixed, and you stop ; 
 
 You quicken its procedure by a word 
 
 Spoken, a thought in silence, prayer and praise. 
 
 Well, I believe that such a hand may stoop, 
 
 And such appeals to it may stave off harm. 
 
 Pacify the grim guardian of this Square, 
 
 And stand you in good stead on quarter-day : 
 
 Quite possible in your case ; not in mine. 
 
SA VIOUR OF SOCIETY. 15 
 
 " Ah, but I choose to make the difference, 
 
 Find the emancipation ? " No, I hope ! 
 
 If I deceive myself, take noon for night, 
 
 Please to become determinedly blind 
 
 To the true ordinance of human life. 
 
 Through mere presumption — that is my affair. 
 
 And truly a grave one ; but as grave I think 
 
 Your affair, yours, the specially observed, — 
 
 Each favored person that perceives his path 
 
 Pointed him, inch by inch, and looks above 
 
 For guidance, through the mazes of this world, 
 
 In what we call its meanest life-career 
 
 — Not how to manage Europe properly. 
 
 But how keep open shop, and yet pay rent. 
 
 Rear household, and make both ends meet, the same. 
 
i6 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 I say, such man is no less tasked than I 
 
 To duly take the path appointed him 
 
 By whatsoever sign he recognize. 
 
 Our insincerity on both our heads ! 
 
 No matter what the object of a life, 
 
 Small work or large, — the making thrive a shop, 
 
 Or seeing that an empire take no harm, — 
 
 There are known fruits to judge obedience by. 
 
 You Ve read a ton's weight, now, of newspaper — 
 
 Lives of me, gabble about the kind of prince — 
 
 You know my work i' the rough ; I ask you, then. 
 
 Do I appear subordinated less 
 
 To hand-impulsion, one prime push for all. 
 
 Than little lives of men, the multitude 
 
 That cried out, every quarter of an hour, 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. i-j 
 
 For fresh instructions, did or did not work, 
 And praised in the odd minutes ? 
 
 Eh, my dear ? 
 Such is the reason why I acquiesced 
 In doing what seemed best for me to do, 
 So as to please myself on the great scale, 
 Having regard to immortality 
 No less than life— did that which head and heart 
 Prescribed my hand, in measure with its means 
 Of doing — used my special stock of power — 
 Not from the aforesaid head and heart alone, 
 But every sort of helpful circumstance. 
 Some problematic and some nondescript : 
 All regulated by the single care 
 
i8 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAUy 
 
 I' the last resort — that I made thoroughly serve 
 
 The when and how, toiled where was need, reposed 
 
 As resolutely to the proper point. 
 
 Braved sorrow, courted joy, to just one end : 
 
 Namely, that just the creature I was bound 
 
 To be, I should become, nor thwart at all 
 
 God's purpose in creation. I conceive 
 
 No other duty possible to man, — 
 
 Highest mind, lowest mind, — no other law 
 
 By which to judge life failure or success : 
 
 What folks call being saved or cast away. 
 
 Such was my rule of life ; I worked my best 
 Subject to ultimate judgment, God's not man's. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 19 
 
 Well then, this settled, — take your tea, I beg. 
 
 And meditate the fact, 'twixt sip and sip, — 
 
 This settled — why I pleased myself, you saw, 
 
 By turning blot and blot into a line, 
 
 O' the little scale, — we '11 try now (as your tongue 
 
 Tries the concluding sugar-drop) what 's meant 
 
 To please me most o' the great scale. Why, just now. 
 
 With nothing else to do within my reach. 
 
 Did I prefer making two blots one line 
 
 To making yet another separate 
 
 Third blot, and leaving those I found unlinked ? 
 
 It meant, I like to use the thing I find. 
 
 Rather than strive at unfound novelty : 
 
 I make the best of the old, nor try for new. 
 
 Such will to act, such choice of action's way. 
 
20 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Constitute — when at work on the great scale, 
 Driven to their farthest natural consequence 
 By all the help from all the means — my own 
 Particular faculty of serving God, 
 , Instinct for putting power to exercise 
 Upon some wish and want o' the time, I prove 
 Possible to mankind as best I may. 
 This constitutes my mission, — grant the phrase, — 
 Namely, to rule men — men within my reach, 
 To order, influence and dispose them so 
 As render solid and stabilify 
 Mankind in particles, the light and loose, 
 For their good and my pleasure in the act. 
 Such good accomplished proves twice good to me — 
 Good for its own sake, as the just and right. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 
 
 And, in the effecting also, good again 
 To me its agent, tasked as suits my taste. 
 
 Is this much easy to be understood 
 
 At first glance ? Now begin the steady gaze ! 
 
 My rank — (if I must tell you simple truth — 
 Telling were else not worth the whiff o* the weed 
 I lose for the tale's sake)— dear, my rank i' the w^orld 
 Is hard to know and name precisely : err 
 I may, but scarcely over-estimate 
 My style and title. Do I class with men 
 Most useful to their fellows ? Possibly, — 
 Therefore, in some sort, best ; but, greatest mind 
 And rarest nature ? Evidently no. 
 
22 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 A conservator, call me, if you please, 
 
 Not a creator nor destroyer : one 
 
 Who keeps the world safe. I profess to trace 
 
 The broken circle of society, 
 
 Dim actual order, I can redescribe 
 
 Not only where some segment silver-true 
 
 Stays clear, but where the breaks of black commence 
 
 Baffling you all who want the eye to probe — 
 
 As I make out yon problematic thin 
 
 White paring of your thumb-nail outside there, 
 
 Above the plaster-monarch on his steed — 
 
 See an inch, name an ell, and prophecy 
 
 O' the rest that ought to follow, the round moon 
 
 Now hiding in the night of things : that round, 
 
 I labour to demonstrate moon enough 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 23 
 
 For the month's purpose, — that society, 
 Render efficient for the age's need : 
 Preserving you in either case the old, 
 Nor aiming at a new and greater thing, 
 A sun for moon, a future to be made 
 By first aboHshing the present law : 
 No such proud task for me by any means ! 
 History shows you men whose master-touch 
 Not so much modifies as makes anew : 
 Minds that transmute nor need restore at all. 
 A breath of God made manifest in flesh 
 Subjects the world to change, from time to time, 
 Alters the whole conditions of our race 
 Abruptly, not by unperceived degrees 
 Nor play of elements already there, 
 
24 PRINCE HOIIENSTIEL-SCIIIVANGAU, 
 
 But quite new leaven, leavening the lump, 
 And liker, so, the natural process. See ! 
 Where winter reigned for ages — by a turn 
 1' the time, some star-change, (ask geologists) 
 The ice-tracts split, clash, splinter and disperse. 
 And there 's an end of immobility, 
 Silence, and all that tinted pageant, base 
 To pinnacle, one flush from fairy-land 
 Dead-asleep and deserted somewhere, — see ! — 
 As a fresh sun, wave, spring and joy outburst. 
 Or else the earth it is, time starts from trance. 
 Her mountains tremble into fire, her plains 
 Heave blinded by confusion : what result ? 
 New teeming growth, surprises of strange life 
 Impossible before, a world broke up 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 25 
 
 And re-made, order gained by law destroyed. 
 
 Not otherwise, in our society 
 
 Follow like portents, all as absolute 
 
 Regenerations : they have birth at rare 
 
 Uncertain unexpected intervals 
 
 O' the world, by ministry impossible 
 
 Before and after fulness of the days : 
 
 Some dervish desert-spectre, swordsman, saint, 
 
 Law-giver, lyrist, — Oh, we know the names ! 
 
 Quite other these than I. Our time requires 
 
 No such strange potentate, — who else would dawn, — 
 
 No fresh force till the old have spent itself. 
 
 Such seems the natural economy. 
 
 To shoot a beam into the dark, assists : 
 
 To make that beam do fuller service, spread 
 
26 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHVVANGAU, 
 
 And utilize such bounty to the height, 
 
 That assists also, — and that work is mine. 
 
 I recognize, contemplate, and approve 
 
 The general compact of society. 
 
 Not simply as I see effected good. 
 
 But good i' the germ, each chance that 's possible 
 
 I' the plan traced so far : all results, in short, 
 
 For better or worse of the operation due 
 
 To those exceptional natures, unlike mine, 
 
 Who, helping, thwarting, conscious, unaware. 
 
 Did somehow manage to so far describe 
 
 This diagram left ready to my hand. 
 
 Waiting my turn of trial. I see success. 
 
 See failure, see what makes or mars throughout. 
 
 How shall I else but help complete this plan 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 27 
 
 Of which I know the purpose and approve, 
 By letting stay therein what seems to stand, 
 And adding good thereto of easier reach 
 To-day than yesterday ? 
 
 So much, no more ! 
 Whereon, ^^ No more than that ?" — inquire aggrieved 
 Half of my critics : " nothing new at all ? 
 The old plan saved, instead of a sponged slate 
 And fresh-drawn figure ?" — while, " So much as that?" 
 Object their fellows of the other faith : 
 " Leave uneffaced the crazy labyrinth 
 Of alteration and amendment, lines 
 Which every dabster felt in duty bound 
 To signalize his power of pen and ink 
 
28 PRINCE nOHENSTIEL-SCH\VANGAl\ 
 
 By adding to a plan once plain enough ? 
 Why keep each fool's bequeathment, scratch and blurr 
 Which overscrawl and underscore the piece — 
 Nay, strengthen them by touches of your own ?" 
 
 Well, that 's my mission, so I serve the world, 
 
 Figure as man o' the moment, — in default 
 
 Of somebody inspired to strike such change 
 
 Into society — from round to square. 
 
 The ellipsis to the rhomboid, how you please, 
 
 As suits the size and shape o' the world he finds. 
 
 But this I can, — and nobody my peer, — 
 
 Do the best with the least change possible : 
 
 Carry the incompleteness on, a stage, 
 
 Make w^hat was crooked straight, and roughness smooth. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 29 
 
 And weakness strong : wherein if I succeed, 
 
 It will not prove the worst achievement, sure. 
 
 In the eyes at least of one man, one I look 
 
 Nowise to catch in critic company : 
 
 To-wit, the man inspired, the genius' self 
 
 Destined to come and change things thoroughly. 
 
 He, at least, finds his business simplified. 
 
 Distinguishes the done from undone, reads 
 
 Plainly what meant and did not mean this time 
 
 We live in, and I work on, and transmit 
 
 To such successor : he will operate 
 
 On good hard substance, not mere shade and shine. 
 
 Let all my critics, born to idleness 
 
 And impotency, get their good, and have 
 
 Their hooting at the giver : I am deaf — 
 
30 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Who find great good in this society, 
 
 Great gain, the purchase of great labour. Touch 
 
 The work I may and must, but — reverent 
 
 In every fall o' the finger-tip, no doubt. 
 
 Perhaps I find all good there 's warrant for 
 
 I' the world as yet : nay, to the end of time, — 
 
 Since evil never means part company 
 
 With mankind, only shift side and change shape. 
 
 I find advance i' the main, and notably 
 
 The Present an improvement on the Past, 
 
 And promise for the Future — which shall prove 
 
 Only the Present with its rough made smooth, 
 
 Its indistinctness emphasized; I hope 
 
 No better, nothing newer for mankind, 
 
 But something equably smoothed everywhere, 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 31 
 
 Good, reconciled with hardly-quite-as-good, 
 
 Instead of good and bad each jostling each. 
 
 " And that 's all ? " Ay, and quite enough for me ! 
 
 We have toiled so long to gain what gain I find 
 
 I' the Present, — let us keep it ! We shall toil 
 
 So long before we gain — if gain God grant — 
 
 A Future with one touch of difference 
 
 I' the heart of things, and not their outside face, — 
 
 Let us not risk the whiff of my cigar 
 
 For Fourier, Comte and all that ends in smoke ! 
 
 This I see clearest probably of men 
 With power to act and influence, now alive : 
 Juster than they to the true state of things ; 
 In consequence, more tolerant that, side 
 
32 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCmVANGAU, 
 
 By side, shall co-exist and thrive alike 
 
 In the age, the various sorts of happiness 
 
 jNIoral, mark ! — not material — moods o' the mind 
 
 Suited to man and man his opposite : 
 
 Say, minor modes of movement — hence to there, 
 
 Or thence to here, or simply round about — 
 
 So long as each toe spares its neighbour's kibe, 
 
 Nor spoils the major march and main advance. 
 
 The love of peace, care for the family, 
 
 Contentment with what 's bad but might be worse — 
 
 Good movements these ! and good, too, discontent. 
 
 So long as that spurs good, which might be best. 
 
 Into becoming better, anyhow : 
 
 Good — pride of country, putting hearth and home 
 
 1' the back-ground, out of undue prominence : 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 33 
 
 Good — yearning after change, strife, victory, 
 
 And triumph. Each shall have its orbit marked, 
 
 But no more, — none impede the other's path 
 
 In this wide world, — though each and all alike, 
 
 Save for me, fain would spread itself through space 
 
 And leave its fellow not an inch of way. 
 
 I rule and regulate the course, excite, 
 
 Restrain : because the whole machine should march 
 
 Impelled by those diversely-moving parts, 
 
 Each blind to aught beside its little bent. 
 
 Out of the turnings round and round inside. 
 
 Comes that straight-forward world-advance, I want, 
 
 And none of them supposes God wants too 
 
 And gets through just their hindrance and my help. 
 
 I think that to have held the balance straight 
 
 S 
 
34 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 For twenty years, say, weighing claim and claim, 
 
 And giving each its due, no less no more. 
 
 This was good service to humanity, 
 
 Right usage of my power in head and heart. 
 
 And reasonable piety beside. 
 
 Keep those three points in mind while judging me ! 
 
 You stand, perhaps, for some one man, not men, — 
 
 Represent this or the other interest, 
 
 Nor mind the general welfare, — so, impugn 
 
 My practice and dispute my value : why ? 
 
 You man of faith, I did not tread the world 
 
 Into a paste, and thereof make a smooth 
 
 Uniform mound whereon to plant your flag, 
 
 The lily-white, above the blood and brains ! 
 
 Nor yet did I, you man of faithlessness, 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 35 
 
 So roll things to the level which you love, 
 
 That you could stand at ease there and survey 
 
 The universal Nothing undisgraced 
 
 By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire 
 
 I' the distance ! Neither friend would I content, 
 
 Nor, as the world were simply meant for him. 
 
 Thrust out his fellow and mend God's mistake. 
 
 Why, you two fools, — my dear friends all the same, — 
 
 Is it some change o' the world and nothing else 
 
 Contents you ? Should whatever was, not be ? 
 
 How thanklessly you view things ! There 's the root • 
 
 Of the evil, source of the entire mistake : 
 
 You see no worth i' the world, nature and life, 
 
 Unless we change what is to what may be. 
 
 Which means, — may be, i' the brain of one of you ! 
 
36 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 " Reject what is? " — all capabilities — 
 
 Nay, you may style them chances if you choose — 
 
 All chances, then, of happiness that lie 
 
 Open to anybody that is born, 
 
 Tumbles into this life and out again, — 
 
 All that may happen, good and evil too, 
 
 I' the space between, to each adventurer 
 
 Upon this 'sixty, Anno Domini : 
 
 A life to live — and such a life ! a world 
 
 To learn, one's lifetime in, — and such a world ! 
 
 However did the foolish pass for wise 
 
 By calling life a burden, man a fly 
 
 Or worm or what 's most insignificant? 
 
 " O littleness of man !" deplores the bard ; 
 
 And then, for fear the Powers should punish him, 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 37 
 
 *' grandeur of the visible universe 
 Our human Httleness contrasts withal ! 
 
 sun, O moon, ye mountains and thou sea, 
 Thou emblem of immensity, thou this, 
 That and the other, — what impertinence 
 
 In man to eat and drink and walk about 
 
 And have his little notions of his own, 
 
 The while some wave sheds foam upon the shore !" 
 
 First of all, 't is a lie some three-times thick : 
 
 The bard, — this sort of speech being poetry, — 
 
 The bard puts mankind well outside himself 
 
 And then begins instructing them : '^This way 
 
 1 and my friend the sea conceive of you ! 
 
 What would you give to think such thoughts as ours 
 Of you and the sea together ? " Down they go 
 
38 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 On the humbled knees of them : at once they draw 
 
 Distinction, recognize no mate of theirs 
 
 In one, despite his mock humiHty, 
 
 So plain a match for what he plays with. Next, 
 
 The turn of the great ocean-play-fellow, 
 
 When the bard, leaving Bond Street very far 
 
 From ear-shot, cares not to ventriloquize, 
 
 But tells the sea its home-truths : " You, my match ? 
 
 You, all this terror and inmiensity 
 
 And what not ? Shall I tell you what you are ? 
 
 Just fit to hitch into a stanza, so 
 
 Wake up and set in motion who 's asleep 
 
 O' the other side of you, in England, else 
 
 Unaware, as folk pace their Bond Street now, 
 
 Somebody here despises them so much ! 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. . 39 
 
 Between us, — they are the ultimate ! to them 
 And their perception go these lordly thoughts : 
 Since what were ocean — mane and tail, to boot — 
 Mused I not here, how make thoughts thinkable ? 
 Start forth my stanza and astound the world ! 
 Back, billows, to your insignificance ! 
 Deep, you are done with ! '- 
 
 ■ ' Learn, my gifted friend, 
 
 There are two things i' the world, still wiser folk 
 Accept — intelligence and sympathy. 
 You pant about unutterable power 
 I' the ocean, all you feel but cannot speak ? 
 Why, that 's the plainest speech about it all. 
 You did not feel what was not to be felt. 
 
40 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Well, then, all else but what man feels is nought- 
 
 The wash o' the liquor that o'erbrims the cup 
 
 Called man, and runs to waste adown his side, 
 
 Perhaps to feed a cataract, — who cares ? 
 
 I '11 tell you : all the more I know mankind, 
 
 The more I thank God, like my grandmother, 
 
 For making me a little lower than 
 
 The angels, honor-clothed and glory-crowned : 
 
 This is the honor, — that no thing I know, 
 
 Feel or conceive, but I can make my own 
 
 Somehow, by use of hand or head or heart : 
 
 This is the glory, — that in all conceived. 
 
 Or felt or known, I recognize a mind 
 
 Not mine but like mine, — for the double joy, — 
 
 Making all things for me and me for Him. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 41 
 
 There 's folly for you at this time of day ! 
 
 So think it ! and enjoy your ignorance 
 
 Of what — no matter for the worthy's name — 
 
 Wisdom set working in a noble heart, 
 
 When he, who was earth's best geometer 
 
 Up to that time of day, consigned his life 
 
 With its results into one matchless book, 
 
 The triumph of the human mind so far. 
 
 All in geometry man yet could do : 
 
 And then wrote on the dedication-page 
 
 In place of name the universe applauds, 
 m ^ But, God, what a geometer art Thou ! " 
 ^B|suppose Heaven is, through Eternity, 
 
 The equalizing, ever and anon, 
 
 In momentary rapture, great with small, 
 
42 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Omniscience with intelligency, God 
 
 With man,^-the thunder-glow from pole to pole 
 
 Abolishing, a blissful moment-space, 
 
 Great cloud alike and small cloud, in one fire — 
 
 As sure to ebb as sure again to flow 
 
 When the new receptivity deserves 
 
 The new completion. There 's the Heaven for me. 
 
 And I say, therefore, to live out one's life 
 
 I' the world here, with the chance, — whether by pain 
 
 Or pleasure be the process, long or short 
 
 The time, august or mean the circumstance 
 
 To human eye, — of learning how set foot 
 
 Decidedly on some one path to Heaven, 
 
 Touch segment in the circle whence all lines 
 
 Lead to the centre equally, red lines 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 43 
 
 Or black lines, so they but produce themselves — 
 This, I do say, — and here my sermon ends, — 
 This makes it worth our while to tenderly 
 Handle a state of things which mend we might. 
 Mar we may, but which meanwhile helps so far. 
 Therefore my end is — save society ! 
 
 " And that 's all ? " twangs the never-failing taunt 
 O' the foe — " No novelty, creativeness, 
 Mark of the master that renews the age ? " 
 " Nay, all that? " rather will demur my judge 
 I look to hear some day, nor friend nor foe — 
 *' Did you attain, then, to perceive that God 
 Knew what He undertook when He made things ? " 
 Ay : that my task was to co-operate 
 
44 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCmVANGAU, 
 
 Rather than play the rival, chop and change 
 The order whence comes all the good we know, 
 With this, — good's last expression to our sense, — 
 That there 's a further good conceivable 
 Beyond the utmost earth can realize : 
 And, therefore, that to change the agency, 
 The evil whereby good is brought about — 
 Try to make good do good as evil does — 
 Were just as if a chemist, wanting white. 
 And knowing black ingredients bred the dye. 
 Insisted these too should be white forsooth ! 
 Correct the evil, mitigate your best, 
 Blend mild with harsh, and soften black to gray 
 If gray may follow with no detriment 
 To the eventual perfect purity ! 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 45 
 
 But as for hazarding the main result 
 
 By hoping to anticipate one half 
 
 In the intermediate process, — no, my friends ! 
 
 This bad world, I experience and approve ; 
 
 Your good world, — with no pity, courage, hope. 
 
 Fear, sorrow, joy, — devotedness, in short, 
 
 Which I account the ultimate of man, 
 
 Of which there 's not one day nor hour but brings^ 
 
 In flower or fruit, some sample of success, 
 
 Out of this same society I save — 
 
 None of it for me ! That I might have none, 
 
 I rapped your tampering knuckles twenty years. 
 
 Such was the task imposed me, such my end. 
 
 Now for the means thereto. Ah, confidence — 
 
46 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Keep we together or part company ? 
 
 This is the critical minute ! '^ Such my end ? " 
 
 Certainly ; how could it be otherwise ? 
 
 Can there be question which was the right task — 
 
 To save or to destroy society? 
 
 Why, even prove that, by some miracle, 
 
 Destruction were the proper work to choose, 
 
 And that a torch best remedies what 's wrong 
 
 I' the temple, whence the long procession wound 
 
 Of powers and beauties, earth's achievements all. 
 
 The human strength that strove and overthrew, — 
 
 The human love that, weak itself, crowned strength,— 
 
 The instinct crying " God is whence I came ! " — 
 
 The reason laying down the law " And such 
 
 His will i' the world must be ! " — the leap and shout 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 47 
 
 Of genius " For I hold His very thoughts, 
 
 The meaning of the mind of Him ! " — nay, more 
 
 The ingenuities, each active force 
 
 That turning in a circle on itselt 
 
 Looks neither up nor down but keeps the spot. 
 
 Mere creature-like and, for religion, works, 
 
 Works only and works ever, makes and shapes 
 
 And changes, still wrings more of good from less, 
 
 Still stamps some bad out, where was worst before. 
 
 So leaves the handiwork, the act and deed. 
 
 Were it but house and land and wealth, to show 
 
 Here was a creature perfect in the kind — 
 
 Whether as bee, beaver, or behemoth, 
 
 What 's the importance ? he has done his work 
 
 For work's sake, worked well, earned a creature's praise; — 
 
48 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 I say, concede that same fane, whence deploys 
 
 Age after age, all this humanity, 
 
 Diverse but ever dear, out of the dark 
 
 Behind the altar into the broad day 
 
 By the portal — enter, and, concede there mocks 
 
 Each lover of free motion and much space 
 
 A perplexed length of apse and aisle and nave, — 
 
 Pillared roof and carved screen, and what care I ?- 
 
 That irk the movement and impede the march, — 
 
 Nay, possibly, bring flat upon his nose 
 
 At some odd break-neck angle, by some freak 
 
 Of old-world artistry, that personage 
 
 Who, could he but have kept his skirts from grief 
 
 And catching at the hooks and crooks about, 
 
 Had stepped out on the daylight of our time 
 
 i 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 49 
 
 Plainly the man of the age, — still, still, I bar 
 Excessive conflagration in the case. 
 *' Shake the flame freely ! " shout the multitude : 
 The architect approves I stuck my torch 
 Inside a good stout lantern, hung its light 
 Above the hooks and crooks, and ended so. 
 To save society was well : the means 
 Whereby to save it, — there begins the doubt 
 Permitted you, imperative on me ; 
 Were mine the best means ? Did I work aright 
 With powers appointed me ? — since powers denied 
 Concern me nothing. 
 
 Well, my work reviewed 
 Fairly, leaves more hope than discouragement. 
 
so PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 First, there 's the deed done : what I found, I leave,- 
 
 What tottered, I kept stable : if it stand 
 
 One month, without sustainment, still thank me 
 
 The twenty years' sustainer ! Now, observe, 
 
 Sustaining is no brilliant self-display 
 
 Like knocking down or even setting up : 
 
 Much bustle these necessitate ; and still 
 
 To vulgar eye, the mightier of the myth 
 
 Is Hercules, who substitutes his own 
 
 For Atlas' shoulder and supports the globe 
 
 A whole day, — not the passive and obscure 
 
 Atlas who bore, ere Hercules was born, 
 
 And is to go on bearing that same load 
 
 When Hercules turns ash on CEta's top. 
 
 'T is the transition-stage, the tug and strain. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 51 
 
 That Strike men : standing still is stupid-like. 
 
 My pressure was too constant on the whole 
 
 For any part's eruption into space * 
 
 Mid sparkles, crackling, and much praise of me. 
 
 I saw that, in the ordinary life, 
 
 Many of the little make a mass of men 
 
 Important beyond greatness here and there ; 
 
 As certainly as, in life exceptional, 
 
 When old things terminate and new commence, 
 
 A solitary great man 's worth the world. 
 
 God takes the business into His own hands 
 
 At such time : who creates the novel flower 
 
 Contrives to guard and give it breathing-room : 
 
 I merely tend the corn-field, care for crop, 
 
 And weed no acre thin to let emerge 
 
52 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 What prodigy may stifle there perchance, 
 
 — No, though my eye have noted where he lurks. 
 
 Oh those mute myriads that spoke loud to me — 
 
 The eyes that craved to see the light, the mouths 
 
 That sought the daily bread and nothing more, 
 
 The hands that supplicated exercise, 
 
 Men that had wives, and women that had babes, 
 
 And all these making suit to only live ! 
 
 Was I to turn aside from husbandry, 
 
 Leave hope of harvest for the corn, my care, 
 
 To play at horticulture, rear some rose 
 
 Or poppy into perfect leaf and bloom 
 
 When, mid the furrows, up was pleased to sprout 
 
 Some man, cause, system, special interest 
 
 I ought to study, stop the world meanwhile ? 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 53 
 
 " But I am Liberty, Philanthropy, 
 
 Enhghtenment, or Patriotism, the power 
 
 Whereby you are to stand or fall !" cries each : 
 
 " Mine and mine only be the flag you flaunt ! " 
 
 And, when I venture to object " Meantime, 
 
 What of yon myriads with no flag at all — 
 
 My crop which, who flaunts flag must tread across ?" 
 
 ^^ Now, this it is to have a puny mind !" 
 
 Admire my mental prodigies : ^' down — down — 
 
 Ever at home o' the level and the low. 
 
 There bides he brooding ! Could he look above, 
 
 With less of the owl and more of the eagle eye, 
 
 He 'd see there 's no way helps the little cause 
 
 Like the attainment of the great. Dare first 
 
 The chief emprise ; dispel yon cloud between 
 
54 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 The sun and us ; nor fear that, though our heads 
 
 Find earlier warmth and comfort from his ray, 
 
 What Hes about our feet, the multitude, 
 
 Will fail of benefaction presently. 
 
 Come now, let each of us awhile cry truce 
 
 To special interests, make common cause 
 
 Against the adversary — or perchance • 
 
 Mere dullard to his own plain interest ! 
 
 Which of us will you choose ? — since needs must be 
 
 Some one o' the warring causes you incline 
 
 To hold, i' the main, has right and should prevail ; 
 
 Why not adopt and give it prevalence ? 
 
 Choose strict Faith or lax Incredulity, — 
 
 King, Caste and Cultus — or the Rights of Man, 
 
 Sovereignty of each Proudhon o'er himself, 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 55 
 
 And all that follows in just consequence ! 
 
 Go free the stranger from a foreign yoke ; 
 
 Or stay, concentrate energy at home ; 
 
 Succeed ! — when he deserves, the stranger will. 
 
 Comply with the Great Nation's impulse, print 
 
 By force of arms, — since reason pleads in vain, 
 
 And, mid the sweet compulsion, pity weeps, — 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau on the universe ! 
 
 Snub the Great Nation, cure the impulsive itch 
 
 With smartest fillip on a restless nose 
 
 Was ever launched by thumb and finger ! Bid 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau first repeal the tax 
 
 On pig-tails and pomatum and then mind 
 
 Abstruser matters for next century ! 
 
 Is your choice made ? Why then, act up to choice ! 
 
56 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAUf 
 
 Leave the illogical touch now here now there 
 
 r the way of work, the tantalizing help 
 
 First to this then the other opposite : 
 
 The blowing hot and cold, sham policy, 
 
 Sure ague of the mind and nothing more, 
 
 Disease of the perception or the Avill, 
 
 That fain would hide in a fine name ! Your choice, 
 
 Speak it out and condemn yourself thereby !" 
 
 Well, Leicester-square is not the Residenz : 
 Instead of shrugging shoulder, turning friend 
 The deaf ear, with a wink to the police — 
 I '11 answer — by a que stion, wisdom's mode. 
 How many years, o' the average, do men 
 Live in this world ? Some score, say computists. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 
 
 57 
 
 Quintuple me that term and give mankind 
 
 The likely hundred, and with all my heart 
 
 I '11 take your task upon me, work your way, 
 
 Concentrate energy on some one cause : 
 
 Since, counseller, I also have my cai^, ^ ^^y ^4 />^<\ 
 
 My flag, my faith in its effect, my hope >^ "^ *l S I f X^ 
 
 In its eventual triumph for the good ^^^^^*^'*^OR]|iTli^* 
 
 O' the world. And once upon a time, when I 
 
 Was like all you, mere voice and nothing more, 
 
 Myself took wings, soared sun-ward, and thence sang 
 
 '' Look where I live i' the loft, come up to me, 
 
 Groundlings, nor grovel longer 1 gain this height. 
 
 And prove you breathe here better than below ! 
 
 Why, what emancipation far and wide 
 
 Will follow in a trice ! They too can soar, 
 
 8 
 
58 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Each tenant of the earth's circumference 
 
 Claiming to elevate humanity, 
 
 They also must attain such altitude, 
 
 Live in the luminous circle that surrounds 
 
 The planet, not the leaden orb itself. 
 
 Press out, each point, from surface to yon verge 
 
 Which one has gained and guaranteed your realm 1" 
 
 Ay, still my fragments wander, music-fraught, 
 
 Sighs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and mine 
 
 For ever ! Crumbled arch, crushed aqueduct, 
 
 Alive with tremors in the shaggy growth 
 
 Of wild-wood, crevice-sown, that triumphs there 
 
 Imparting exultation to the hills ! 
 
 Sweep of the swathe when only the winds walk 
 
 And waft my words above the grassy sea 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 59 
 
 Under the blinding blue that basks o'er Rome, — 
 
 Hear ye not still — " Be Italy again ?" 
 
 And ye, what strikes the panic to your heart ? 
 
 Decrepit council-chambers, — where some lamp 
 
 Drives the unbroken black three paces off 
 
 From where the greybeards huddle in debate, 
 
 Dim cowls and capes, and midmost glimmers one 
 
 Like tarnished gold, and what they say is doubt. 
 
 And what they think is fear, and what suspends 
 
 The breath in them is not the plaster-patch 
 
 Time disengages from the painted wall 
 
 Where Rafael moulderingly bids adieu, 
 
 Nor tick of the insect turning tapestry 
 
 To dust, which a queen's finger traced of old ; 
 
 But some word, resonant, redoubtable. 
 
6o PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Of who once felt upon his head a hand 
 
 Whereof the head now apprehends his foot. 
 
 " Light in Rome, Law in Rome, and Liberty 
 
 O' the soul in Rome — the free Church, the free State ! 
 
 Stamp out the nature that 's best typified 
 
 By its embodiment in Peter's Dome, 
 
 The scorpion-body with the greedy pair 
 
 Of outstretched nippers, either colonnade 
 
 Agape for the advance of heads and hearts !" 
 
 There 's one cause for you ! one and only one. 
 
 For I am vocal through the universe, 
 
 I' the work-shop, manufactory, exchange 
 
 And market-place, sea-port and custom-house 
 
 O' the frontier : listen if the echoes die — 
 
 " Unfettered commerce ! Power to speak and hear, 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 6i 
 
 And print and read ! The universal vote ! 
 
 Its rights for labour !" This, with much beside, 
 
 I spoke when I was voice and nothing more, 
 
 But altogether such an one as you 
 
 My censors. " Voice, and nothing more, indeed ! " 
 
 Re-echoes round me : '^ that 's the censure, there 's 
 
 Involved the ruin of you soon or late ! 
 
 Voice, — when its promise beat the empty air : 
 
 And nothing more, — when solid earth 's your stage. 
 
 And we desiderate performance, deed 
 
 For word, the realizing all you dreamed 
 
 In the old days : now, for deed, we find at door 
 
 O' the council-chamber posted, mute as mouse, 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau, sentry and safeguard 
 
 O' the greybeards all a-chuckle, cowl to cape. 
 
 I 
 
62 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Who challenge Judas, — that 's endearment's style, — 
 
 To stop their mouths or let escape grimace, 
 
 While they keep cursing Italy and him. 
 
 The power to speak, hear, print and read is ours ? 
 
 Ay, we learn where and how, when clapped inside 
 
 A convict-transport bound for cool Cayenne ! 
 
 The universal vote we have : its urn, 
 
 We also have where votes drop, fingered-o'er 
 
 By the universal Prefect. Say, Trade 's free 
 
 And Toil turned master out o' the slave it was : 
 
 What then ? These feed man's stomach, but his soul 
 
 Craves finer fare, nor lives by bread alone. 
 
 As somebody says somewhere. Hence you stand 
 
 Proved and recorded either false or weak, 
 
 Faulty in promise or performance : which ? " 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. (^i 
 
 Neither, I hope. Once pedestalled on earth, 
 
 To act not speak, I found earth was not air. 
 
 I saw that multitude of mine, and not 
 
 The nakedness and nullity of air 
 
 Fit only for a voice to float in free. 
 
 Such eyes I saw that craved the light alone. 
 
 Such mouths that wanted bread and nothing else, 
 
 Such hands that supplicated handiwork, 
 
 Men with the wives, and women with the babes, 
 
 Yet all these pleading just to live, not die! 
 
 Did I believe one whit less in belief. 
 
 Take truth for falsehood, wish the voice revoked 
 
 That told the truth to heaven for earth to hear ? 
 
 No, this should be, and shall ; but when and how ? 
 
 At what expense to these who average 
 
64 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Your twenty years of life, my computists ? 
 " Not bread alone " but bread before all else 
 For these : the bodily want serve first, said I ; 
 If earth-space and the life-time help not here, 
 Where is the good of body having been ? 
 But, helping body, if we somewhat baulk 
 The soul of finer fare, such food 's to find 
 Elsewhere and afterward — all indicates. 
 Even this self-same fact that soul can starve 
 Yet body still exist its twenty years : 
 While, stint the body, there 's an end at once 
 O' the revel in the fancy that Rome 's free. 
 And superstition 's fettered, and one prints 
 Whate'er one pleases and who pleases reads 
 The same, and speaks out and is spoken to. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 
 
 And divers hundred thousand fools may vote 
 
 A vote untampered with by one wise man, 
 
 And so elect Barabbas deputy 
 
 In lieu of his concurrent. I who trace 
 
 The purpose written on the face of things, 
 
 For my behoof and guidance — (whoso needs 
 
 No such sustainment, sees beneath my signs, 
 
 Proves, what I take for writing, penmanship, 
 
 Scribble and flourish with no sense for me 
 
 O' the sort I solemnly go spelling out, — 
 
 Let him ! there 's certain work of mine to show 
 
 Alongside his work : which gives warranty 
 
 Of shrewder vision in the workman — ^judge !) 
 
 I who trace Providence without a break 
 
 I' the plan of things, drop plumb on this plain print 
 
 9 
 
66 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Of an intention with a view to good, 
 
 That man is made in sympathy with man 
 
 At outset of existence, so to speak ; 
 
 But in dissociation, more and more, 
 
 Man from his fellow, as their lives advance 
 
 In culture ; still humanity, that 's born 
 
 A mass, keeps flying off, fining away 
 
 Ever into a multitude of points, 
 
 And ends in isolation, each from each : 
 
 Peerless above i' the sky, the pinnacle, — 
 
 Absolute contact, fusion, all below 
 
 At the base of being. How comes this about ? 
 
 This stamp of God characterizing man 
 
 And nothing else but man in the universe — 
 
 That, while he feels with man (to use man's speech) 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 67 
 
 I' the little things of life, its fleshly wants 
 Of food and rest and health and happiness, 
 Its simplest spirit-motions, loves and hates, 
 Hopes, fears, soul-cravings on the ignoblest scale, 
 O' the fellow-creature, — owns the bond at base, — 
 He tends to freedom and divergency 
 In the upward progress, plays the pinnacle 
 When life 's at greatest (grant again the phrase ! 
 Because there 's neither great nor small in life.) 
 '^ Consult thou for thy kind that have the eyes 
 To see, the mouths to eat, the hands to work, 
 Men with the wives, and women with the babes !" 
 Prompts Nature. " Care thou for thyself alone 
 I' the conduct of the mind God made thee with ! 
 Think, as if man had never thought before ! 
 
68 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAUy 
 
 Act, as if all creation hung attent 
 
 On the acting of such faculty as thine, 
 
 To take prime pattern from thy masterpiece !" 
 
 Nature prompts also : neither law obeyed 
 
 To the uttermost 'by any heart and soul 
 
 We know or have in record : both of them 
 
 Acknowledged blindly by whatever man 
 
 We ever knew or heard of in this world. 
 
 " Will you have why and wherefore, and the fact 
 
 Made plain as pikestaff?" modern Science asks. 
 
 " That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lump 
 
 Once on a time ; he kept an after course 
 
 Through fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast, 
 
 Till he attained to be an ape at last 
 
 Or last but one. And if this doctrine shock 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 69 
 
 In aught the natural pride " . . . . Friend, banish fear, 
 
 The natural humility replies ! 
 
 Do you suppose, even I, poor potentate, 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau, who once ruled the roast, — 
 
 I was born able at all points to ply 
 
 My tools ? or did I have to learn my trade, 
 
 Practise as exile ere perform as prince ? 
 
 The world knows something of my ups and downs : 
 
 But grant me time, give me the management 
 
 And manufacture of a model me. 
 
 Me fifty-fold, a prince without a flaw, — 
 
 Why, there 's no social grade, the sordidest, 
 
 My embryo potentate should blink and scape. 
 
 King, all the better he was cobbler once, 
 
 He should know, sitting on the throne, how tastes 
 
70 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Life to who sweeps the doorway. But life 's hard, 
 
 Occasion rare ; you cut probation short, 
 
 And, being half-instructed, on the stage 
 
 You shuffle through your part as best you may, 
 
 And bless your stars, as I do. God takes time. 
 
 I like the thought He should have lodged me once 
 
 I' the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement. 
 
 The mansion and the palace ; made me learn 
 
 The feel o' the first, before I found myself 
 
 Loftier i' the last, not more emancipate 3 
 
 From first to last of lodging, I was I, 
 
 And not at all the place that harboured me. 
 
 Do I refuse to follow farther yet 
 
 I' the backwardness, repine if tree and flower, 
 
 Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 71 
 
 Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusc ? 
 As well account that way for many a thrill 
 Of kinship, I confess to, with the powers 
 Called Nature : animate, inanimate. 
 In parts or in the whole, there 's something there 
 Man-like that somehow meets the man in me. 
 My pulse goes altogether with the heart 
 O' the Persian, that old Xerxes, when he stayed 
 His march to conquest of the world, a day 
 I' the desert, for the sake of one superb 
 Plane-tree which queened it there in solitude : 
 Giving her neck its necklace, and each arm 
 Its armlet, suiting soft waist, snowy side. 
 With cincture and apparel. Yes, I lodged 
 In those successive tenements ; perchance 
 
72 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Taste yet the straitness of them while I stretch 
 
 Limb and enjoy new Hberty the more. 
 
 And some abodes are lost or ruinous ; 
 
 Some, patched-up and pieced out, and so transfomied 
 
 They still accommodate the traveller 
 
 His day of life-time. O you count the links, 
 
 Descry no bar of the unbroken man ? 
 
 Yes, — and who welds a lump of ore, suppose 
 
 He likes to make a chain and not a bar. 
 
 And reach by link on link, link small, link large, 
 
 Out to the due length — why, there 's forethought still 
 
 Outside o' the series, forging at one end. 
 
 While at the other there 's — no matter what 
 
 The kind of critical intelligence 
 
 Believing that last link had last but one 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 
 
 For parent, and no link was, first of all, 
 
 Fitted to anvil, hammered into shape. 
 
 Else, I accept the doctrine, and deduce 
 
 This duty, that I recognize mankind. 
 
 In all its height and depth and length and breadth. 
 
 Mankind i' the main have little wants, not large : 
 
 I, being of will and power to help, i' the main, 
 
 Mankind, must help the least wants first. My friend, 
 
 That is, my foe, without such power and will, 
 
 May plausibly concentrate all he wields, 
 
 And do his best at helping some large want, 
 
 Exceptionally noble cause, that 's seen 
 
 Subordinate enough from where I stand. 
 
 As he helps, I helped once, when like himself. 
 
 Unable to help better, work more wide ; 
 
74 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 And so would work with heart and hand to-day, 
 
 Did only computists confess a fault, 
 
 And multiply the single score by five, 
 
 Five only, give man's life its hundred years. 
 
 Change life, in me shall follow change to match ! 
 
 Time were then, to work here, there, everywhere, 
 
 By turns and try experiment at ease ! 
 
 Full time to mend as well as mar : why wait 
 
 The slow and sober uprise all around 
 
 O' the building ? Let us run up, right to roof. 
 
 Some sudden marvel, piece of perfectness, 
 
 And testify what we intend the whole ! 
 
 Is the world losing patience ? " Wait ! " say we : 
 
 " There's time : no generation needs to die 
 
 Unsolaced ; you Ve a century in store ! '' 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 75 
 
 But, no : I sadly let the voices wing 
 
 Their way i' the upper vacancy, nor test 
 
 Truth on this solid as I promised once. 
 
 Well, and what is there to be sad about ? 
 
 The world 's the world, life 's life, and nothing else. 
 
 'T is part of life, a property to prize. 
 
 That those o' the higher sort engaged i' the world, 
 
 Should fancy they can change its ill to good. 
 
 Wrong to right, ugliness to beauty : find 
 
 Enough success in fancy turning fact. 
 
 To keep the sanguine kind in countenance 
 
 And justify the hope that busies them t 
 
 Failure enough, — to who can follow change 
 
 Beyond their vision, see new good prove ill 
 
 r the consequence, see blacks and whites of life 
 
76 PRINCE H0HENST1EL-SCHWANGAI\ 
 
 Shift square indeed, but leave the chequered face 
 
 Unchanged i' the main, — failure enough for such. 
 
 To bid ambition keep the whole from change, 
 
 As their best service. I hope nought beside. 
 
 No, my brave thinkers, whom I recognize, 
 
 Gladly, myself the first, as, in a sense, 
 
 All that our world 's worth, flower and fruit of man ! 
 
 Such minds myself award supremacy 
 
 Over the common insignificance, 
 
 When only Mind 's in question, — Body bows 
 
 To quite another government, you know. 
 
 Be Kant crowned king o' the castle in the air ! 
 
 Hans Slouch, — his own, and children's moutlis to feed 
 
 I' the hovel on the ground, — wants meat, nor chews 
 
 " The Pure Critique of Reason " in exchange. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 77 
 
 But, now, — suppose I could allow your claims 
 And quite change life to please you, — would it please ? 
 Would life comport with change and still be life ? 
 Ask, now, a doctor for a remedy : 
 There 's his prescription. Bid him point you out 
 Which of the five or six ingredients saves 
 The sick man. " Such the efficacity? 
 Then why not dare and do things in one dose 
 ^ Simple and pure, all virtue, no alloy 
 
 Of the idle drop and powder ? " What 's his word ? 
 The efficacity, neat, were neutralized : 
 It wants dispersing and retarding, — nay 
 Is put upon its mettle, plays its part 
 Precisely through such hindrance everywhere, 
 Finds some mysterious give and take i' the case, 
 
78 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Some gain by opposition, he foregoes 
 
 Should he unfetter the medicament. 
 
 So with this thought of yours that fain would work 
 
 Free in the world : it wants just what it finds — 
 
 The ignorance, stupidity, the hate, 
 
 Envy and malice and uncharitableness 
 
 That bar your passage, break the flow of you 
 
 Down from those happy heights where many a cloud 
 
 Combined to give you birth and bid you be 
 
 The royalest of rivers : on you glide 
 
 Silverly till you reach the summit-edge, 
 
 Then over, on to all that ignorance. 
 
 Stupidity, hate, envy, bluffs and blocks. 
 
 Posted to fret you into foam and noise. 
 
 What of it ? Up you mount in minute mist, 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 79 
 
 And bridge the chasm that crushed your quietude, 
 
 A spirit-rainbow, earthbom jewelry 
 
 Outsparkling the insipid firmament 
 
 Blue above Temi and its orange-trees. 
 
 Do not mistake me ! You, too, have your rights ! 
 
 Hans must not bum Kant's house above his head, 
 
 Because he cannot understand Kant's book : 
 
 And still less must Hans' pastor bum Kant's self 
 
 Because Kant understands some books too well. 
 
 But, justice seen to on this little point, 
 
 Answer me, is it manly, is it sage 
 
 To stop and struggle with arrangements here 
 
 It took so many lives, so much of toil, 
 
 To tinker up into efficiency ? 
 
 Can't you contrive to operate at once, — 
 
So PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Since time is short and art is long, — to show 
 Your quality i' the world, whatever you boast, 
 Without this fractious call on folks to crush 
 The world together just to set you free, 
 Admire the capers you will cut perchance, 
 Nor mind the mischief to your neighbours ? 
 
 " Age ! 
 Age and experience bring discouragement," 
 You taunt me : I maintain the opposite. 
 Am I discouraged who, — perceiving health. 
 Strength, beauty, as they tempt the eye of soul, 
 Are uncombinable with flesh and blood, — 
 Resolve to let my body live its best, 
 And leave my soul what better yet may be 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 8i 
 
 Or not be, in this life or afterward ? 
 
 — In either fortune, wiser than who waits 
 
 Till magic art procure a miracle. 
 
 In virtue of my very confidence 
 
 Mankind ought to outgrow its babyhood, 
 
 I prescribe rocking, deprecate rough hands. 
 
 While thus the cradle holds it past mistake. 
 
 Indeed, my task 's the harder — equable 
 
 Sustainment everywhere, all strain, no push — 
 
 Whereby friends credit me with indolence. 
 
 Apathy, hesitation. *^ Stand stock-still 
 
 If able to move briskly ? ' All a-strain ' — 
 
 So must we compliment your passiveness ? 
 
 Sound asleep, rather ! " 
 
82 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Just the judgment passed 
 Upon a statue, luckless like myself, 
 I saw at Rome once ! 'T was some artisf s whim 
 To cover all the accessories close 
 I' the group, and leave you only Laocoon 
 With neither sons nor serpents to denote 
 The purpose of his gesture. Then a crowd 
 Was called to try the question, criticize 
 Wherefore such energy of legs and arms. 
 Nay, eyeballs, starting from the socket. One — 
 I give him leave to write my history — 
 Only one said " I think the gesture strives 
 Against some obstacle we cannot see." 
 All the rest made their minds up. " 'T is a yawn 
 Of sheer fatigue subsiding to repose : 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 83 
 
 The Statue 's * Somnolency ' clear enough ! " 
 
 There, my arch stranger-friend, my audience both 
 
 And arbitress, you have one half your wish, 
 
 At least : you know the thing I tried to do ! 
 
 All, so far, to my praise and glory — all 
 
 Told as befits the self-apologist, — 
 
 Who ever promises a candid sweep 
 
 And clearance of those errors miscalled crimes 
 
 None knows more, none laments so much as he, 
 
 And ever rises from confession, proved 
 
 A god whose fault was — trying to be man. 
 
 Just so, fair judge, — if I read smile aright — 
 
 I condescend to figure in your eyes 
 
 As biggest heart and best of Europe's friends. 
 
84 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 And hence my failure. God will estimate 
 Success one day ; and, in the mean time — you ! 
 
 I daresay there 's some fancy of the sort 
 
 Frolicking round this final puff I send 
 
 To die up yonder in the ceiling-rose, — 
 
 Some consolation-stakes, we losers win ! 
 
 A plague of the return to " I — I — I 
 
 Did this, meant that, hoped, feared the other thing ! " 
 
 Autobiography, adieu ! The rest 
 
 Shall make amends, be pure blame, history 
 
 And falsehood : not the ineffective truth, 
 
 But Thiers-and- Victor-Hugo exercise. 
 
 Hear what I never was, but might have been 
 
 r the better world where goes tobacco-smoke ! 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 
 
 Here lie the dozen volumes of my life : 
 (Did I say "lie?" the pregnant word will serve.) 
 Cut on to the concluding chapter, though ! 
 Because the little hours begin to strike. 
 Hurry Thiers-Hugo to the labour's end ! 
 
 Something like this the unwritten chapter reads. 
 
 Exemplify the situation thus ! 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau, being, no dispute, 
 Absolute mistress, chose the Assembly, first, 
 To serve her : chose this man, its President 
 Afterward, to serve also, — specially 
 To see that they did service one and all. 
 And now the proper term of years was out. 
 
86 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 When the Head-servant must vacate his place ; 
 
 And nothing lay so patent to the world 
 
 As that his fellow-servants one and all 
 
 Were — mildly make we mention — knaves or fools, 
 
 Each of them with his purpose flourished full 
 
 I' the face of you by word and impudence, 
 
 Or filtered slyly out by nod and wink 
 
 And nudge upon your sympathetic rib — 
 
 That not one minute more did knave or fool 
 
 Mean to keep faith and serve as he had sworn 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau, once that Head away. 
 
 Why did such swear except to get the chance, 
 
 When time should ripen and confusion bloom, 
 
 Of putting Hohenstielers-Schwangauese 
 
 To the true use of human property ? 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 87 
 
 Restoring souls and bodies, this to Pope, 
 
 And that to King, that other to his planned 
 
 Perfection of a Share-and-share-alike, 
 
 That other still, to Empire absolute 
 
 In shape of the Head-servant's very self 
 
 Transformed to master whole and sole : each scheme 
 
 Discussible, concede one circumstance — 
 
 That each scheme's parent were, beside himself, 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau, not her serving-man 
 
 Sworn to do service in the way she chose 
 
 Rather than his way : way superlative, 
 
 Only, — by some infatuation, — his 
 
 And his and his and everyone's but hers 
 
 Who stuck to just the Assembly and the Head. 
 
 I niake no doubt the Head, too, had his dream 
 
SS PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Of doing sudden duty swift and sure 
 
 On all that heap of untrustworthiness-- 
 
 Catching each vaunter of the villany 
 
 He meant to perpetrate when time was ripe, 
 
 Once the Head-servant fairly out of doors, — 
 
 And, caging here a knave and there a fool. 
 
 Cry " Mistress of the servants, these and me, 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau ! I, their trusty Head, 
 
 Pounce on a pretty scheme concocting here 
 
 That 's stopped, extinguished by my vigilance. 
 
 Your property is safe again : but mark ! 
 
 Safe in these hands, not yours, who lavish trust 
 
 Too lightly. Leave my hands their charge awhile ! 
 
 I know your business better than yourself : 
 
 Let me alone about it ! Some fine day. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 89 
 
 Once we are rid of the embarrassment, 
 
 You shall look up and see your longings crowned I " 
 
 Such fancy may have tempted to be false, 
 
 But this man chose truth and was wiser so. 
 
 He recognized that for great minds i' the world 
 
 There is no trial like the appropriate one 
 
 Of leaving little minds their liberty 
 
 Of littleness to blunder on through life, 
 
 Now, aiming at right end by foolish means. 
 
 Now, at absurd achievement through the aid 
 
 Of good and wise means : trial to acquiesce 
 
 In folly's life-long privilege — though with power 
 
 To do the little minds the good they need, 
 
 Despite themselves, by just aboHshing 
 
 Their right to play the part and fill the place 
 
90 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAby 
 
 I' the scheme of things He schemed who made aUke 
 Great minds and little minds, saw use for each. 
 Could the orb sweep those puny particles 
 ' It just half-lights at distance, hardly leads 
 I' the leash — sweep out each speck of them from space 
 They anticize in with their days and nights 
 And whirlings round and dancings off, forsooth, 
 And all that fruitless individual life 
 One cannot lend a beam to but they spoil — 
 Sweep them into itself and so, one star, 
 Preponderate henceforth i' the heritage 
 Of heaven ! No ! in less senatorial phrase. 
 The man endured to help, not save outright 
 The multitude by substituting him 
 For them, his knowledge, will and way, for God's : 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 91 
 
 Not change the world, such as it is, and was 
 
 And will be, for some other, suiting all 
 
 Except the purpose of the maker. No ! 
 
 He saw that weakness, wickedness will be, 
 
 And therefore should be : that the perfect man 
 
 As we account perfection — at most pure 
 
 0' the special gold, whate'er the form it take, 
 
 Head-work or heart- work, fined and thrice-refined 
 
 I' the crucible of life, whereto the powers 
 
 Of the refiner, one and all, were flung 
 
 To feed the flame their utmost, — e'en that block. 
 
 He holds out breathlessly triumphant, — breaks 
 
 Into some poisonous ore, its opposite. 
 
 At the very purest, so compensating 
 
 The Adversary — what if we believe ? 
 
92 PRINCE IIOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 For earlier stern exclusion of his stuff. 
 
 See the sage, with the hunger for the truth, 
 
 And see his system that 's all true, except 
 
 The one weak place that 's stanchioned by a lie ! 
 
 The moralist, that walks with head erect 
 
 I' the crystal clarity of air so long. 
 
 Until a stumble, and the man 's one mire ! 
 
 Philanthropy undoes the social knot 
 
 With axe-edge, makes love room 'twixt head and trunk ! 
 
 Religion — but, enough, the thing 's too clear ! 
 
 Well, if these sparks break out i' the greenest tree. 
 
 Our topmost of performance, yours and mine, 
 
 AVhat will be done i' the dry ineptitude 
 
 Of ordinary mankind, Ipark and bole. 
 
 All seems ashamed of but their mother-earth ? 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 93 
 
 Therefore throughout his term of servitude 
 He did the appointed service, and forbore 
 Extraneous action that were duty else, 
 Done by some other servant, idle now 
 Or mischievous : no matter, each his own — 
 Own task, and, in the end, own praise or blame ! 
 He suffered them strut, prate and brag their best. 
 Squabble at odds on every point save one, 
 And there shake hands, — agree to trifle time, 
 Obstruct advance with, each, his cricket-cry 
 *^ Wait till the Head be off the shoulders here ! 
 Then comes my King, my Pope, my Autocrat, 
 My Socialist Republic to her own — • 
 To-wit, that property of only me, 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau who conceits herself 
 
94 PRINCE HOHENSTJEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Free, forsooth, and expects I keep her so ! '* 
 
 — Nay, suffered when, perceiving with dismay 
 
 His silence paid no tribute to their noise, 
 
 They turned on him. " Dumb menace in that mouth, 
 
 Malice in that unstridulosity ! 
 
 He cannot but intend some stroke of state 
 
 Shall signalize his passage into peace 
 
 Out of the creaking, — hinder transference 
 
 O' the Hohenstielers-Schwangauese to king. 
 
 Pope, autocrat, or socialist republic ! That 's 
 
 Exact the cause his lips unlocked would cry ! 
 
 Therefore be stirring : brave, beard, bully him ! 
 
 Dock, by the million, of its friendly joints, 
 
 The electoral body short at once ! who did, 
 
 May do again, and undo us beside. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 95 
 
 Wrest from his hands the sword for self-defence, 
 
 The right to parry any thrust in play 
 
 We perad venture please to meditate ! " 
 
 And so forth ; creak, creak, creak : and ne'er a line 
 
 His locked mouth oped the wider, till at last 
 
 O' the long degraded and insulting day, 
 
 Sudden the clock told it was judgment-time. 
 
 Then he addressed himself to speak indeed 
 
 To the fools, not knaves : they saw him walk straight down 
 
 Each step of the eminence, as he first engaged, 
 
 And stand at last o' the level, — all he swore. 
 
 " People, and not the people's varletry, 
 
 This is the task you set myself and these ! 
 
 Thus I performed my part of it, and thus 
 
 They thwarted me throughout, here, here, and here : 
 
96 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Study each instance ! yours the loss, not mine. 
 
 What they intend now is demonstrable 
 
 As plainly : here 's such man, and here 's such mode 
 
 Of making you some other than the thing 
 
 You, wisely or unwisely, choose to be, 
 
 And only set him up to keep you so. 
 
 Do you approve this ? Yours the loss, not mine. 
 
 Do you condemn it ? There 's a remedy. 
 
 Take me— w^ho know your mind, and mean your good, 
 
 With clearer head and stouter arm than they, 
 
 Or you, or haply anybody else — 
 
 And make me master for the moment ! Choose 
 
 What time, what power you trust me with : I too 
 
 AVill choose as frankly ere I trust myself 
 
 With time and power : they must be adequate 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 97 
 
 To the end and aim, since mine the loss, with yours^ 
 If means be wanting ; once their worth approved, 
 Grant them, and I shall forthwith operate — 
 Ponder it well ! — to the extremest stretch 
 0' the power you trust me : if with unsuccess, 
 God wills it, and there 's nobody to blame." 
 
 Whereon the people answered with a shout 
 " The trusty one ! no tricksters any more ! " 
 How could they other ? He was in his place. 
 
 What followed ? Just what he foresaw, what proved 
 The soundness of both judgments, — his, o' the knaves- 
 And fools, each trickster with his dupe, — and theirs^ 
 The people, in what head and arm should help. 
 
 13 
 
98 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 There was uprising, masks dropped, flags unfurled, 
 
 Weapons outflourished in the wind, my faith ! 
 
 Heavily did he let his fist fall plumb 
 
 On each perturber of the public peace, 
 
 No matter whose the wagging head it broke — 
 
 From bald-pate craft and greed and impudence 
 
 Of night-hawk at first cliance to prowl and prey 
 
 For glory and a little gain beside, - 
 
 Passing for eagle in the dusk of the age, — 
 
 To florid head-top, foamy patriotism 
 
 And tribunitial daring, breast laid bare 
 
 Thro' confidence in rectitude, with hand 
 
 On private pistol in the pocket : these 
 
 And all the dupes of these, who lent themselves 
 
 As dust and feather do, to help offence 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 99 
 
 O' the wind that whirls them at you, then subsides 
 
 In safety somewhere, leaving filth afloat, 
 
 Annoyance you may brush from eyes and beard, — 
 
 These he stopped : bade the wind's spite howl or whine 
 
 Its worst outside the building, wind conceives 
 
 Meant to be pulled together and become 
 
 Its natural playground so. What foolishness 
 
 Of dust or feather proved importunate 
 
 And fell 'twixt thumb and finger, found them gripe 
 
 To detriment of bulk and buoyancy. 
 
 Then followed silence and submission. Next, 
 
 The inevitable comment came on work 
 
 And work's cost ; he was censured as profuse 
 
 Of human life and liberty : too swift 
 
 And thorough his procedure, who had lagged 
 
loo PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 At the outset, lost the opportunity 
 
 Through timid scruples as to right and wrong. 
 
 *' There 's no such certain mark of a small mind " 
 
 (So did Sagacity explain the fault) 
 
 ^' As when it needs must square away and sink 
 
 To its own small dimensions, private scale 
 
 Of right and wrong, — humanity i' the large, 
 
 The right and wrong of the universe, forsooth ! 
 
 This man addressed himself to guard and guide 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau. When the case demands 
 
 He frustrate villany in the t%g^ unhatched, 
 
 With easy stamp and minimum of pang 
 
 E*en to the punished reptile, * There's my oath 
 
 Restrains my foot,' objects our guide and guard, 
 
 *• I must leave guardianship and guidance now : 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 
 
 Rather than stretch one handbreadth of the law, 
 
 I am bound to see it break from end to end. 
 
 First show me death i' the body politic : 
 
 Then prescribe pill and potion, what may please 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau ! all is for her sake : 
 
 'T was she ordained my service should be so. 
 
 What if the event demonstrate her unwise, 
 
 If she unwill the thing she willed before ? 
 
 I hold to the letter and obey the bond 
 
 And leave her to perdition loyally.' 
 
 Whence followed thrice the expenditure we blame 
 
 Of human life and liberty : for want 
 
 O' the by-blow, came deliberate butcher s-work ! " 
 
 " Elsewhere go carry your complaint ! " bade he. 
 
 " Least, largest, there 's one law for all the minds, 
 
I02 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Here or above : be true at any price ! 
 
 'T is just o' the great scale, that such happy stroke 
 
 Of falsehood would be found a failure. Truth 
 
 Still stands unshaken at her base by me, 
 
 Reigns paramount i' the world, for the large good 
 
 O' the long late generations, — I and you 
 
 Forgotten like this buried foohshness ! 
 
 Not so the good I rooted in its grave." 
 
 This is why he refused to break his oath, 
 Rather appealed to the people, gained the power 
 To act as he thought best, then used it, once 
 For all, no matter what the consequence 
 To knaves and fools. As thus began his sway, 
 So, through its twenty years, one rule of right 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 103 
 
 Sufficed him : govern for the many first, 
 
 The poor mean multitude, all mouths and eyes : 
 
 Bid the few, better favoured in the brain, 
 
 Be patient, nor presume on privilege. 
 
 Help him, or else be quiet, — never crave 
 
 That he help them, — increase, forsooth, the gulf 
 
 Yawning so terribly 'twixt mind and mind 
 
 I' the world here, which his purpose was to block 
 
 At bottom, were it by an inch, and bridge, 
 
 If by a filament, no more, at top. 
 
 Equalize things a little ! And the way 
 
 He took to work that purpose out, was plain 
 
 Enough to intellect and honesty 
 
 And — superstition, style it if you please, 
 
 So long as you allow there was no lack 
 
104 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 O' the quality imperative in man — 
 
 Reverence. You see deeper? thus saw he, 
 
 And by the Hght he saw, must walk : how else 
 
 Was he to do his part ? the man's, with might 
 
 And main, and not a faintest touch of fear^ 
 
 Sure he was in the hand of God who comes 
 
 Before and after, with a work to do 
 
 Which no man helps nor hinders. Thus the man,- 
 
 So timid when the business was to touch 
 
 The uncertain order of humanity. 
 
 Imperil, for a problematic cure 
 
 Of grievance on the surface, any good 
 
 I' the deep of things, dim yet discernible — 
 
 This same man, so irresolute before. 
 
 Show him a true excrescence to cut sheer, 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 105 
 
 A devil's-graft on God's foundation-stone, 
 
 Then — no complaint of indecision more ! 
 
 He wrenched out the whole canker, root and branch, 
 
 Deaf to who cried the world would tumble in 
 
 At its four corners if he touched a twig. 
 
 Witness that lie of lies, arch-infamy. 
 
 When the Republic, with all life involved 
 In just this law — " Each people rules itself 
 Its own way, not as any stranger please " — 
 Turned, and for first proof she was living, bade 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau fasten on the throat 
 Of the first neighbour that claimed benefit 
 O' the law herself established : " Hohenstiel 
 For Hohenstielers ! Rome, by parity 
 Of reasoning, for Romans? That 's a jest 
 
 14 
 
io6 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Wants proper treatment, — lancet-puncture suits 
 The proud flesh : Rome ape Hohenstiel forsooth ! '' 
 And so the siege and slaughter and success 
 Whereof we nothing doubt that Hohenstiel 
 Will have to pay the price, in God's good time, 
 Which does not always fall on Saturday 
 When the world looks for wages. Any how. 
 He found this infamy triumphant. Well,— 
 Sagacity suggested, make this speech ! 
 "The work was none of mine : suppose wrong wait, 
 Stand over for redressing ? Mine for me, 
 My predecessors' work on their own head ! 
 Meantime, there 's plain advantage, should we leave 
 Things as we find them. Keep Rome manacled 
 Hand and foot : no fear of unruliness ! 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 107 
 
 Her foes consent to even seem our friends 
 
 So long, no longer. Then, there 's glory got 
 
 I' the boldness and bravado to the world. 
 
 The disconcerted world must grin and bear 
 
 The old saucy writing, — * Grunt thereat who may, 
 
 So shall things be, for such my pleasure is — 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau.' How that reads in Rome 
 
 I' the Capitol where Brennus broke his pate ! 
 
 And what a flourish for our journalists ! " 
 
 Only, it was nor read nor flourished of, 
 
 Since, not a moment did such glory stay 
 
 Excision of the canker ! Out it came, 
 
 Root and branch, with much roaring, and some blood, 
 
 And plentiful abuse of him from friend 
 
 And foe. Who cared ? Not Nature, that assuaged 
 
 I 
 
io8 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 The pain and set the patient on his legs 
 
 Promptly : the better ! had it befen the worse, 
 
 'T is Nature you must try conclusions with, 
 
 Not he, since nursing canker kills the sick 
 
 For certain, while to cut may cure, at least. 
 
 *' Ah," groaned a second time Sagacity, 
 
 " Again the little mind, precipitate, 
 
 Rash, rude, when even in the right, as here ! 
 
 The great mind knows the power of gentleness, 
 
 Only tries force because persuasion fails. 
 
 Had this man, by prelusive trumpet-blast, 
 
 Signified * Truth and Justice mean to come. 
 
 Nay, fast approach your threshold ! Ere they knock, 
 
 See that the house be set in order, swept 
 
 And garnished, windows shut, and doors thrown wide ! 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 109 
 
 ' The free State comes to visit the free Church : 
 Receive her ! or . . or . . never mind what else ! * 
 Thus moral suasion heralding brute force, 
 How had he seen the old abuses die, 
 And new life kindle here, there, everywhere. 
 Roused simply by that mild yet potent spell — 
 Beyond or beat of drum or stroke of^ 
 
 Public opinion ! " /l of tjj^ ^ ^u\y, 
 
 " How, indeed ? " iJ^iSfefi^.l^'y^ 
 
 " When all to see, after some twenty years, 
 
 Were your own fool-face waiting for the sight. 
 
 Faced by as wide a grin from ear to ear 
 
 O* the knaves that, while the fools were waiting, worked — 
 
 Broke yet another generation's heart — 
 
no PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Twenty years' respite helping ! Teach your nurse 
 
 ' Compliance with, before you suck, the teat ! ' 
 
 Find what that means, and meanwhile hold your tongue ! " 
 
 Whereof the war came which he knew must be. 
 
 Now, this had proved the dry-rot of the race 
 
 He ruled o'er, that, in the old day, when was need 
 
 They fought for their own liberty and life, 
 
 Well did they fight, none better : whence, such love 
 
 Of fighting somehow still for fighting's sake 
 
 Against no matter whose the liberty 
 
 And life, so long as self-conceit should crow 
 
 And clap the wing, while justice sheathed her claw, — 
 
 That what had been the glory of the world 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 
 
 When thereby came the world's good, grew its plague 
 
 Now that the champion-armour, donned to dare 
 
 The dragon once, was clattered up and down 
 
 Highway and by-path of the world at peace, 
 
 Merely to mask marauding, or for sake 
 
 O' the shine and rattle that apprized the fields 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau was a fighter yet. 
 
 And would be, till the weary world suppressed 
 
 A peccant humour out of fashion now. 
 
 Accordingly the world spoke plain at last. 
 
 Promised to punish who next played with arms. 
 
 So, at his advent, such discomfiture 
 Taking its true shape of beneficence, 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau, half-sad and part-wise, 
 
112 PRINCE H0HENST2EL'SCHWANGAl\ 
 
 Sat : if with wistful eye reverting oft 
 
 To each pet weapon rusty on its peg, 
 
 Yet, with a sigh of satisfaction too 
 
 That, peacefulness become the law, herself 
 
 Got the due share of godsends in its train, 
 
 Cried shame and took advantage quietly. 
 
 Still, so the dry-rot had been nursed into 
 
 Blood, bones and marrow, that, from worst to best, 
 
 All, — clearest brains and soundest hearts, save here,- 
 
 All had this lie acceptable for law 
 
 Plain as the sun at noonday — " War is best, 
 
 Peace is worst ; peace we only tolerate 
 
 As needful preparation for new war : 
 
 War may be for whatever end we will — 
 
 Peace only as the proper help thereto. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 113 
 
 Such is the law of right and wrong for us 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau : for the other world, 
 
 As naturally, quite another law. 
 
 Are we content ? The world is satisfied. 
 
 Discontent ? Then the world must give us leave 
 
 Strike right and left to exercise our arm 
 
 Torpid of late through overmuch repose. 
 
 And show its strength is still superlative 
 
 At somebody 's expense in life or limb : 
 
 Which done, — let peace succeed and last a year ! " 
 
 Such devil's-doctrine was so judged God's law, 
 
 We say, when this man stepped upon the stage, 
 
 That it had seemed a venial fault at most 
 
 Had he once more obeyed Sagacity. 
 
 " You come i' the happy interval of peace, 
 
 15 
 
114 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 The favourable weariness from war : 
 
 Prolong it ! — artfully, as if intent 
 
 On ending peace as soon as possible. 
 
 Quietly so increase the sweets of ease 
 
 And safety, so employ the multitude. 
 
 Put hod and trowel so in idle hands. 
 
 So stuff and stop the wagging jaws with bread. 
 
 That selfishness shall surreptitiously 
 
 Do wisdom's office, whisper in the ear 
 
 Of Hohenstiel-Schwangau, there 's a pleasant feel 
 
 In being gently forced down, pinioned fast 
 
 To the easy arm-chair by the pleading arms 
 
 O' the world beseeching her to there abide 
 
 Content with all the harm done hitherto, 
 
 And let herself be petted in return, 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 115 
 
 Free to re-wage, in speech and prose and verse, 
 
 The old unjust wars, nay — in verse and prose 
 
 And speech, — to vaunt new victories, as vile 
 
 A plague o' the future, — so that words suffice 
 
 For present comfort, and no deeds denote 
 
 That, — tired of illimitable line on line 
 
 Of boulevard-building, tired o' the theatre 
 
 With the tuneful thousand in their thrones above. 
 
 For glory of the male intelligence. 
 
 And Nakedness in her due niche below, 
 
 For illustration of the female use — 
 
 She, 'twixt a yawn and sigh, prepares to slip 
 
 Out of the arm-chair, wants some blood again 
 
 From over the boundary, to colour-up 
 
 The sheeny sameness, keep the world aware 
 
ii6 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau must have exercise 
 
 Despite the petting of the universe ! 
 
 Come, you're a city-builder : what ^s the way 
 
 Wisdom takes when time needs that she entice 
 
 Some fierce tribe, castled on the mountain-peak, 
 
 Into the quiet and amenity 
 
 O' the meadow-land below ? By crying * Done 
 
 With fight now, down with fortress ? ' Rather — ' Dare 
 
 On, dare ever, not a stone displaced ! ' 
 
 Cries Wisdom, ' Cradle of our ancestors. 
 
 Be bulwark, give our children safety still ! 
 
 Who of our children please, may stoop and taste 
 
 O' the valley-fatness, unafraid, — for why? 
 
 At first alarm, they have thy mother-ribs 
 
 To run upon for refuge ; foes forget 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 117 
 
 Scarcely what Terror on her vantage-coigne, 
 
 Couchant supreme among the powers of air, 
 
 Watches — prepared to pounce — the country wide ! * 
 
 Meanwhile the encouraged valley holds its own, 
 
 From the first hut's adventure in descent. 
 
 Half home, half hiding place, — to dome and spire 
 
 Befitting the assured metropolis : 
 
 Nor means offence to the fort which caps the crag, 
 
 All undismantled of a turret-stone, 
 
 And bears the banner-pole that creaks at times 
 
 Embarrassed by the old emblazonment, 
 
 „ When festal days are to commemorate. 
 
 ' Otherwise left untenanted, no doubt, 
 Since, never fear, our myriads from below 
 Would rush, if needs were, man the w^alls once more. 
 
n8 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Renew the exploits of the earHer time 
 
 At moment's notice ! But till notice sound, 
 
 Inhabit we in ease and opulence ! ' 
 
 And so, till one day thus a notice sounds, 
 
 Not trumpeted, but in a whisper-gust 
 
 Fitfully playing through mute city streets 
 
 At midnight weary of day's feast and game — 
 
 ' Friends, your famed fort 's a ruin past repair ! 
 
 Its use is — to proclaim it had a use 
 
 Stolen away long since. Climb to study there 
 
 How to paint barbican and battlement 
 
 I' the scenes of our new theatre ! We fight 
 
 Now — by forbidding neighbours to sell steel 
 
 Or buy wine, not by blowing out their brains ! 
 
 Moreover, while we let time sap the strength 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 119 
 
 O' the walls omnipotent in menace once, 
 Neighbours would seem to have prepared surprise — 
 Run up defences in a mushroom-growth, 
 For all the world like what we boasted : brief — 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau's policy is peace ! ' " 
 
 Ay, so Sagacity advised him filch 
 Folly from fools : handsomely substitute 
 The dagger o' lath, while gay they sang and danced 
 For that long dangerous sword they liked to feel, 
 Even at feast-time, clink and make friends start. 
 No ! he said " Hear the truth, and bear the truth, 
 And bring the truth to bear on all you are 
 And do, assured that only good comes thence 
 Whate'er the shape good take ! While I have rule. 
 
I20 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAL, 
 
 Understand ! — war for war's sake, war for the sake 
 O' the good war gets you as war's sole excuse, 
 Is damnable and damned shall be. You want 
 Glory ? Why so do I, and so does God. 
 Where is it found, — in this paraded shame, — 
 One particle of glory ? Once you warred 
 For liberty against the w^orld, and won : 
 There was the glory. Now, you fain would war 
 Because the neighbour prospers overmuch, — 
 Because there has been silence half-an-hour, 
 Like Heaven on earth, without a cannon-shot 
 Announcing Hohenstielers-Schwangauese 
 Are minded to disturb the jubilee, — 
 Because the loud tradition echoes faint, 
 And who knows but posterity may doubt 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 
 
 If the great deeds were ever done at all, 
 Much less believe, were such to do again, 
 So the event would follow : therefore, prove 
 The old power, at the expense of somebody ! 
 Oh, Glory, — gilded bubble, bard and sage 
 So nickname rightly, — would thy dance endure 
 One moment, would thy mocking make believe 
 Only one upturned eye thy ball was gold, 
 Had'st thou less breath to buoy thy vacancy 
 Than a whole multitude expends in praise, 
 Less range for roaming than from head to head 
 Of a whole people ? Flit, fall, fly again, 
 Only, fix never where the resolute hand 
 May prick thee, prove the lie thou art, at once ! 
 Give me real intellect to reason with, 
 
 i6 
 
122 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 No multitude, no entity that apes 
 
 One wise man, being but a million fools ! 
 
 How and whence wishest glory, thou wise one? 
 
 AVould'st get it, — did'st thyself guide Providence, — 
 
 By stinting of his due each neighbour round 
 
 In strength and knowledge and dexterity 
 
 So as to have thy littleness grow large 
 
 By all those somethings, once, turned nothings, now, 
 
 As children make a molehill mountainous 
 
 By scooping out the plain into a trench 
 
 And saving so their favourite from approach ? 
 
 Quite otherwise the cheery game of life. 
 
 True yet mimetic warfare, whereby man 
 
 Does his best with his utmost, and so ends 
 
 The victor most of all in fair defeat. 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 123 
 
 Who thinks, — would he have no one think beside ? 
 
 Who knows, who does, — must other learning die 
 
 And action perish ? Why, our giant proves 
 
 No better than a dwarf, with rivalry 
 
 Prostrate around him. ' Let the whole race stand 
 
 And try conclusions fairly ! ' he cries first. 
 
 Show me the great man would engage his peer 
 
 Rather by grinning * Cheat, thy gold is brass ! ' 
 
 Than granting ' Perfect piece of purest ore ! 
 
 Still, is it less good mintage, this of mine ? ' 
 
 Well, and these right and sound results of soul 
 
 I' the strong and healthy one wise man,— shall such 
 
 Be vainly sought for, scornfully renounced 
 
 I' the multitude that make the entity — 
 
 The people ? — to what purpose, if no less. 
 
124 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCmVANGAU, 
 
 In power and purity of soul, below 
 
 The reach of the unit than, in multiplied 
 
 Might of the body, vulgarized the more, 
 
 Above, in thick and threefold brutishness ? 
 
 See ! you accept such one wise man, myself: 
 
 Wiser or less wise, still I operate 
 
 From my own stock of wisdom, nor exact 
 
 Of other sort of natures you admire. 
 
 That whoso rhymes a sonnet pays a tax, 
 
 Who paints a landscape dips brush at his cost, 
 
 Who scores a septett true for strings and wind 
 
 Mulcted must be — else how should I impose 
 
 Properly, attitudinize aright, 
 
 Did such conflicting claims as these divert 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau from observing me? 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 125 
 
 Therefore, what I find facile, you be sure, 
 
 With effort or without it, you shall dare — 
 
 You, I aspire to make my better self 
 
 And truly the Great Nation. No more war 
 
 For war's sake, then ! and, — seeing, wickedness 
 
 Springs out of folly, — no more foolish dread 
 
 O' the neighbour waxing too inordinate 
 
 A rival, through his gain of wealth and ease ! 
 
 What ? — keep me patient, Powers ! — the people here,. 
 
 Earth presses to her heart, nor owns a pride 
 
 Above her pride i' the race all flame and air 
 
 And aspiration to the boundless Great, 
 
 The incommensurably Beautiful — 
 
 Whose very faulterings groundward come of flight 
 
 Urged by a pinion all too passionate 
 
126 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 For heaven and what it holds of gloom and glow : 
 
 Bravest of thinkers, bravest of the brave 
 
 Doers, exalt in Science, rapturous 
 
 In Art, the — more than all — magnetic race 
 
 To fascinate their fellows, mould mankind 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau-fashion, — these, what? — these 
 
 Will have to abdicate their primacy 
 
 Should such a nation sell them steel untaxed, 
 
 And such another take itself, on hire 
 
 For the natural sen'night, somebody for lord 
 
 Unpatronized by me whose back was turned ? 
 
 Or such another yet would fain build bridge, 
 
 Lay rail, drive tunnel, busy its poor self 
 
 With its appropriate fancy : so there 's — flash — 
 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau up in arms at once ! 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 127 
 
 Genius has somewhat of the infantine : 
 But of the childish, not a touch nor taint 
 Except through self-will, which, being foolishness, 
 Is certain, soon or late, of punishment. 
 Which Providence avert ! — and that it may 
 Avert what both of us would so deserve. 
 No foolish dread o' the neighbour, I enjoin ! 
 By consequence, no wicked war with him, 
 While I rule ! 
 
 Does that mean — no war at all 
 When just the wickedness I here proscribe 
 Comes, haply, from the neighbour? Does my speech 
 Precede the praying that you beat the sword 
 To plough-share, and the spear to pruning-hook. 
 
128 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 And sit down henceforth under your own vine 
 
 And fig-tree through the sleepy summer month, 
 
 Letting what hurly-burly please explode 
 
 On the other side the mountain-frontier ? No, 
 
 Beloved ! I foresee and I announce 
 
 Necessity of warfare in one case, 
 
 For one cause : one way, I bid broach the blood 
 
 O' the world. For truth and right, and only right 
 
 And truth, — right, truth, on the absolute scale of God, 
 
 No pettiness of man's admeasurement, — 
 
 In such case only, and for such one cause, 
 
 Fight your hearts out, whatever fate betide 
 Hands energetic to the uttermost ! 
 Lie not ! Endure no lie which needs your heart 
 And hand to push it out of mankind's path — 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 129 
 
 No lie that lets the natural forces work 
 Too long ere lay it plain and pulverized — 
 Seeing man's life lasts only twenty years ! 
 And such a lie, before both man and God, 
 Being, at this time present, Austria's rule 
 O'er Italy, — for Austria's sake the first, 
 Italy's next, and our sake last of all. 
 Come with me and deliver Italy ! 
 Smite hip and thigh until the oppressor leave 
 Free from the Adriatic to the Alps 
 The oppressed one ! We were they who laid her low 
 In the old bad day when Villany braved Truth 
 And Right, and laughed * Henceforward, God deposed, 
 The Devil is to rule for evermore 
 I' the world 1' — whereof to stop the consequence, 
 
 17 
 
I30 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 And for atonement of false glory there 
 
 Gaped at and gabbled over by the world, 
 
 We purpose to get God enthroned again 
 
 For what the world will gird at as sheer shame 
 
 I* the cost of blood and treasure. ' All for nought- 
 
 Not even, say, some patch of province, splice 
 
 O' the frontier ? — some snug honorarium-fee 
 
 Shut into glove and pocketed apace ? ' 
 
 (Questions Sagacity) ^ in deference 
 
 To the natural susceptibility 
 
 Of folks at home, unwitting of that pitch 
 
 You soar to, and misdoubting if Truth, Right 
 
 And the other such augustnesses repay 
 
 Expenditure in coin o' the realm, — but prompt 
 
 To recognize the cession of Savoy 
 
I 
 
 SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 131. 
 
 And Nice as marketable value ! ' No, 
 Sagacity, go preach to Metternich, 
 And, sermon ended, stay where he resides I 
 Hohenstiel-Schwangau, you and I must march 
 The other road ! war for the hate of war, 
 Not love, this once ! " So Italy was free. 
 
 What else noteworthy and commendable 
 
 I' the man's career ? — that he was resolute 
 
 No trepidation, much less treachery 
 
 On his part, should imperil from its poise 
 
 The ball o' the world, heaved up at such expense 
 
 Of pains so far, and ready to rebound, 
 
 Let but a finger maladroitly fall, 
 
 Under pretence of making fast and sure 
 
132 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 The inch gained by late volubility, 
 
 And run itself back to the ancient rest 
 
 At foot o* the mountain. Thus he ruled, gave proof 
 
 The world had gained a point, progressive so, 
 
 By choice, this time, as will and power concurred, 
 
 0' the fittest man to rule \ not chance of birth, 
 
 Or such-like dice-throw. Oft Sagacity 
 
 Was at his ear : " Confirm this clear advance, 
 
 Support this wise procedure ! You, elect 
 
 O' the people, mean to justify their choice 
 
 And out-king all the kingly imbeciles ; . 
 
 But that 's just half the enterprise : remains 
 
 You find them a successor like yourself. 
 
 In head and heart and eye and hand and aim, 
 
 Or all done 's undone ; and whom hope to mould 
 
^ SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 133 
 
 i ■ 
 
 So like you as the pupil Nature sends, 
 
 J, The son and heir's completeness which you lack ? 
 
 Lack it no longer ! Wed the pick o' the world, 
 
 Where'er you think you find it. Should she be 
 
 A queen, — tell Hohenstielers-Schwangauese 
 
 ' So do the old enthroned decrepitudes 
 
 Acknowledge, in the rotten hearts of them, 
 
 Their knell is knolled, they hasten to make peace 
 
 With the new order,\ecognize in me 
 
 Your right to constitute what king you will. 
 
 Cringe therefore crown in hand and bride on arm, 
 
 To both of us : we triumph, I suppose ! ' 
 
 Is it the other sort of rank ? — bright eye, 
 
 Soft smile, and so forth, all her queenly boast ? 
 
 Undaunted the exordium — ' I, the man 
 
134 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 O' the people, with the people mate myself: 
 
 So stand, so fall. Kings, keep your crowns and brides ! 
 
 Our progeny (if Providence agree) 
 
 Shall live to tread the baubles underfoot 
 
 And bid the scarecrows consort with their kin. 
 
 For son, as for his sire, be the free wife 
 
 In the free state ! ' 
 
 That is. Sagacity 
 Would prop up one more lie, the most of all 
 Pernicious fancy that the son and heir 
 Receives the genius from the sire, himself 
 Transmits as surely, — ask experience else ! 
 Which answers, — never was so plain a truth 
 As that God drops his seed of heavenly flame 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 135 
 
 Just where He wills on earth : sometimes where man 
 
 Seems to tempt — such the accumulated store 
 
 Of faculties — one spark to fire the heap; 
 
 Sometimes where, fire-ball-like, it falls upon 
 
 The naked unpreparedness of rock, 
 
 Bums, beaconing the nations through their night. 
 
 Faculties, fuel for the flame ? All helps 
 
 Come, ought to come, or come not, crossed by chance, 
 
 From culture and transmission. What 's your want 
 
 I' the son and heir ? Sympathy, aptitude. 
 
 Teachableness, the fuel for the flame ? 
 
 You ^11 have them for your pains : but the flame's self. 
 
 The novel thought of God shall light the world ? 
 
 No, poet, though your oflspring rhyme and chime 
 
 I' the cradle, — painter, no, for all your pet 
 
136 miXCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Draws his first eye, beats Salvatore's boy, — 
 And thrice no, statesman, should your progeny 
 Tie bib and tucker with no tape but red, 
 And make a foolscap-kite of protocols ! 
 Critic and copyist and bureaucrat 
 To heart's content ! The seed o' the apple-tree 
 Brings forth another tree which bears a crab : 
 'T is the great gardener grafts the excellence 
 On wildings where he will. 
 
 " How plain I view, 
 Across those misty years 'twixt me and Rome " — 
 (Such the man's answer to Sagacity) 
 ''The little wayside temple, halfway down 
 To a mild river that makes oxen white 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 137 
 
 Miraculously, un-mouse-colours hide, 
 
 Or so the Roman country people dream ! 
 
 I view that sweet small shrub-embedded shrine 
 
 On the declivity, was sacred once 
 
 To a transmuting Genius of the land, 
 
 Could touch and turn its dunnest natures bright, 
 
 — Since Italy means the Land of the Ox, we know. 
 
 Well, how was it the due succession fell 
 From priest to priest who ministered T the cool 
 Calm fane o' the Clitumnian god ? The sire 
 Brought forth a son and sacerdotal sprout, 
 Endowed instinctively with good and grace 
 To suit the gliding gentleness below — 
 Did he ? Tradition tells another tale. 
 Each priest obtained his predecessor's staff, 
 
138 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Robe, fillet and insignia, blamelessly. 
 By springing out of ambush, soon or late. 
 And slaying him : the initiative rite 
 Simply was murder, save that murder took, 
 I' the case, another and religious name. 
 So it was once, is now, shall ever be 
 With genius and its priesthood in this world : 
 The new power slays the old — but handsomely. 
 There he lies, not diminished by an inch 
 Of stature that he graced the altar with. 
 Though somebody of other bulk and build 
 Cries * What a goodly personage lies here 
 Reddening the water where the bulrush roots ! 
 May I conduct the service in his place. 
 Decently and in order, as did he, 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 139 
 
 i 
 
 And, as he did not, keep a wary watch 
 When meditating 'neath a willow shade ! ' 
 Find out your best man, sure the son of him, 
 Will prove best man again, and, better still 
 Somehow than best, the grandson-prodigy ! 
 You think the world would last another day 
 Did we so make us masters of the trick 
 Whereby the works go, we could pre-arrange 
 Their play and reach perfection when we please ? 
 Depend on it, the change and the surprise 
 Are part o* the plan : 't is we wish steadiness ; 
 Nature prefers a motion by unrest, 
 Advancement through this force that jostles that. 
 And so, since much remains i' the world to see. 
 Here is it still, affording God the sight." 
 
I40 PRINCE HOHENSTJEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Thus did the man refute Sagacity, 
 Ever at this one whisper in his ear : 
 " Here are you picked out, by a miracle, 
 And placed conspicuously enough, folks say 
 And you believe, by Providence outright 
 Taking a new way — nor without success — 
 To put the world upon its mettle : good ! 
 But Fortune alternates with Providence ; 
 Resource is soon exhausted. Never count 
 On such a happy hit occurring twice ! 
 Try the old method next time !" 
 
 "Old enough," 
 (To whisper in his ear, the. laugh outbroke) 
 " And most discredited of all the modes 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 141 
 
 By just the men and women who make boast 
 
 They are kings and queens thereby ! Mere self-defence 
 
 Should teach them, on one chapter of the law 
 
 Must be no sort of trifling— chastity : 
 
 They stand or fall, as their progenitors 
 
 Were chaste or unchaste. Now, run eye around 
 
 My crowned acquaintance, give each life its look 
 
 And no more, — why, you *d think each life was led 
 
 Purposely for example of what pains 
 
 Who leads it took to cure the prejudice. 
 
 And prove there 's nothing so unproveable 
 
 As who is who, what son of what a sire, 
 
 And,— inferentially, — how faint the chance 
 
 That the next generation needs to fear 
 
 Another fool o' the selfsame type as he 
 
142 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAV, 
 
 Happily regnant now by right divine 
 And luck o' the pillow ! No : select your lord 
 By the direct employment of your brains 
 As best you may, — ^bad as the blunder prove, 
 A far worse evil stank beneath the sun 
 When some legitimate blockhead managed so 
 Matters that high time was to interfere, 
 Though interference came from hell itself 
 And not the blind mad miserable mob 
 Happily ruled so long by pillow-luck 
 And divine right, — by lies in short, not truth. 
 And meanwhile use the allotted minute . . . 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 143 
 
 One, — 
 
 Two, three, four, five — yes, five the pendule warns ! 
 
 Eh ? Why, this wild work wanders past all bound 
 
 And bearing ! Exile, Leicester-square, the life 
 
 I' the old gay miserable time, rehearsed, 
 
 Tried on again like cast clothes, still to serve 
 
 At a pinch, perhaps ? " Who 's who ? " was aptly asked, 
 
 Since certainly I am not I ! since when ? 
 
 Where is the bud-mouthed arbitress ? A nod 
 
 Out-Homering Homer ! Stay — there flits the clue 
 
 I fain would find the end of ! Yes, — " Meanwhile, 
 
 Use the allotted minute ! " Well, you see, 
 
 (Veracious and imaginary Thiers, 
 
 Who map out thus the life I might have led, 
 
 But did not, — all the worse for earth and me — 
 
144 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 DofF spectacles, wipe pen, shut book, decamp !) 
 You see 't is easy in heroics ! Plain 
 Pedestrian speech shall help me perorate. 
 Ah, if one had no need to use the tongue ! 
 How obvious and how easy 't is to talk 
 Inside the soul, a ghostly dialogue — 
 Instincts with guesses, — instinct, guess, again 
 With dubious knowledge, half-experience : each 
 And all the interlocutors alike 
 Subordinating, — as decorum bids, 
 Oh, never fear ! but still decisively, — 
 Claims from without that take too high a tone, 
 — (" God wills this, man wants that, the dignity 
 Prescribed a prince would wish the other thing ")- 
 Putting them back to insignificance 
 
SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY. 145 
 
 \ 
 Beside one intimatest fact — myself 
 
 Am first to be considered, since I live 
 
 Twenty years longer and then end, perhaps ! 
 
 But, where one ceases to soliloquize, 
 
 Somehow the motives, that did well enough 
 
 I' the darkness, when you bring them into light 
 
 Are found, like those famed cave-fish, to lack eye 
 
 And organ for the upper magnitudes. 
 
 The other common creatures, of less fine 
 
 Existence, that acknowledge earth and heaven, 
 
 Have it their own way in the argument. 
 
 Yes, forced to speak, one stoops to say — one's aim 
 
 Was — what it peradventure should have been ; — 
 
 To renovate a people, mend or end 
 
 That bane come of a blessing meant the world — 
 
 19 
 
146 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL'SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Inordinate culture of the sense made quick 
 By soul, — the lust o' the flesh, lust of the eye, 
 And pride of life, — and, consequent on these, 
 The worship of that prince o' the power o' the air 
 Who paints the cloud and fills the emptiness 
 And bids his votaries, famishing for truth. 
 Feed on a He. 
 
 Alack, one lies oneself 
 Even in the stating that one's end was truth, 
 Truth only, if one states as much in words ! 
 Give me the inner chamber of the soul 
 For obvious easy argument ! 't is there 
 One pits the silent truth against a lie — 
 Truth which breaks shell a careless simple bird, 
 
I 
 
 SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY, 147 
 
 Nor wants a gorget nor a beak filed fine, 
 
 Steel spurs and the whole armoury o' the tongue, 
 
 To equalize the odds. But, do your best, 
 
 Words have to come : and somehow words deflect 
 
 As the best cannon ever rifled will. 
 
 So, i' the Residenz yet, not Leicester-square, 
 Alone, — no such congenial intercourse ! — 
 My reverie concludes, as dreaming should, • 
 With daybreak : nothing done and over yet, 
 Except cigars ! The adventure thus may be, 
 Or never needs to be at all : who knows ? 
 My Cousin-Duke, perhaps, at whose hard head 
 —Is it, now — is this letter to be launched, 
 The sight of whose grey oblong, whose grim seal, 
 
148 PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, 
 
 Set all these fancies floating for an hour ? 
 
 Twenty years are good gain, come what come will ! 
 Double or quits ! The letter goes ! Or stays ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
 London: Printed by Smith, Elder & Co., Old Bailey, E.G. 
 
?6(o 
 1^7)