Classic Poem

O land of Empire, art and love
What is it that you show me?
A sky for Gods to tread, above,
A floor for pigs below me!
O in all place and shape and kind
Beyond all thought and thinking,
The graceful with the foul combined,
The stately with the stinking!
Was ever seen in tie so close
With beauty dirt in union?
Did ever glorious things and gross
Hold such serene communion?
For though for open bridge and street
I will not feel compunction,
Is palace proud a place allowed
For bestial-filthy function?
Must vile expectorations greet
Angelic limbs with unction,
And marble flags attest the feat
Of digital emunction?
Whilst, studying here with musings meet
Thy mystic old injunction
Thy porch I pace or take my place
Within thee, great Pantheon,
What sights untold of contrast bold
My ranging eyes must be on! —
What though uprolled by young and old
In slumbrous convolution
'Neath pillared shade I see displayed
Bare limbs that scorn ablution,
Must babied hags perform with rags
That napkin-evolution?
Though husks that swine would scarcely pick
Bestrew the patterned paving
And sores to make a doctor sick
Your charity come craving;
And though the meditative cur
Account it no intrusion
Through that great gate to quit the stir
Of market-place confusion,
True brother of the bipeds there,
If Nature's need requireth
Lifts up his leg with tranquil air
And quietly retireth,
Though priest from prayer stop short to spit
Beside the altar solemn
Must therefore boys turn up to —
By this Corinthian column? —

O richly soiled and richly sunned,
Exuberant, fervid, and fecund!
Are these the fixed condition
On which may Northern pilgrim come
To imbibe thine ether-air, and sum
Thy store of old tradition?
Must we be chill, if clean, and stand
Foot-deep in dirt in classic land? —

So it is: in all ages so,
And in all places man can know,
From homely roots unseen below
In forest-shade, in woodland bowers
The stem that bears the ethereal flowers
Derives that emanative power;
From mixtures fetid foul and sour
Draws juices that these petals fill.

Ah Nature, if indeed thy will
Thou own'st it, it shall not be ill!
And truly here in this quick clime
Where, scarcely bound by space or time,
The elements in half a day
Toss off with exquisitest play
What our cold seasons toil and grieve
And never quite at last achieve;
Where processes, with pain and fear,
Disgust and horror wrought, appear
The quick mutations of a dance,
Wherein retiring but to advance
Life in brief interpause of death,
One moment sitting, taking breath,
Forth comes again as glad as e'er
In some new figure full as fair,
Where what has scarcely ceased to be
Instinct with newer birth we see.
What dies already, look you, lives;
In such a clime, who thinks, forgives,
Who sees, will understand; who knows,
In calm of knowledge find repose,
And thoughtful as of glory gone
So too of more to come anon,
Of permanent existence sure,
Brief intermediate breaks endure.

O Nature, if indeed thy will
Thou ownest it, it is not ill!
And e'en as oft on heathy hill,
On moorland black and ferny fells,
Beside thy brooks and in thy dells,
Was welcomed erst the kindly stain
Of thy true Earth, e'en so again
With resignation fair and meet
The dirt and refuse of thy street
My philosophic foot shall greet,
So leave but perfect to my eye
Thy columns set against thy sky! —