Classic Poem

DEAR H AZLITT , whose tact intellectual is such
That it seems to feel truth, as one's fingers do touch, —
Who in politics, arts, metaphysics, poetics,
To critics in these times, are health to cosmetics,
And nevertheless, — or I rather should say,
For that very reason, — can relish boy's play,
And turning on all sides, through pleasures and cares,
Find nothing more precious than laughs and fresh airs; —

One's life, I conceive, might go prettily down
In a due easy mixture of country and town; —
Not after the fashion of most with two houses,
Who gossip, and gape, and just follow their spouses,
And let their abode be wherever it will,
Are the same vacant, house-keeping animals still; —
But with due sense of each, and of all that it yields, —
In the town, of the town, — in the fields, of the fields;
In the one, for example, to feel as we go on,
That streets are about us, arts, people, and so on;
In t'other, to value the stillness, the breeze,
And love to see farms, and to get among trees

Each his liking, of course, — so that this be the rule. —
For my part, who went in the city to school,
And whenever I got in a field, felt my soul in it
— Spring so, that like a young horse I could roll in it,
— My inclinations are much what they were,
And cannot dispense, in the first place, with air;
But then I would have the most rural of nooks
Just near enough town to make use of its books,
And to walk there, whenever I chose to make calls,
To look at the ladies, and lounge at the stalls.

To tell you the truth, I could spend very well
Whole mornings in this way 'twixt here and Pall Mall,
And make my gloves' fingers as black as my hat,
In pulling the books up from this stall and that: —
Then turning home gently through field, and o'er style,
Partly reading a purchase, or rhyming the while,
Take my dinner (to make a long evening) at two,
With a few droppers-in like my Cousin and you,
Who can season the talk with the right-flavoured attic,
Too witty, for tattling, — too wise, for dogmatic; —
Then take down an author, whom one of us mentions,
And doat, for a while, on his jokes or inventions;
Then have Mozart touched, on our bottle's completion,
Or one of your fav'rite trim ballads Venetian: —
Then up for a walk before tea down a valley,
And so to come back through a leafy-walled alley,
In which the sun peeping, as into a chamber,
Looks gold on the leaves, turning some to sheer amber:
Then tea made by one, who (although my wife she be),
If Jove were to drink it, would soon be his Hebe;
Then silence a little, — a creeping twilight, —
Then an egg for your supper, with lettuces white,
And a moon and friend's arm to go home with at night.

Now this I call passing a few devout hours
Becoming a world that has friendships and flowers;
That has lips also, made for still more than to chat to;
And if it has rain, has a rainbow for that too.

" Lord bless us!" exclaims some old hunks in a shop,
" What useless young dogs!" — and falls combing a crop
" How idle!" another cries — " really a sin!"
And starting up, takes his first customer in
" At least," cries another, " it's nothing but pleasure;"
Then longs for the Monday, quite sick of his leisure.
" What toys!" cries the sage haggard statesman, — " what stuff!"
Then fillips his ribband, to shake off the snuff.
" How profane!" cries the preacher, proclaiming his message;
Then calls God's creation a vile dirty passage
" Lips too!" cries a vixen, — and fidgets, and stirs,
And concludes (which is true) that I didn't mean hers.

Yet most of these sages, dear Will, would agree,
To get what they could out of you and of me, —
To stir up their jog-trotting dullness at times
With your cannonade reasoning, or dance of my rhymes.
They only would have us dig on like themselves,
Yet be all observation to furnish their shelves;
Would only expect us (inordinate crew!)
To be just what they are, and delight them all too!
As well might they ask the explorers of oceans
To make their discoveries, as doctors do lotions;
Or shut up some bees in the till with their money,
And look, on the Sabbath, to breakfast on honey

The secret, in fact, why most people condemn,
Is not that men differ, but differ with them
And yet if the world were put under their keeping,
Our only resource from a pond would be sleeping.
I've thought of, sometimes, when amused with these cavils,
A passage I met with in somebody's travels, —
A merchant's, — who sailing from Greece to Triiste,
Grew vexed with the crew, and avowedly testy,
Because, as he said, being lazy and Greeks,
They were always for putting in harbours and creeks,
And instead of conveying him quick with his lading,
(As any men would, who had due sense of trading)
Could never come near a green isle with a spring,
But smack they went to it, like birds on the wing;
And taking their wine out, and strumming their lutes,
Fell drinking and dancing, — like so many brutes.

Ah, Will, there are some birds and beasts, I'm afraid,
Who if they could peep upon some of the trade,
And see them pale, sneaking, proud, faithless of trust,
Midst their wainscotted twilight, and bundles, and dust,
Would wonder what strange kind of nest and of blisses
The creatures had picked from a world such as this is.
Imagine, for instance, a lark at the casement
Stand glancing his head about, deep in amazement;
Then turning it up to the cloud-silvered skies,
Strikes off to the fields with the air in his eyes,
And heaving and heaving, — thrilled, quivering, and even,
Goes mounting his steps of wild music to heaven.

I blame (you'll bear witness) these tricksters and hiders
No more than I quarrel with bats or with spiders: —
All, all have their uses, though never so hideous; —
But bats shouldn't fancy their eyesight prodigious

You see I can't mention the country again,
But I'm off like a Harlequin, plump through the pane.