Classic Poem

Papers to sign and documents to read
Lettres de cachets, and recurrent writs,
So many things to do I cannot do,
To think of — to decide, my acts they say
And never yet they never mean that I should act
Nor dream I should decide . . . And yet my acts
My acts, they say — Ah you are come, my girls,
My children dear, my flowers of Paradise,
My darling ones, and what have you been doing?
Playing all day — and I, poor King, the while
So tired, so tired. — Come round me, play with me;
Would I had mouths as berries on a bush
For all of you at once to pick in kisses.
Ninon, your fingers here in mine — Fanchetta,
Is it not you sweet rogue behind me there?
Come, play awhile, and then we say our prayers
E'en as in holy Church together all
Say prayers — and then — Which shall it be, you ask,
Ah which — shall we draw lots? . . . the Lutheran
And Calvinistic heretics repeat
Hour-long thanksgivings ere they set to dinner
E'en so, prayers done — by lot? or choose in the dark?
Ah but you are not heretics, my girls.
Louise, who came from pestilent Auvergne,
You are sound, I trust, my child, — I'd have you so.
We will all go you know at last to heaven,
Confess our naughty deeds, repent, receive
The wafer and the Unction of the Church
And so — through Purgatory pass to heaven:
And Purgatory also is not long,
But much like penance upon Earth: we say
The seven penitential psalms: repeat
A course of prayers with holy meditations,
And so washed white, and clad in virgin robes
The good kind God receives us to himself.
You laugh, my pet ones — Ah I mean it, though.
Yes and tomorrow — I will not forget —
I'll bring with me the Catechism of Trent,
And test you in your faiths, my little ones.
Ah but you'll all be dutiful and learn
And docilely believe the Church's word.
Keep safely all in union blest with her,
And sinners as we are, we shall yet join
The happy Saints who in their heavenly seats
Pity us in poor sad ways below.
Come
The blinds are closed, the Curtains drawn; put out the lights
We'll fold each other in each other's arms,
Forget the uproarious world and dream of the day
When we shall all be mingled into Heaven.

*

'Tis true, Monseigneur, I am much to blame;
But we must all forgive; especially
Subjects their King; would I were one to do so.
What could I do? and how was I to help it?
'Tis true it should not be so; true indeed,
I know I am not what I would I were.
I would I were, as God intended me,
A little quiet harmless acolyte
Clothed in long serge and linen shoulder-piece,
Day after day
To pace serenely through the sacred fane,
Bearing the sacred things before the priest,
Curtsey before that altar as we pass,
And place our burden reverently on this.
There — by his side to stand and minister,
To swing the censer and to sound the bell,
Uphold the book, the patin change and cup —
Ah me —
And why does childhood ever change to man?
Oh underneath the black and sacred serge
Would yet uneasy uncontented blood
Swell to revolt; beneath the tippet's white
Would harassed nerves by sacred music soothed,
By solemn sights and peaceful tasks composed,
Demand more potent medicine than these
Or ask from pleasure more than duty gives?
*

Ah yes: but who is to blame for this? I wonder.
You found me —
Not you, but some one of your filthy kin —
You found me
A little foolish innocent ignorant Prince,
Awkward and sheepish, bashful and devout,
A silent, shrinking, somewhat overgrown child
Who at the coarse-tongued age of bold fifteen
Knew not his sister differed from himself
Save in her frock and fashion of her hair.
You found me and you told me — oh kind Saints
What was it that you told me then and how! —
But I remember that you left me weeping;
But I remember that from that day forth
The Wicked World was real to me and Heaven
Which had the Substance been was Shadow now.

*

'Tis curious too
These fits of eloquence that come upon him;
He will go dozing, maundering, month on month
And if you meddle, only look distrest
And then at last if something touches him
Comes out with words like these.

*

Ah, holy father, yes.
Without the appointed,
Without the sweet confessional relief,
Without the welcome all-absolving words,
The mystic rite, the solemn soothing forms,
Our human life were miserable indeed.
And yet methinks our holy Mother Church
Deals hardly, very, with her eldest born,
Her chosen, sacred, and most Christian Kings.
To younger pets, the blind, the halt, the sick,
The outcast child, the sinners of the street,
Her doors are open and her precinct free:
The beggar finds a nest, the slave a home,
Even thy altars, O my Mother Church —
O templa quam dilecta . We the while,
Poor Kings, must forth to action, as you say;
Action, that slaves us, drives us, fretted, worn,
To pleasure which anon enslaves us too;
Action, and what is Action, O my God?
Alas, and can it be
In this perplexing labyrinth I see,
This waste and wild infinity of ways
Where all are like, and each each other meets,
Quits, meets, and quits a many hundred times,
That this path more than that conducts to Thee?
Alas, and is it true
Aught I can purpose, say, or will, or do,
My fancy choose, my changeful silly heart
Resolve, my puny petty hand enact
To that great glory can in aught conduce
Which from the old eternities is Thine? —
Ah never, no!
If aught there be for sinful souls below
To do, 'tis rather to forbear to do;
If aught there be of Action that contains
The sense of sweet identity with God,
It is, methinks, it is inaction only.
To walk with God I know not; let me kneel.
Ah yes, the livelong day
To watch before the altar where they pray:
To muse and wait,
On sacred stones lie down and meditate.
No, through the long and dark and dismal night
We will not turn and seek the city streets,
We will not stir, we should but lose our way,
But faithful stay
And watch the tomb where He, our Saviour, lies
Till his great day of Resurrection rise.

Yes, the commandments you remind me, yes,
The Sacred Word has pointed out the Way,
The Priest is here for our unfailing guide,
Do this, not that, to right hand and to left,
A voice is with us ever at our ear.
Yes, holy father, I am thankful for it,
Most thankful I am not, as other men,
A lonely Lutheran English Heretic.
If I had so by God's despite been born,
Alas, methinks I had but passed my life
In sitting motionless beside the fire
Not daring to remove the once-placed chair
Nor stir my foot for fear it should be sin.
Thank God indeed.

Thank God for his infallible certain creed.
Yes, the commandments, precepts of good life
And counsels of perfection and the like,
" Thou knowest the commandments." Yes indeed,
Yes, I suppose. But it is weary work,
For Kings I think they are not plain to read,
Ministers somehow have small faith in them.
Ah, holy father, would I were as you.
But you, no less, have trials as you say,
Inaction vexes you, and action tempts,
And the bad prickings of the animal heats,
As in the palace, to the cell will come.

Alas — and why
Why in that blessed and baptismal rite
When pain is small and small the sense of sin
Should not the holy and preventive hand
With one short act, decisive for all time,
By sharp excision pluck the unsprouted seed: the seed of ill —
There are, the Scripture tells us, who have done it.
Origen was not orthodox, you say,
In this at least was not his heresy:
You holy priests, who do all else for us,
What he did for himself, might do for us. —
Ah well a day,
Would I were out in quiet Paraguay
Mending the Jesuits' shoes! —

*

You drive us into Action as our duty.
Then Action persecutes and tortures us,
To pleasures and to loving soft delights
We fly for solace and for peace; and gain
Vexation, Persecution also here.
We hurry from the tyranny of man
Into the tyranny yet worse of woman.
No satisfaction find I any more
In the old pleasant evil ways; but less,
Less, I believe, of those uneasy stirs
Of discontented and rebellious will
That once with self-contempt tormented me.
Depraved, that is, degraded am I. — Sins,
Which yet I see not how I should have shunned,
Have in despite of all the means of grace,
Submission perfect to the appointed creed,
And absolution-plenary and prayers,
Possessed me, held, and changed — yet after all
Somehow I think my heart within is pure.