Albeit a pang of dissolution rounds Along thy fields, as sunless billows roll; Die to thyself," they say, "as we have died From dear existence, and the foe forgive, Nor pray for aught save in our little space To warm good seed to greet the fair earth's face." 331 AMERICA SIDNEY DOBELL Men say, Columbia, we shall hear thy guns. But in what tongue shall be thy battle-cry? Not that our sires did love in years gone by, When all the Pilgrim Fathers were little sons In merrie homes of Englaunde? Back, and see Thy satchel'd ancestor! Behold, he runs To mine, and, clasp'd, they tread the equal lea To the same village-school, where side by side They spell "our Father." Hard by, the twin-pride Of that gray hall whose ancient oriel gleams Thro' yon baronial pines, with looks of light Our sister-mothers sit beneath one tree. Meanwhile our Shakespeare wanders past and dreams His Helena and Hermia. Shall we fight? Nor force nor fraud shall sunder us! O ye Who north or south, on east or western land, Native to noble sounds, say truth for truth, For God; O ye who in eternal youth Heroic utterance-parted, yet a whole, Sublime as Milton's immemorial theme, TO WALT WHITMAN IN AMERICA ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Send but a song oversea for us, More than our singing can be; Sweet-smelling of pine leaves and grasses, And blown as a tree through and through With the winds of the keen mountain passes, And tender as sun-smitten dew; Sharp-tongued as the winter that shakes The wastes of your limitless lakes, Wide-eyed as the sea-line's blue. O strong-winged soul with prophetic Lips hot with the bloodbeats of song, With tremor of heartstrings magnetic, With thoughts as thunders in throng, With consonant ardors of chords That pierce men's souls as with swords And hale them hearing along, Make us, too, music, to be with us As a word from a world's heart warm, To sail the dark as a sea with us, Full-sailed, outsinging the storm, A song to put fire in our ears Whose burning shall burn up tears, Whose sign bid battle reform; A note in the ranks of a clarion, Till east way as west way is clear. Out of the sun beyond sunset, From the evening whence morning shall be, With the rollers in measureless onset, With the van of the storming sea, With the world-wide wind, with the breath That breaks ships driven upon death, With the passion of all things free, With the sea-steeds footless and frantic, With terror, with ardor and wonder, With the soul of the season that wakes When the weight of a whole year's thunder In the tidestream of autumn breaks, Let the flight of the wide-winged word Come over, come in and be heard, Take form and fire for our sakes. For a continent bloodless with travail Here toils and brawls as it can, II. THE CRUSADE AGAINST MATERIALISM 1. THE GOSPEL OF WORK THE INHERITANCE THOMAS CARLYLE [From Past and Present, 1843, Book II, chapter xvii] It is all work and forgotten work, this peopled, clothed, articulate-speaking, hightowered, wide-acred World. The hands of forgotten brave men have made it a World for us;-they,-honor to them; they, in spite of the idle and the dastard. This English Land, here and now, is the summary of what was found of wise, and noble, and accordant with God's Truth, in all the generations of English Men. Our English Speech is speakable because there were Hero-Poets of our blood and lineage; speakable in proportion to the number of these. This Land of England has its conquerors, possessors, which change from epoch to epoch, from day to day; but its real conquerors, creators, and eternal proprietors are these following, and their representatives if you can find them: All the Heroic Souls that ever were in England, each in their degree; all the men that ever cut a thistle, drained a puddle out of England, contrived a wise scheme in England, did or said a true and valiant thing in England. I tell thee, they had not a hammer to begin with; and yet Wren built St. Paul's: not an articulated syllable; and yet there have come English Literatures, Elizabethan Literatures, Satanic-School, Cockney-School, and other Literatures;—once more, as in the old time of the Leitourgia, a most waste imbroglio, and world-wide jungle and jumble; waiting terribly to be "well-edited" and "well-burnt!" Arachne started with forefinger and thumb, and had not even a distaff; yet thou seest Manchester, and Cotton Cloth, which will shelter naked backs, at twopence an ell. Work? The quantity of done and forgotten work that lies silent under my feet in this world, and escorts and attends me, and supports and keeps me alive, wheresoever I walk or stand, whatsoever I think or do, gives rise to reflections! Is it not enough, at any rate, to strike the thing called "Fame" into total silence for a wise man? For fools and unreflective persons, she is and will be very noisy, this "Fame," and talks of her "immortals" and so forth: but if you will consider it, what is she? Abbot Samson was not nothing because nobody said anything of him. Or thinkest thou, the Right Honorable Sir Jabez Windbag can be made something by Parliamentary Majorities and Leading Articles? Her "immortals!" Scarcely two hundred years back can Fame recoilect articulately at all; and there she but maunders and mumbles. She manages to recollect a Shakespeare or so; and prates, considerably like a goose, about him;-and in the rear of that, onwards to the birth of Theuth, to Hengst's Invasion, and the bosom of Eternity, it was all blank; and the respectable Teutonic Languages, Teutonic Practices, Existences, all came of their own accord, as the grass springs, as the trees grow; no Poet, no work from the inspired heart of a Man needed there; and Fame has not an articulate word to say about it! Or ask her, What, with all conceivable appliances and mnemonics, including apotheosis and human sacrifices among the number, she carries in her head with regard to a Wodan, even a Moses, or other such? She begins to be uncertain as to what they were, whether spirits or men of mold,-gods, charlatans: begins sometimes to have a misgiving that they were mere symbols, ideas of the mind; perhaps nonentities and Letters of the Alphabet! She is the noisiest, inarticulately babbling, hissing, screaming, foolishest, unmusicalest of fowls that fly; and needs no "trumpet," I think, but her own enormous goose-throat, measuring several degrees of celestial latitude, so to speak. Her "wings," in these days, have grown far swifter than ever; but her goose-throat hitherto seems only larger, louder, and foolisher than ever. She is transitory, futile, a goose-goddess:if she were not transitory, what would become of us! It is a chief comfort that she forgets us all; all, even to the very Wodans; and grows to consider us, at last, as probably nonentities and Letters of the Alphabet. Yes, a noble Abbot Samson resigns himself to Oblivion too; feels it no hardship, but a comfort; counts it as a still restingplace, from much sick feet and fever and stupidity, which in the night-watches often |