The discipline of wisdom

     Rich labour is the struggle to be wise,
     While we make sure the struggle cannot cease. 
     Else better were it in some bower of peace
     Slothful to swing, contending with the flies. 
     You point at Wisdom fixed on lofty skies,
     As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece: 
     She falls.  To live and shine, she grows her fleece,
     Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies. 
     So following her, your hewing may attain
     The right to speak unto the mute, and shun
     That sly temptation of the illumined brain,
     Deliveries oracular, self-spun. 
     Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain
     To shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun.

     The state of age

     Rub thou thy battered lamp:  nor claim nor beg
     Honours from aught about thee.  Light the young. 
     Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung,
     O grey one! pendant on a loosened peg. 
     Thou art for this our life an ancient egg,
     Or a tough bird:  thou hast a rudderless tongue,
     Turning dead trifles, like the cock of dung,
     Which runs, Time’s contrast to thy halting leg. 
     Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires. 
     But hast thou in thy season set her fires
     To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash,
     Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high: 
     Yea, to spread light when thy proud letter I
     Drops prone and void as any thoughtless dash.

     Progress

     In Progress you have little faith, say you: 
     Men will maintain dear interests, wreak base hates,
     By force, and gentle women choose their mates
     Most amorously from the gilded fighting crew: 
     The human heart Bellona’s mad halloo
     Will ever fire to dicing with the Fates. 
     ‘Now at this time,’ says History, ’those two States
     Stood ready their past wrestling to renew. 
     They sharpened arms and showed them, like the brutes
     Whose haunches quiver.  But a yellow blight
     Fell on their waxing harvests.  They deferred
     The bloody settlement of their disputes
     Till God should bless them better.’  They did right. 
     And naming Progress, both shall have the word.

     The world’s advance

     Judge mildly the tasked world; and disincline
     To brand it, for it bears a heavy pack. 
     You have perchance observed the inebriate’s track
     At night when he has quitted the inn-sign: 
     He plays diversions on the homeward line,
     Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack: 
     A hedge may take him, but he turns not back,
     Nor turns this burdened world, of curving spine. 
     ‘Spiral,’ the memorable Lady terms
     Our mind’s ascent:  our world’s advance presents
     That figure on a flat; the way of worms. 
     Cherish the promise of its good intents,
     And warn it, not one instinct to efface
     Ere Reason ripens for the vacant place.