The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 06, April, 1858. Various

        Tell me, my friend, do you think that the grain would sprout in the

             furrow,

        Did it not truly accept as its summum et ultimum bonum

        That mere common and may-be indifferent soil it is set in?

        Would it have force to develope and open its young cotyledons,

        Could it compare, and reflect, and examine one thing with another?

        Would it endure to accomplish the round of its natural functions,

        Were it endowed with a sense of the general scheme of existence?

          While from Marseilles in the steamer we voyaged to Civita Vecchia,

        Vexed in the squally seas as we lay by Capraja and Elba,

        Standing, uplifted, alone on the heaving poop of the vessel,

        Looking around on the waste of the rushing incurious billows,

        "This is Nature," I said: "we are born as it were from her waters,

        Over her billows that buffet and beat us, her offspring uncared-for,

        Casting one single regard of a painful victorious knowledge,

        Into her billows that buffet and beat us we sink and are swallowed."

        This was the sense in my soul, as I swayed with the poop of the

             steamer;

        And as unthinking I sat in the ball of the famed Ariadne,

        Lo, it looked at me there from the face of a Triton in marble.

        It is the simpler thought, and I can believe it the truer.

        Let us not talk of growth; we are still in our Aqueous Ages.

        Farewell, Politics, utterly! What can I do? I cannot

        Fight, you know; and to talk I am wholly ashamed. And although I

        Gnash my teeth when I look in your French or your English papers,

        What is the good of that? Will swearing, I wonder, mend matters?

        Cursing and scolding repel the assailants? No, it is idle;

        No, whatever befalls, I will hide, will ignore or forget it.

        Let the tail shift for itself; I will bury my head. And what's the

        Roman Republic to me, or I to the Roman Republic?

          Why not fight?—In the first place, I haven't so much as a musket.

        In the next, if I had, I shouldn't know how I should use it.

        In the third, just at present I'm studying ancient marbles.

        In the fourth, I consider I owe my life to my country.

        In the fifth,—I forget; but four good reasons are ample.

        Meantime, pray, let 'em fight, and be killed. I delight in devotion.

        So that I 'list not, hurrah for the glorious army of martyrs!

        Sanguis martyrum semen Ecclesiae; though it would seem this

        Church is indeed of the purely Invisible, Kingdom-Come kind:

        Militant here on earth! Triumphant, of course, then, elsewhere!

        Ah, good Heaven, but I would I were out far away from the pother!

        Not, as we read in the words of the olden-time inspiration,

        Are there two several trees in the place we are set to abide in;

        But on the apex most high of the Tree of Life in the Garden,

        Budding, unfolding, and falling, decaying and flowering ever,

        Flowering is set and decaying the transient blossom of Knowledge,—

        Flowering alone, and decaying, the needless, unfruitful blossom.

        Or as the cypress-spires by the fair-flowing stream Hellespontine,

        Which from the mythical tomb of the godlike Protesilaus

        Rose, sympathetic in grief, to his lovelorn Laodamia,

        Evermore growing, and, when in their growth to the prospect attaining,

        Over the low sea-banks, of the fatal Ilian city,

        Withering still at the sight which still they upgrew to encounter.

          Ah, but ye that extrude from the ocean your helpless faces,

        Ye over stormy seas leading long and dreary processions,

        Ye, too, brood of the wind, whose coming is whence we discern not,

        Making your nest on the wave, and your bed on the crested billow,

        Skimming rough waters, and crowding wet sands that the tide shall

             return to,

        Cormorants, ducks, and gulls, fill ye my imagination!

        Let us not talk of growth; we are still in our Aqueous Ages.

        Dearest Miss Roper,—Alas, we are all at Florence quite safe, and

        You, we hear, are shut up! indeed, it is sadly distressing!

        We were most lucky, they say, to get off when we did from the

             troubles.

        Now you are really besieged! They tell us it soon will be over;

        Only I hope and trust without any fight in the city.

        Do you see Mr. Claude?—I thought he might do something for you.

        I am quite sure on occasion he really would wish to be useful.

        What is he doing? I wonder;—still studying Vatican marbles?

        Letters, I hope, pass through. We trust your brother is better.

        Juxtaposition, in fine; and what is juxtaposition?

        Look you, we travel along in the railway-carriage, or steamer,

        And, pour passer le temps, till the tedious journey be ended,

        Lay aside paper or book, to talk with the girl that is next one;

        And, pour passer le temps, with the terminus all but in

             prospect,

        Talk of eternal ties and marriages made in heaven.

          Ah, did we really accept with a perfect heart the illusion!

        Ah, did we really believe that the Present indeed is the Only!

        Or through all transmutation, all shock and convulsion of passion,

        Feel we could carry undimmed, unextinguished, the light of our

             knowledge!

          But for his funeral train

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