  Philosophies I If it be not to be, Or being be in vain, That high philosophy Shall ever counsel men To mend this mindless state In which, as in the East, We drift on floods of fate, As helpless as the beast, Then here the issue is— Look on this land and weep— A race as ruin’d as this, A misery as deep. II Seeing how pent we are Within our human ways, That save in ceaseless war We cannot spend our days, In struggle each with each To get a breathing space, While Heaven, out of reach, Looks on with scornful face; I wonder, for man’s sake, Cannot that mind of his Which made the engine make A better state than this? Here sitting in my place There comes to me unsought The beautiful sad face Of this undying thought. And with it as in scorn The present state descried Of monsters heaven-born And angels crucify’d, Where, scourged to unnatural toil, In palsy’d posture bent, Man creeping near the soil Forgets the firmament. III Since, since we first began To measure near and far, And know that the thoughts of man His chiefest actions are, A thousand cries in sooth Call us thro’ time amain, And every cry a truth And every truth a gain, And yet the needful task, To mend this state withal, Remains undone; we ask, What is the good of all? Do, cries the lofty seer; Believe, the prelate cries; Be, beauty’s priest austere Persuades. The man replies, ‘We have three beds at home Where eight of us must lie; Three blankets and one room, My children, wife and I. All day our work we mind; But little money gain; At night the wintry wind Whines thro’ the window-pane.’ So one doth read at ease With comfortable wine Devout philosophies That say, for him, divine, To be, to bear, to act, To know oneself, be strong, Are all the heav’ns exact. He answers, ‘I am strong; I fear not any fate; I do; I nobly bear.’ A beggar at his gate Cries in the bitter air. |
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