A College Breakfast-Party

Young Hamlet, not the hesitating Dane,But one named after him, who lately stroveFor honors at our English Wittenburg,—Blond, metaphysical, and sensuous,Questioning all things and yet half convinced,Credulity were better; held inert'Twixt fascinations of all opposites,And half suspecting that the mightiest soul(Perhaps his own?) was union of extremes,Having no choice but choice of everything:As, drinking deep to-day for love of wine,To-morrow half a Brahmin, scorning lifeAs mere illusion, yearning for that TrueWhich has no qualities; another dayFinding the fount of grace in sacraments,And purest reflex of the light divineIn gem-bossed pyx and broidered chasuble,Resolved to wear no stockings and to fastWith arms extended, waiting ecstasy;But getting cramps instead, and needing change,A would-be-pagan next:— Young Hamlet satA guest with five of somewhat riper ageAt breakfast with Horatio, a friendWith few opinions, but of faithful heart,Quick to detect the fibrous spreading rootsOf character that feed men's theories,Yet cloaking weaknesses with charity,And ready in all service save rebuke.

With ebb of breakfast and the cider-cupCame high debate: the others seated thereWere Osric, spinner of fine sentences,A delicate insect creeping over life,Feeding on molecules of floral breath,And weaving gossamer to trap the sun;Laertes ardent, rash, and radical;Discursive Rosencranz, grave Guildenstern,And he for whom the social meal was made,The polished priest, a tolerant listener,Disposed to give a hearing to the lost,And breakfast with them ere they went below.

From alpine metaphysic glaciers firstThe talk sprang copious; the themes were old,But so is human breath, so infant eyes,The daily nurslings of creative light.Small words held mighty meanings: Matter, Force,Self, Not-self, Being, Seeming, Space and Time—Plebeian toilers on the dusty roadOf daily traffic, turned to GeniiAnd cloudy giants darkening sun and moon.Creation was reversed in human talk:None said, "Let Darkness be," but Darkness was;And in it weltered with Teutonic ease,An argumentative Leviathan,Blowing cascades from out his element,The thunderous Rosencranz, till "Truce, I beg

Said Osric, with nice accent. "I abhorThat battling of the ghosts, that strife of termsFor utmost lack of color, form, and breath,That tasteless squabbling called Philosophy:As if a blue-winged butterfly afloatFor just three days above the Italian fields,Instead of sipping at the heart of flowers,Poising in sunshine, fluttering towards its bride,Should fast and speculate, consideringWhat were if it were not? or what now isInstead of that which seems to be itself?Its deepest wisdom surely were to beA sipping, marrying, blue-winged butterfly;Since utmost speculation on itselfWere but a three days living of worse sort—A bruising struggle all within the boundsOf butterfly existence." "I protest,"Burst in Laertes, "against argumentsThat start with calling me a butterfly,A bubble, spark, or other metaphor.Which carries your conclusions, as a phraseIn quibbling law will carry property.Put a thin sucker for my human lipsFed at a mother's breast, who now needs foodWhat I will earn for her; put bubbles blownFrom frothy thinking, for the joy, the love,The wants, the pity, and the fellowship(The ocean deeps I might say, were I bentOn bandying metaphors) that make a man—Why, rhetoric brings within your easy reachConclusions worthy of—a butterfly.The universe, I hold, is no charade,No acted pun unriddled by a word,Nor pain a decimal diminishingWith hocus-pocus of a dot or naught.For those who know it, pain is solely pain:Not any letters of the alphabetWrought syllogistically pattern-wise,Nor any cluster of fine images,Nor any missing of their figured danceBy blundering molecules. AnalysisMay show you the right physic for the ill;Teaching the molecules to find their dance,But spare me your analogies, that holdSuch insight as the figure of a crowAnd bar of music put to signifyA crowbar."Said the Priest, "There I agree—Would add that sacramental grace is graceWhich to be known must first be felt, with allThe strengthening influxes that come by prayerI note this passingly—would not delayThe conversation's tenor, save to hintThat taking stand with Rosencranz one seesFinal equivalence of all we nameOur Good and Ill—their difference meanwhileBeing inborn prejudice that plumps you downAn Ego, brings a weight into your scale

Forcing a standard. What resistless weight,Obstinate, irremovable by thought,Persisting through disproof; an ache, a needThat spaceless stays where sharp analysisHas shown a plenum filled without it—whatIf this, to use your phrase, were just that BeingNot looking solely, grasping from the dark,Weighing the difference you call Ego? ThisGives you persistence, regulates the fluxWith strict relation rooted in the AllWho is he of your late philosophersTakes the true name of Being to be Will?I—nay, the Church objects naught, is content:Reason has reached its utmost negative,Physic and metaphysic meet in the inaneAnd backward shrink to intense prejudice,Making their absolute and homogeneA loaded relative, a choice to beWhatever is—supposed: a What is not.The Church demands no more, has standing roomAnd basis for her doctrine: this (no more)—That the strong bias which we name the Soul,Though fed and clad by dissoluble waves,Has antecedent quality, and rulesBy veto or consent the strife of thought,Making arbitrament that we call faith."Here was brief silence, till young Hamlet spoke."I crave direction, Father, how to knowThe sign of that imperative whose rightTo sway my act in face of thronging doubtsWere an oracular gem in price beyondUrim and Thummim lost to Israel.That bias of the soul, that conquering dieLoaded with golden emphasis of Will—How find it where resolve, once made, becomesThe rash exclusion of an oppositeWhich draws the stronger as I turn aloof."

"I think I hear a bias in your words,"The Priest said mildly,—"that strong natural bentWhich we call hunger. What more positiveThan appetite?—of spirit or of flesh,I care not—'sense of need' were truer phrase.You hunger for authoritative right,And yet discern no difference of tones,No weight of rod that marks imperial rule?Laertes granting, I will put your caseIn analogic form: the doctors holdHunger which gives no relish—save capriceThat tasting venison fancies mellow pears—A symptom of disorder, and prescribeStrict discipline. Were I physician hereI would prescribe that exercise of soulWhich lies in full obedience; you ask,Obedience to what? The answer liesWithin the word itself; for how obeyWhat has no rule, asserts no absolute claim?Take inclination, taste—why, that is you,No rule about you. Science, reasoningOn nature's order—they exist and moveSolely by disputation, hold no pledgeOf final consequence, but push the swingWhere Epicurus and the Stoic sitIn endless see-saw. One authority,And only one, says simply this, Obey:Place yourself in that current (test it so!)Of spiritual order where at leastLies promise of a high communion,A Head informing members, Life that breathesWith gift of forces over and aboveThe plus of arithmetic interchange.'The Church, too, has a body,' you object,'Can be dissected, put beneath the lensAnd shown the merest continuityOf all existence else beneath the sun.'I grant you; but the lens will not disproveA presence which eludes it. Take your wit,Your highest passion, widest-reaching thought:Show their conditions if you will or can,But though you saw the final atom-danceMaking each molecule that stands for signOf love being present, where is still your love?How measure that, how certify its weight?And so I say, the body of the Church

Carries a Presence, promises and giftsNever disproved—whose argument is foundIn lasting failure of the search elsewhereFor what it holds to satisfy man's need,But I grow lengthy: my excuse must beYour question, Hamlet, which has probed right throughTo the pitch of our belief. And I have robbedMyself of pleasure as a listener.'Tis noon, I see; and my appointment standsFor half-past twelve with Voltimand. Good-by."

Brief parting, brief regret—sincere, but quenchedIn fumes of best Havana, which consolesFor lack of other certitude. Then said,Mildly sarcastic, quiet Guildenstern:"I marvel how the Father gave new charmTo weak conclusions: I was half convincedThe poorest reasoner made the finest man,And held his logic lovelier for its limp.""I fain would hear," said Hamlet, "how you findA stronger footing than the Father gave.How base your self-resistance save on faithIn some invisible Order, higher RightThan changing impulse. What does Reason bid?To take as fullest rationalityWhat offers best solution: so the Church.Science, detecting hydrogen aflameOutside our firmament, leaves mysteryWhole and untouched beyond; nay, in our bloodAnd in the potent atoms of each germThe Secret lives—envelops, penetratesWhatever sense perceives or thought divines.Science, whose soul is explanation, haltsWith hostile front at mystery. The ChurchTakes mystery as her empire, brings its wealthOf possibility to fill the void'Twixt contradictions—warrants to a faithDefying sense and all its ruthless trainOf arrogant 'Therefores.' Science with her lensDissolves the forms that made the other halfOf all our love, which thenceforth widowed livesTo gaze with maniac stare at what is not.

The Church explains not, governs—feeds resolveBy vision fraught with heart-experienceAnd human yearning." "Ay," said Guildenstern,With friendly nod, "the Father, I can see,Has caught you up in his air-chariot.His thought takes rainbow-bridges, out of reachBy solid obstacles, evaporatesThe coarse and common into subtilties.Insists that what is real in the ChurchIs something out of evidence, and begs(Just in parenthesis) you'll never mindWhat stares you in the face and bruises you.Why, by his method I could justifyEach superstition and each tyrannyThat ever rode upon the back of man,Pretending fitness for his sole defenceAgainst life's evil. How can aught subsistThat holds no theory of gain or good?Despots with terror in their red, right handMust argue good to helpers and themselves,Must let submission hold a core of gainTo make their slaves choose life. Their theory,Abstracting inconvenience of racks,Whip-lashes, dragonnades and all things coarseInherent in the fact or concrete mass,Presents the pure idea—utmost goodSecured by Order only to be foundIn strict subordination, hierarchyOf forces where, by nature's law, the strongHas rightful empire, rule of weaker provedMere dissolution. What can you object?The Inquisition—if you turn awayFrom narrow notice how the scent of goldHas guided sense of damning heresy—The Inquisition is sublime, is loveHindering the spread of poison in men's souls:The flames are nothing: only smaller painTo hinder greater, or the pain of oneTo save the many, such as throbs at heartOf every system born into the world.So of the Church as high communion

Of Head with members, fount of spirit forceBeyond the calculus, and carrying proofIn her sole power to satisfy man's need:That seems ideal truth as clear as linesThat, necessary though invisible, traceThe balance of the planets and the sun—Until I find a hitch in that last claim.'To satisfy man's need.' Sir, that depends:We settle first the measure of man's needBefore we grant capacity to fill.John, James, or Thomas, you may satisfy:But since you choose ideals, I demand

Your Church shall satisfy ideal, man,His utmost reason and his utmost love.And say these rest a-hungered—find no schemeContent them both, but hold the world accursedA Calvary where Reason mocks at Love,And Love forsaken sends out orphan criesHopeless of answer; still the soul remainsLarger, diviner than your half-way Church,Which racks your reason into false consent,And soothes your Love with sops of selfishness."

"There I am with you," cried Laertes. "WhatTo me are any dictates, though they cameWith thunders from the Mount, if still withinI see a nigher Right, a higher GoodCompelling love and worship? Though the earthHeld force electric to discern and killEach thinking rebel—what is martyrdomBut death-defying utterance of belief,Which being mine remains my truth supreme,Though solitary as the throb of painLying outside the pulses of the world?Obedience is good: ay, but to what?And for what ends? For say that I rebel

Against your rule as devilish, or as ruleOf thunder-guiding powers that denyMan's highest benefit: rebellion thenWere strict obedience to another ruleWhich bids me flout your thunder." "Lo you now!"

Said Osric, delicately, "how you come,Laertes mine, with all your warring zeal,As Python-slayer of the present age—Cleansing all social swamps by darting raysOf dubious doctrine, hot with energyOf private judgment and disgust for doubt—To state my thesis, which you most abhorWhen sung in Daphnis-notes beneath the pinesTo gentle rush of waters. Your belief—In essence, what is it but simply Taste?I urge with you exemption from all claimsThat come from other than my proper will,An Ultimate within to balance yours,A solid meeting you, excluding you,Till you show fuller force by enteringMy spiritual space and crushing MeTo a subordinate complement of You:Such ultimate must stand alike for all.Preach your crusade, then; all will join who likeThe hurly-burly of aggressive creeds;Still your unpleasant Ought, your itch to chooseWhat grates upon the sense, is simply Taste,Differs, I think, from mine (permit the word,Discussion forces it) in being bad."

The tone was too polite to breed offence,Showing a tolerance of what was "bad,"Becoming courtiers. Louder RosencranzTook up the ball with rougher movement, wontTo show contempt for doting reasonersWho hugged some reasons with a preference,As warm Laertes did: he gave five puffsIntolerantly skeptical, then said,"Your human good, which you would make supreme,How do you know it? Has it shown its faceIn adamantine type, with features clear.As this republic, or that monarchy?As federal grouping, or municipal?Equality, or finely shaded linesOf social difference? ecstatic whirlAnd draught intense of passionate joy and pain,Or sober self-control, that starves its youthAnd lives to wonder what the world calls joy?Is it in sympathy that shares men's pangs,Or in cool brains that can explain them well?Is it in labor, or in laziness?In training for the tug of rivalryTo be admired, or in the admiring soul?In risk, or certitude? In battling rageAnd hardy challenges of Protean luck,Or in a sleek and rural apathyFull fed with sameness? Pray define your GoodBeyond rejection by majority;Next, how it may subsist without the IllWhich seems its only outline. Show a worldOf pleasure not resisted; or a worldOf pleasure equalized, yet variousIn action formative; for that will serveAs illustration of your human good—Which at its perfecting (your goal of hope)Will not be straight extinct, or fall to sleepIn the deep bosom of the Unchangeable.What will you work for, then, and call it goodWith full and certain vision—good for aughtSave partial ends which happen to be yours?How will you get your stringency to bindThought or desire in demonstrated tracksWhich are but waves within a balanced whole?Is 'relative' the magic word that turnsYour flux mercurial of good to gold?Why, that analysis at which you rageAs anti-social force that sweeps you downThe world in one cascade of molecules,Is brother 'relative'—and grins at youLike any convict whom you thought to sendOutside society, till this enlarged,And meant New England and Australia too.The Absolute is your shadow, and the spaceWhich you say might be real were you milledTo curves pellicular, the thinnest thin,Equation of no thickness, is still you."

"Abstracting all that makes him clubbable,"Horatio interposed. But Rosencranz,Deaf as the angry turkey-cock, whose earsAre plugged by swollen tissues when he scoldsAt men's pretensions: "Pooh, your 'Relative'Shuts you in, hopeless, with your progenyAs in a Hunger tower; your social good,Like other deities by turn supremeIs transient reflex of a prejudice,Anthology of causes and effectsTo suit the mood of fanatics who leadThe mood of tribes or nations. I admitIf you could show a sword, nay, chance of swordHanging conspicuous to their inward eyes,With edge so constant threatening as to swayAll greed and lust by terror; and a lawClear-writ and proven as the law supremeWhich that dread sword enforces—then your RightDuty, or social Good, were it once broughtTo common measure with the potent law,Would dip the scale, would put unchanging marksOf wisdom or of folly on each deed,And warrant exhortation. Until then,Where is your standard or criterion?'What always, everywhere, by all men'—why,That were but Custom, and your system needsIdeals never yet incorporate,The imminent doom of Custom. Can you findAppeal beyond the sentience in each man?Frighten the blind with scarecrows? raise an aweOf things unseen where appetite commandsChambers of imagery in the soulAt all its avenues?—You chant your hymnsTo Evolution, on your altar layA sacred egg called Progress: have you provedA Best unique where all is relative,And where each change is loss as well as gain?The age of healthy Saurians, well suppliedWith heat and prey, will balance well enoughA human age where maladies are strongAnd pleasures feeble; wealth a monster gorgedMid hungry populations; intellectAproned in laboratories, bent on proofThat this is that, and both are good for naught

Save feeding error through a weary life;While Art and Poesy struggle like poor ghostsTo hinder cock-crow and the dreadful light,Lurking in darkness and the charnel-house,Or like two stalwart graybeards, imbecileWith limbs still active, playing at beliefThat hunt the slipper, foot-ball, hide-and-seekAre sweetly merry, donning pinaforesAnd lisping emulously in their speech.O human race! Is this, then, all thy gain?—Working at disproof, playing at belief,Debate on causes, distate of effects,Power to transmute all elements, and lackOf any power to sway the fatal skillAnd make thy lot aught else than rigid doom.The Saurians were better.—Guildenstern,Pass me the taper. Still the human curseHas mitigation in the best cigars."

Then swift Laertes, not without a glareOf leonine wrath, "I thank thee for that word:That one confession, were I Socrates,Should force you onward till you ran your headAt your own image—flatly gave the lieTo all your blasphemy of that human goodWhich bred and nourished you to sit at easeAnd learnedly deny it. Say the worldGroans ever with the pangs of doubtful births:Say, life's a poor donation at the best—Wisdom a yearning after nothingness—Nature's great vision and the thrill supremeOf thought-fed passion but a weary play—I argue not against you. Who can proveWit to be witty when the deeper groundDulness intuitive declares wit dull?If life is worthless to you—why, it is.You only know how little love you feelTo give you fellowship, how little forceResponsive to the quality of things.Then end your life, throw off the unsought yoke.If not—if you remain to taste cigars,Choose racy diction, perorate at large

With tacit scorn of meaner men who winNo wreath or tripos—then admit at leastA possible Better in the seeds of earth;Acknowledge debt to that laborious lifeWhich, sifting evermore the mingled seedsTesting the Possible with patient skill,And daring ill in presence of a goodFor futures to inherit, made your lotOne you would choose rather than end it, nay,Rather than, say, some twenty million lotsOf fellow-Britons toiling all to makeThat nation, that community, whereonYou feed and thrive and talk philosophy.I am no optimist, whose faith must hangOn hard pretence that pain is beautifulAnd agony explained for men at easeBy virtue's exercise in pitying it.But this I hold: that he who takes one giftMade for him by the hopeful work of man,Who tastes sweet bread, walks where he will unarmed,His shield and warrant the invisible law,Who owns a hearth and household charities,Who clothes his body and his sentient soulWith skill and thoughts of men, and yet deniesA human good worth toiling for, is cursedWith worse negation than the poet feignedIn Mephistopheles. The Devil spinsHis wire-drawn argument against all goodWith sense of brimstone as his private lot,And never drew a solace from the Earth."

Laertes fuming paused, and GuildensternTook up with cooler skill the fusillade:"I meet your deadliest challenge, Rosencranz:—Where get, you say, a binding law, a ruleEnforced by sanction, an Ideal thronedWith thunder in its hand? I answer, thereWhence every faith and rule has drawn its forceSince human consciousness awaking ownedAn outward, whose unconquerable swayResisted first and then subdued desireBy pressure of the dire ImpossibleUrging to possible ends the active soulAnd shaping so its terror and its love.Why, you have said it—threats and promisesDepend on each man's sentence for their force:All sacred rules, imagined or revealed,Can have no form or potency apartFrom the percipient and emotive mind.God, duty, love, submission, fellowship,Must first be framed in man, as music is,Before they live outside him as a law.And still they grow and shape themselves anew,With fuller concentration in their lifeOf inward and of outward energiesBlending to make the last result called Man,Which means, not this or that philosopherLooking through beauty into blankness, notThe swindler who has sent his fruitful lieBy the last telegram: it means the tideOf needs reciprocal, toil, trust, and love—The surging multitude of human claimsWhich make 'a presence not to be put by'Above the horizon of the general soul.Is inward Reason shrunk to subtleties,And inward wisdom pining passion-starved?—The outward Reason has the world in store,Regenerates passion with the stress of want,Regenerates knowledge with discovery,Shows sly rapacious Self a blunderer,Widens dependence, knits the social wholeIn sensible relation more defined.Do Boards and dirty-handed millionairesGovern the planetary system?—swayThe pressure of the Universe?—decideThat man henceforth shall retrogress to ape,Emptied of every sympathetic thrillThe All has wrought in him? dam up henceforthThe flood of human claims as private forceTo turn their wheels and make a private hellFor fish-pond to their mercantile domain?What are they but a parasitic growthOn the vast real and ideal worldOf man and nature blent in one divine?

Why, take your closing dirge—say evil growsAnd good is dwindling; science mere decay,Mere dissolution of ideal wholesWhich through the ages past alone have madeThe earth and firmament of human faith;Say, the small arc of Being we call manIs near its mergence, what seems growing lifeNaught but a hurrying change towards lower types,The ready rankness of degeneracy.Well, they who mourn for the world's dying goodMay take their common sorrows for a rock,On it erect religion and a church,A worship, rites, and passionate piety—The worship of the Best though crucifiedAnd God-forsaken in its dying pangs;The sacramental rites of fellowshipIn common woe; visions that purifyThrough admiration and despairing love,Which keep their spiritual life intactBeneath the murderous clutches of disproofAnd feed a martyr-strength." "Religion high!"(Rosencranz here) "but with communicantsFew as the cedars upon Lebanon—A child might count them. What the world demandsIs faith coercive of the multitude."

"Tush, Guildenstern, you granted him too much,Burst in Laertes; "I will never grantOne inch of law to feeble blasphemiesWhich hold no higher ratio to life—Full vigorous human life that peopled earth,And wrought and fought and loved and bravely died—Than the sick morning glooms of debauchees.Old nations breed old children, wizened babesWhose youth is lanquid and incredulousWeary of life without the will to die;Their passions visionary appetitesOf bloodless spectres wailing that the worldFor lack of substance slips from out their grasp;Their thoughts the withered husks of all things dead,Holding no force of germs instinct with life,Which never hesitates but moves and grows.Yet hear them boast in screams their godlike ill,Excess of knowing! Fie on you, Rosencranz!You lend your brains and fine-dividing tongueFor bass-notes to this shrivelled crudity,This immature decrepitude that strainsTo fill our ears and claim the prize of strengthFor mere unmanliness. Out on them all!—Wits, puling minstrels, and philosophers,Who living softly prate of suicide,And suck the commonwealth to feed their easeWhile they vent epigrams and threnodies,Mocking or wailing all the eager workWhich makes that public store whereon they feed.Is wisdom flattened sense and mere distaste?Why, any superstition warm with love,Inspired with purpose, wild with energyThat streams resistless through his ready frame,Has more of human truth within its lifeThan souls that look through color into naught,—Whose brain, too unimpassioned for delight,Has feeble ticklings of a vanityWhich finds the universe beneath its mark,And scorning the blue heavens as merely blueCan only say, 'What then?'—pre-eminentIn wondrous want of likeness to their kindFounding that worship of sterilityWhose one supreme is vacillating WillWhich makes the Light, then says, ''Twere better not.'"

Here rash Laertes brought his Handel-strainAs of some angry Polypheme, to pause;And Osric, shocked at ardors out of taste,Relieved the audience with a tenor voiceAnd delicate delivery. "For me,I range myself in line with RosencranzAgainst all schemes, religious or profane,That flaunt a Good as pretext for a lashTo flog us all who have the better taste,Into conformity, requiring meAt peril of the thong and sharp disgraceTo care how mere Philistines pass their lives;Whether the English pauper-total growsFrom one to two before the naughts; how farTeuton will outbreed Roman; if the classOf proletaires will make a federal bandTo bind all Europe and America,Throw, in their wrestling, every government,Snatch the world's purse and keep the guillotine:Or else (admitting these are casualties)Driving my soul with scientific hailThat shuts the landscape out with particles,Insisting that the PalingenesisMeans telegraphs and measure of the rateAt which the stars move—nobody knows where.So far, my Rosencranz, we are at one.But not when you blaspheme the life of Art,The sweet perennial youth of Poesy,Which asks no logic but its sensuous growth,No right but loveliness; which fearless strollsBetwixt the burning mountain and the sea,Reckless of earthquake and the lava stream,Filling its hour with beauty. It knows naughtOf bitter strife, denial, grim resolve.Sour resignation, busy emphasisOf fresh illusions named the new-born True,Old Error's latest child; but as a lakeImages all things, yet within its depthsDreams them all lovelier—thrills with soundAnd makes a harp of plenteous liquid chords—So Art or Poesy: we its votariesAre the Olympians, fortunately bornFrom the elemental mixture; 'tis our lotTo pass more swiftly than the Delian God.But still the earth breaks into flowers for us,And mortal sorrows when they reach our earsAre dying falls to melody divine.Hatred, war, vice, crime, sin, those human storms,Cyclones, floods, what you will—outbursts of force—Feed art with contrast, give the grander touchTo the master's pencil and the poet's song,Serve as Vesuvian fires or navies tossedOn yawning Waters, which when viewed afarDeepen the calm sublime of those choice soulsWho keep the heights of poesy and turnA fleckless mirror to the various world,Giving its many-named and fitful fluxAn imaged, harmless, spiritual life,With pure selection, native to art's frame,Of beauty only, save its minor scaleOf ill and pain to give the ideal joyA keener edge. This is a mongrel globe,All finer being wrought from its coarse earthIs but accepted privilege: what elseYour boasted virtue, which proclaims itselfA good above the average consciousness?Nature exists by partiality(Each planet's poise must carry two extremesWith verging breadths of minor wretchedness):We are her favorites and accept our wings.For your accusal, Rosencranz, that ArtShares in the dread and weakness of the time,I hold it null; since Art or Poesy pure,Being blameless by all standards save her own,Takes no account of modern or antiqueIn morals, science, or philosophy:No dull elenchus makes a yoke for her,Whose law and measure are the sweet consentOf sensibilities that move apartFrom rise or fall of systems, states or creeds—Apart from what Philistines call man's weal."

"Ay, we all know those votaries of the MuseRavished with singing till they quite forgotTheir manhood, sang, and gaped, and took no food,Then died of emptiness, and for rewardLived on as grasshoppers."—Laertes thus:But then he checked himself as one who feelsHis muscles dangerous, and GuildensternFilled up the pause with calmer confidence.

"You use your wings, my Osric, poise yourselfSafely outside all reach of argument,Then dogmatize at will (a method knownTo ancient women and philosophers,

Nay, to Philistines whom you most abhor);Else, could an arrow reach you, I should askWhence came taste, beauty, sensibilitiesRefined to preference infallible?Doubtless, ye're gods—these odors ye inhale,A sacrificial scent. But how, I pray,Are odors made, if not by gradual changeOf sense or substance? Is your beautifulA seedless, rootless flower, or has it grownWith human growth, which means the rising sumOf human struggle; order, knowledge?—senseTrained to a fuller record, more exact—To truer guidance of each passionate force?Get me your roseate flesh without the blood,Get fine aromas without structure wroughtFrom simpler being into manifold:Then and then only flaunt your BeautifulAs what can live apart from thought, creeds, states,Which mean life's structure. Osric, I beseech—The infallible should be more catholic—Join in a war-dance with the cannibals,Hear Chinese music, love a face tattooed,Give adoration to a pointed skull,And think the Hindu Siva looks divine'Tis art, 'tis poesy. Say, you object:How came you by that lofty dissidence,If not through changes in the social manWidening his consciousness from Here and NowTo larger wholes beyond the reach of sense;Controlling to a fuller harmonyThe thrill of passion and the rule of fact:And paling false ideals in the lightOf full-rayed sensibilities, which blendTruth and desire? Taste, beauty, what are theyBut the soul's choice towards perfect bias wroughtBy finer balance of a fuller growth—Sense brought to subtlest metamorphosisThrough love, thought, joy—the general human storeWhich grows from all life's functions? As the plantHolds its corolla, purple, delicate,Solely as outflush of that energyWhich moves transformingly in root and branch,Guildenstern paused, and Hamlet quiveringSince Osric spoke, in transit imminentFrom catholic striving into laxity,Ventured his word. "Seems to me, Guildenstern,Your argument, though shattering Osric's pointThat sensibilities can move apartFrom social order, yet has not annulledHis thesis that the life of poesy(Admitting it must grow from out the whole)Has separate functions, a transfigured realmFreed from the rigors of the practical,Where what is hidden from the grosser world—Stormed down by roar of engines and the shoutsOf eager concourse—rises beauteousAs voice of water-drops in sapphire caves;A realm where finest spirits have free swayIn exquisite selection, uncontrolledBy hard material necessityOf cause and consequence. For you will grantThe Ideal has discoveries which askNo test, no faith, save that we joy in them:A new-found continent, with spreading landsWhere pleasure charters all, where virtue, rank,Use, right, and truth have but one name, Delight.Thus Art's creations, when etherealizedTo least admixture of the grosser factDelight may stamp as highest." "Possible!Said Guildenstern, with touch of weariness,"But then we might dispute of what is gross,What high, what low." "Nay," said Laertes, "ask

The mightiest makers who have reigned, still reignWithin the ideal realm. See if their thoughtBe drained of practice, and the thick, warm bloodOf hearts that beat in action variousThrough the wide drama of the struggling world.Good-by, Horatio." Each now said "Good-by."

Such breakfast, such beginning of the dayIs more than half the whole. The sun was hotOn southward branches of the meadow elms,The shadows slowly farther crept and veeredLike changing memories, and Hamlet strolledAlone and dubious on the empurpled pathBetween the waving grasses of new JuneClose by the stream where well-compacted boatsWere moored or moving with a lazy creakTo the soft dip of oars. All sounds were lightAs tiny silver bells upon the robesOf hovering silence. Birds made twitteringsThat seemed but Silence'self o'erfull of love.'Twas invitation all to sweet repose;And Hamlet, drowsy with the mingled draughtsOf cider and conflicting sentiments,Choose a green couch, and watched with half-closed eyesThe meadow-road, the stream and dreamy lights,Until they merged themselves in sequence strangeWith undulating ether, time, the soul,The will supreme, the individual claim,The social Ought, the lyrist's liberty,Democritus, Pythagoras in talkWith Anselm, Darwin, Comte, and Schopenhauer,The poets rising slow from out their tombsSummoned as arbiters—that border-worldOf dozing, ere the sense is fully locked.And then he dreamed a dream so luminous'He woke (he says) convinced; but what it taughtWithholds as yet. Perhaps those graver shadesAdmonished him that visions told in hastePart with their virtues to the squandering lips,And leave the soul in wider emptiness.