Part 6 (2/2)

These hot long ceremonies of our church 10 Cost us a little--oh, they pay the price, You take me--amply pay it! Now, we'll talk.

So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs.

No deprecation--nay, I beg you, sir!

Beside 't is our engagement: don't you know, I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out, We'd see truth dawn together?--truth that peeps Over the gla.s.ses' edge when dinner's done, And body gets its sop and holds its noise And leaves soul free a little. Now's the time: 20 Truth's break of day! You do despise me then.

And if I say, ”despise me”--never fear!

1 know you do not in a certain sense-- Not in my arm-chair, for example: here, I well imagine you respect my place (<status, entourage=””>, worldly circ.u.mstance) Quite to its value--very much indeed: --Are up to the protesting eyes of you In pride at being seated here for once-- You'll turn it to such capital account! 30 When somebody, through years and years to come, Hints of the bishop--names me--that's enough: ”Blougram? I knew him”--(into it you slide) ”Dined with him once, a Corpus Christi Day, All alone, we two; he's a clever man: And after dinner--why, the wine you know-- Oh, there was wine, and good!--what with the wine . . .

'Faith, we began upon all sorts of talk!

He's no bad fellow, Blougram; he had seen Something of mine he relished, some review: 40 He's quite above their humbug in his heart, Half-said as much, indeed--the thing's his trade.

I warrant, Blougram 's sceptical at times: How otherwise? I liked him, I confess!”

<che che=””>, my dear sir, as we say at Rome, Don't you protest now! It's fair give and take; You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths: The hand's mine now, and here you follow suit.

Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays-- You do despise me; your ideal of life 50 Is not the bishop's: you would not be I.

You would like better to be Goethe, now, Or Buonaparte, or, bless me, lower still, Count D'Orsay--so you did what you preferred, Spoke as you thought, and, as you cannot help, Believed or disbelieved, no matter what, So long as on that point, whate'er it was, You loosed your mind, were whole and sole yourself.

--That, my ideal never can include, Upon that element of truth and worth 60 Never be based! for say they make me Pope-- (They can't--suppose it for our argument!) Why, there I'm at my tether's end, I've reached My height, and not a height which pleases you: An unbelieving Pope won't do, you say.

It's like those eerie stories nurses tell, Of how some actor on a stage played Death, With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart, And called himself the monarch of the world; Then, going in the tire-room afterward, 70 Because the play was done, to s.h.i.+ft himself, Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly, The moment he had shut the closet door, By Death himself. Thus G.o.d might touch a Pope At unawares, ask what his baubles mean, And whose part he presumed to play just now.

Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true!

So, drawing comfortable breath again, You weigh and find, whatever more or less I boast of my ideal realized 80 Is nothing in the balance when opposed To your ideal, your grand simple life, Of which you will not realize one jot.

I am much, you are nothing; you would be all, I would be merely much: you beat me there.

No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why!

The common problem, yours, mine, every one's, Is--not to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be--but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair 90 Up to our means: a very different thing!

No abstract intellectual plan of life Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws, But one, a man, who is man and nothing more, May lead within a world which (by your leave) Is Rome or London, not Fool's-paradise.

Embellish Rome, idealize away, Make paradise of London if you can, You're welcome, nay, you're wise.

A simile!

We mortals cross the ocean of this world 100 Each in his average cabin of a life; The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room.

Now for our six months' voyage--how prepare?

You come on s.h.i.+pboard with a landsman's list Of things he calls convenient: so they are!

An India screen is pretty furniture, A piano-forte is a fine resource, All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf, The new edition fifty volumes long; And little Greek books, with the funny type 110 They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next: Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes!

And Parma's pride, the Jerome, let us add!

'T were pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow Hang full in face of one where'er one roams, Since he more than the others brings with him Italy's self--the marvellous Modenese!-- Yet was not on your list before, perhaps.

--Alas, friend, here's the agent . . . is 't the name?

The captain, or whoever's master here-- 120 You see him screw his face up; what's his cry Ere you set foot on s.h.i.+pboard? ”Six feet square!”

If you won't understand what six feet mean, Compute and purchase stores accordingly-- And if, in pique because he overhauls Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board Bare--why, you cut a figure at the first While sympathetic landsmen see you off; Not afterward, when long ere half seas over, You peep up from your utterly naked boards 130 Into some snug and well-appointed berth, Like mine for instance (try the cooler jug-- Put back the other, but don't jog the ice!) And mortified you mutter ”Well and good; He sits enjoying his sea-furniture; 'Tis stout and proper, and there's store of it; Though I've the better notion, all agree, Of fitting rooms up. Hang the carpenter, Neat s.h.i.+p-shape fixings and contrivances-- I would have brought my Jerome, frame and all!” 140 And meantime you bring nothing: never mind-- You've proved your artist-nature: what you don't You might bring, so despise me, as I say.

Now come, let's backward to the starting-place.

See my way: we're two college friends, suppose.

</che></status,></eluceo></elucesco></elucescebat></cipolla></cipollino></orto>

<script>