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Obedience to what? The answer lies
Within the word itself; for how obey
What has no rule, asserts no absolute claim?
Take inclination, taste-why, that is you,
No rule above you. Science, reasoning
On nature's order-they exist and move
Solely by disputation, hold no pledge
of final consequence, but push the swing
Where Epicurus and the Stoic sit
In 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 least

Lies promise of a high communion,

A Head informing members, Life that breathes
With gift of forces over and above

The plus of arithmetic interchange.

The Church too has a body,' you object, 'Can be dissected, put beneath the lens And shown the merest continuity

Of all existence else beneath the sun.'

I grant you; but the lens will not disprove
A 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-dance
Making each molecule that stands for sign
Of 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 gifts
Never disproved-whose argument is found
In lasting failure of the search elsewhere
For what it holds to satisfy man's need.
But I grow lengthy: my excuse must be

Your question, Hamlet, which has probed right through
To the pith of our belief. And I have robbed

Myself of pleasure as a listener.

'Tis noon, I see; and my appointment stands
For half-past twelve with Voltimand. Good-bye."

Brief parting, brief regret-sincere, but quenched
In fumes of best Havannah, which consoles
For lack of other certitude. Then said,
Mildly sarcastic, quiet Guildenstern:
"I marvel how the Father gave new charm
To weak conclusions: I was half convinced

The poorest reasoner made the finest man,
And held his logic lovelier for its limp."

“I fain would hear," said Hamlet, "how you find A stronger footing than the Father gave.

How base your self-resistance save on faith
In some invisible Order, higher Right

Than changing impulse. What does Reason bid?
To take a fullest rationality

What offers best solution: so the Church.

Science, detecting hydrogen aflame

Outside our firmament, leaves mystery

Whole and untouched beyond; nay, in our blood
And in the potent atoms of each germ
The Secret lives-envelops, penetrates
Whatever sense perceives or thought divines.
Science, whose soul is explanation, halts
With hostile front at mystery. The Church
Takes mystery as her empire, brings its wealth
Of possibility to fill the void

'Twixt contradictions—warrants so a faith
Defying sense and all its ruthless train

Of arrogant 'Therefores.' Science with her lens
Dissolves the Forms that made the other half
Of all our love, which thenceforth widowed lives
To gaze with maniac stare at what is not.
The Church explains not, governs-feeds resolve
By vision fraught with heart-experience
And 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 reach
By solid obstacles, evaporates

The coarse and common into subtilties,
Insists that what is real in the Church
Is something out of evidence, and begs
(Just in parenthesis) you'll never mind
What stares you in the face and bruises you.
Why, by his method I could justify

Each superstition and each tyranny
That ever rode upon the back of man,
Pretending fitness for his sole defence
Against life's evil. How can aught subsist
That holds no theory of gain or good?
Despots with terror in their red right hand
Must argue good to helpers and themselves,

Must let submission hold a core of gain

To make their slaves choose life. Their theory,
Abstracting inconvenience of racks,

Whip-lashes, dragonnades and all things coarse
Inherent in the fact or concrete mass,
Presents the pure idea-utmost good
Secured by Order only to be found
In strict subordination, hierarchy

Of forces where, by nature's law, the strong
Has rightful empire, rule of weaker proved
Mere dissolution. What can you object?
The Inquisition-if you turn away
From narrow notice how the scent of gold
Has guided sense of damning heresy-
The Inquisition is sublime, is love

Hindering the spread of poison in men's souls:
The flames are nothing: only smaller pain
To hinder greater, or the pain of one
To save the many, such as throbs at heart
Of every system born into the world.
So of the Church as high communion
Of Head with members, fount of spirit force
Beyond the calculus, and carrying proof
In her sole power to satisfy man's need:
That seems ideal truth as clear as lines
That, necessary though invisible, trace
The 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 need
Before 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 scheme
Content them both, but hold the world accursed,
A Calvary where Reason mocks at Love,
And Love forsaken sends out orphan cries
Hopeless of answer; still the soul remains
Larger, 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. "What To me are any dictates, though they came With thunders from the Mount, if still within

I see a higher Right, a higher Good
Compelling love and worship? Though the earth
Held force electric to discern and kill

Each thinking rebel-what is martyrdom
But death-defying utterance of belief,
Which being mine remains my truth supreme
Though solitary as the throb of pain
Lying 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 rule
Of thunder-guiding powers that deny
Man's highest benefit: rebellion then
Were strict obedience to another rule
Which 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 rays
Of dubious doctrine, hot with energy

Of private judgment and disgust for doubt-
To state my thesis, which you most abhor
When sung in Daphnis-notes beneath the pines
To gentle rush of waters. Your belief-
In essence what is it but simply Taste?
I urge with you exemption from all claims.
That 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 entering
My spiritual space and crushing Me
To a subordinate complement of You:
Such ultimate must stand alike for all.
Preach your crusade, then all will join who like
The hurly-burly of aggressive creeds;
Still your unpleasant Ought, your itch to choose
What 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 Rosencranz

Took up the ball with rougher movement, wont
To show contempt for doting reasoners
Who hugged some reasons with a preference,

As warm Laertes did he gave five puffs

Intolerantly sceptical, then said,

"Your human good, which you would make supreme, How do you know it? Has it shown its face

In adamantine type, with features clear,

As this republic, or that monarchy ?
As federal grouping, or municipal ?
Equality, or finely shaded lines

Of social difference? ecstatic whirl

And draught intense of passionate joy and pain,
Or sober self-control that starves its youth
And 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 labour or in laziness?

In training for the tug of rivalry

To be admired, or in the admiring soul?
In risk or certitude? In battling rage

And hardy challenges of Protean luck,
Or in a sleek and rural apathy

Full fed with sameness? Pray define your Good
Beyond rejection by majority;

Next, how it may subsist without the Ill

Which seems its only outline. Show a world

Of pressure not resisted; or a world

Of pressure equalised, yet various

In action formative; for that will serve
As illustration of your human good-
Which at its perfecting (your goal of hope)
Will not be straight extinct, or fall to sleep
In the deep bosom of the Unchangeable.
What will you work for, then, and call it good
With full and certain vision-good for aught
Save partial ends which happen to be yours?
How will you get your stringency to bind
Thought or desire in demonstrated tracks
Which are but waves within a balanced whole?

Is 'relative' the magic word that turns

Your flux mercurial of good to gold?
Why, that analysis at which you rage
As anti-social force that sweeps you down
The world in one cascade of molecules,
Is brother relative'-and grins at you
Like any convict whom you thought to send
Outside society, till this enlarged

And meant New England and Australia too.
The Absolute is your shadow, and the space

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