Rampolli - A Year's Diary of an Old Soul
Home - George MacDonald - Rampolli - A Year's Diary of an Old SoulTHE METAPHYSICIAN.
"How far the world lies under me!
Scarce can I see the men below there crawling!
How high it bears me up, my lofty calling!
How near the heavenly canopy!"
Thus, from tower-roof where he doth clamber,
Calls out the slater; and with him the small big man,
Jack Metaphysicus, down in his writing-chamber!
Tell me, thou little great big man,--
The tower, whence thou so grandly all things hast inspected,
Of what is it?--Whereon is it erected?
How cam'st thou up thyself? Its heights so smooth and bare--
How serve they thee but thence into the vale to stare?
THE PHILOSOPHERS.
The principle whence everything
To life and shape ascended--
The pulley whereon Zeus the ring
Of Earth, which else in sherds would spring,
Has carefully suspended--
To genius I yield him a claim
Who fathoms for me what its name,
Save I withdraw its curtain: It is--ten is not thirteen.
That snow makes cold, that fire burns,
That man on two feet goeth, That in the heavens the sun sojourns-- This much the man who logic spurns
Through his own senses knoweth;
But metaphysics who has got,
Knows he that burneth, freezeth not;
Knows 'tis the moist that wetteth, And 'tis the rough that fretteth.
Great Homer sings his epic high;
The hero fronts his dangers;
The brave his duty still doth ply--
And did it while, I won't deny,
Philosophers were strangers: But grant by heart and brain achiev'd What Locke and Des Cartes ne'er conceiv'd--
By them yet, as behovéd, It possible was provéd.
Strength for the Right is counted still;
Bold laughs the strong hyena; Who rule not, servants' parts must fill; It goes quite tolerably ill
Upon this world's arena;
But how it would be, if the plan
Of the universe now first began,
In many a moral system All men may read who list 'em.
"Man needs with man must linked be
To reach the goal of growing;
In the whole only worketh he;
Many drops go to make the sea;
Much water sets mills going. Then with the wild wolves do not stand, But knit the state's enduring band:"
From doctor's chair thus, tranquil, Herr Pufendorf and swan-quill.
But since to all, what doctors say
Flies not as soon as spoken,
Nature will use her mother-way,
See that her chain fly not in tway,
The circle be not broken: Meantime, until the world's great round Philosophy in one hath bound,
She keeps it on the move, sir, By hunger and by love, sir.
SAYINGS OF CONFUCIUS.