GRISELDA GRISELDA _A SOCIETY NOVEL IN RHYMED VERSE_ "Unnatural? My dear, these things are life: And life, some think, is worthy of the Muse." LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER, & CO. LTD. PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD 1893 _The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved._ GRISELDA CHAPTER I. An idle story with an idle moral! Why do I tell it, at the risk of quarrel With nobler themes? The world, alas! is so, And who would gather truth must bend him low, Nor fear to soil his knees with graveyard ground, If haply there some flower of truth be found. For human nature is an earthy fruit, Mired at the stem and fleshy at the root, And thrives with folly's mixon best o'erlaid, Nor less divinely so, when all is said. Brave lives are lived, and worthy deeds are done Each virtuous day, 'neath the all-pitying sun; But these are not the most, perhaps not even The surest road to our soul's modern heaven. The best of us are creatures of God's chance (Call it His grace), which works deliverance; The rest mere pendulums 'twixt good and ill, Like soldiers marking time while standing still. 'Tis all their strategy, who have lost faith In things Divine beyond man's life and death, Pleasure and pain. Of heaven what know we, Save as unfit for angels' company, Say rather hell's? We cling to sins confessed, And say our prayers still hoping for the best. We fear old age and ugliness and pain, And love our lives, nor look to live again. I do but parable the crowd I know, The human cattle grazing as they go, Unheedful of the heavens. Here and there Some prouder, may be, or less hungry steer Lifting his face an instant to the sky, And left behind as the bent herd goes by, Or stung to a short madness, tossing wild His horns aloft, and charging the gay field, Till the fence stops him, and he vanquished too, Turns to his browsing--lost his Waterloo. The moral of my tale I leave to others More bold, who point the finger at their brothers, And surer know than I which way is best To virtue's goal, where all of us find rest, Whether in stern denial of things sweet, Or yielding timely, lest life lose its feet And fall the further. A plain tale is mine Of naked fact, unconscious of design, Told of the world in this last century Of man's (not God's) disgrace, the XIXth. We Have made it all a little as it is In our own images and likenesses, And need the more forgiveness for our sin.