Ah, if I had a course like a full stream, If life were as the field of chase! No, no; The life of instinct has, it seems, gone by, And will not be forced back. And to live now I must sluice out myself into canals, And lose all force in ducts. The modern Hotspur Shrills not his trumpet of ‘To Horse, To Horse!’ But consults columns in a Railway Guide; A demigod of figures; an Achilles Of computation; A verier Mercury, express come down To do the world with swift arithmetic. Well, one could bear with that, were the end ours, One’s choice and the correlative of the soul; To drudge were then sweet service. But indeed The earth moves slowly, if it move at all, And by the general, not the single force Of the linked members of the vast machine. In all these crowded rooms of industry, No individual soul has loftier leave Than fiddling with a piston or a valve. Well, one could bear that also: one would drudge And do one’s petty part, and be content In base manipulation, solaced still By thinking of the leagued fraternity, And of co-operation, and the effect Of the great engine. If indeed it work, And is not a mere treadmill! which it may be. Who can confirm it is not? We ask action. And dream of arms and conflict; and string up All self-devotion’s muscles; and are set To fold up papers. To what end? we know not. Other folks do so; it is always done; And it perhaps is right. And we are paid for it, For nothing else we can be. He that eats Must serve; and serve as other servants do: And don the lacquey’s livery of the house. Oh, could I shoot my thought up to the sky, A column of pure shape, for all to observe! But I must slave, a meagre coral-worm, To build beneath the tide with excrement What one day will be island, or be reef, And will feed men, or wreck them. Well, well, well. Adieu, ye twisted thinkings. I submit: it must be. Action is what one must get, it is clear, And one could dream it better than one finds, In its kind personal, in its motive not; Not selfish as it now is, nor as now Maiming the individual. If we had that, It would cure all indeed. Oh, how would then These pitiful rebellions of the flesh, These caterwaulings of the effeminate heart, These hurts of self-imagined dignity, Pass like the seaweed from about the bows Of a great vessel speeding straight to sea! Yes, if we could have that; but I suppose We shall not have it, and therefore I submit! _Sp._ (_from within_). Submit, submit! ’Tis common sense, and human wit Can claim no higher name than it. Submit, submit! Devotion, and ideas, and love, And beauty claim their place above; But saint and sage and poet’s dreams Divide the light in coloured streams, Which this alone gives all combined, The _siccum lumen_ of the mind Called common sense: and no high wit Gives better counsel than does it. Submit, submit!