Chapter II
Individuality
Sail on, sail on, fair cousin Cloud:Oh loiter hither from the sea.Still-eyed and shadow-brow’d,Steal off from yon far-drifting crowd,And come and brood upon the marsh with me.
Yon laboring low horizon-smoke,Yon stringent sail, toil not for theeNor me; did heaven’s strokeThe whole deep with drown’d commerce choke,No pitiless tease of risk or bottomry
Would to thy rainy office closeThy will, or lock mine eyes from tears,Part wept for traders’-woes,Part for that ventures mean as thoseIn issue bind such sovereign hopes and fears.
—Lo, Cloud, thy downward countenance staresBlank on the blank-faced marsh, and thouMindest of dark affairs;Thy substance seems a warp of cares;Like late wounds run the wrinkles on thy brow.
Well may’st thou pause, and gloom, and stare,A visible conscience: I arraignThee, criminal Cloud, of rareContempts on Mercy, Right, and Prayer,—Of murders, arsons, thefts,—of nameless stain.
(Yet though life’s logic grow as grayAs thou, my soul’s not in eclipse.)Cold Cloud, but yesterdayThy lightning slew a child at play,And then a priest with prayers upon his lips
For his enemies, and then a brightLady that did but ope the doorUpon the storming nightTo let a beggar in,—strange spite,—And then thy sulky rain refused to pour
Till thy quick torch a barn had burnedWhere twelve months’ store of victual lay,A widow’s sons had earned;Which done, thy floods with winds returned,—The river raped their little herd away.
What myriad righteous errands highThy flames MIGHT run on! In that hourThou slewest the child, oh whyNot rather slay Calamity,Breeder of Pain and Doubt, infernal Power?
Or why not plunge thy blades aboutSome maggot politician throngSwarming to parcel outThe body of a land, and routThe maw-conventicle, and ungorge Wrong?
What the cloud doethThe Lord knoweth,The cloud knoweth not.What the artist doeth,The Lord knoweth;Knoweth the artist not?
Well-answered!—O dear artists, ye—Whether in forms of curve or hueOr tone your gospels be—Say wrong `This work is not of me,But God:’ it is not true, it is not true.
Awful is Art because ’tis free.The artist trembles o’er his planWhere men his Self must see.Who made a song or picture, heDid it, and not another, God nor man.
My Lord is large, my Lord is strong:Giving, He gave: my me is mine.How poor, how strange, how wrong,To dream He wrote the little songI made to Him with love’s unforced design!
Oh, not as clouds dim laws have plann’dTo strike down Good and fight for Ill,—Oh, not as harps that standIn the wind and sound the wind’s command:Each artist—gift of terror!—owns his will.
For thee, Cloud,—if thou spend thine allUpon the South’s o’er-brimming seaThat needs thee not; or crawlTo the dry provinces, and fallTill every convert clod shall give to thee
Green worship; if thou grow or fade,Bring on delight or misery,Fly east or west, be madeSnow, hail, rain, wind, grass, rose, light, shade;What matters it to thee? There is no thee.
Pass, kinsman Cloud, now fair and mild:Discharge the will that’s not thine own.I work in freedom wild,But work, as plays a little child,Sure of the Father, Self, and Love, alone.
Baltimore, 1878–9.