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Ode: In A Restaurant
By John Collings Squire, Sir
In this dense hall of green and gold,
Mirrors and lights and steam, there sit
Two hundred munching men;
While several score of others flit
Like scurrying beetles over a fen,
With plates in fanlike spread; or fold
Napkins, or jerk the corks from bottles,
Ministers to greedy throttles.
Some make noises while they eat,
Pick their teeth or shuffle their feet,
Wipe their noses 'neath eyes that range
Or frown whilst waiting for their change.
Gobble, gobble, toil and trouble.
Soul! this life is very strange,
And circumstances very foul
Attend the belly's stormy howl.
How horrible this noise! this air how thick!
It is disgusting ... I feel sick...
Loosely I prod the table with a fork,
My mind gapes, dizzies, ceases to work...
* * * * *
The weak unsatisfied strain
Of a band in another room;
Through this dull complex din
Comes winding thin and sharp!
The gnat-like mourning of the violin,
The faint stings of the harp.
The sounds pierce in and die again,
Like keen-drawn threads of ink dropped into a glass
Of water, which curl and relax and soften and pass.
Briefly the music hovers in unstable poise,
Then melts away, drowned in the heavy sea of noise.
And I, I am now emasculate.
All my forces dissipate;
Conquered by matter utterly,
Moving not, willing not, I lie,
Like a man whom timbers pin
When the roof of a mine falls in.
Halt! ... as a cloud condenses
I press my mind, recover
Dominion of my senses.
With newly flowing blood
I lift, and now float over
The restaurant's expanses
Like a draggled sea-gull over dreary flats of mud.
An effort ... ah ... I urge and push,
And now with greater strength I flush,
The hall is full of my pinions' rush;
No drooping now, the place is mine,
Beating the walls with shattering wings,
Over the herd my spirit swings,
In triumph shouts "Aha, you swine!
Grovel before your lord divine!
I, only I, am real here! ..."
Through the uncertain firmament,
Still bestial in their dull content.
The despicable phantoms leer...
Hogs! even now in my right hand
I hold at my will the thunderbolts
Measured not in mortal volts,
Would crash you to annihilation!
Lit with a new illumination,
What need I of ears and eyes
Of flesh? Imperious I will rise,
Dominate you as a god
Who only does not trouble to wield the rod
Of death, or kick your weak spheroid
Like a football through the void!
* * * * *
Ha! was it but a dream?
And did it merely seem?
Ha! not yet free of your cage,
Soul, spite of all your rage?
Come now, this foe engage!
With explosion of your might
Oh heave, oh leap and flash up, soul.
Like a stabbing scream in the night!
Hurl aside this useless bowl
Of a body...
But there comes a shock
A soft, tremendous shock
Of contact with the body; I lose all power,
And fall back, back, like a solitary rower
Whose prow that debonair the waves did ride
Is suddenly hurled back by an iron tide.
O sadness, sadness, feel the returning pain
Of touch with unescapable mortal things again!
The cloth is linen, the floor is wood,
My plate holds cheese, my tumbler toddy;
I cannot get free of the body,
And no man ever could.
* * * * *
Self! do not lose your hold on life,
Nor coward seek to shrink the strife
Of body and spirit; even now
(Not for the first time), even now
Clear in your ears has rung the message
That tense abstraction is the passage
To nervelessness and living death.
Never forget while you draw breath
That all the hammers of will can never
Your chainèd soul from matter sever;
And though it be confused and mixed,
This is the world in which you're fixed.
Never despise the things that are.
Set your teeth upon the grit.
Though your heart like a motor beat,
Hold fast this earthly star,
The whole of it, the whole of it.
Look on this crowd now, calm now, look.
Remember now that each one drew
Woman's milk (which you partook)
And year by year in wonder grew.
Scorn not them, nor scorn not their feasts
(Which you partake) nor call them beasts.
These be children of one Power
With you, nor higher you nor lower.
They also hear the harp and fiddle,
And sometimes quail before the riddle.
They also have hot blood, quick thought,
And try to do the things they ought,
They also have hearts that ache when stung.
And sigh for days when they were young,
And curse their wills because they falter,
And know that they will never alter.
See these men in a world of men.
Material bodies?, yes, what then?
These coarse trunks that here you see
Judge them not, lest judged you be,
Bow not to the moment's curse,
Nor make four walls a universe.
Think of these bodies here assembled,
Whence they have come, where they have trembled
With the strange force that fills us all.
Men and beasts both great and small.
Here within this fleeting home
Two hundred men have this day come;
Here collected for one day,
Each shall go his separate way.
Self, you can imagine nought
Of all the battles they have fought,
All the labours they have done,
All the journeys they have run.
O, they have come from all the world,
Borne by invisible currents, swirled
Like leaves into this vortex here
Flying, or like the spirits drear
Windborne and frail, whom Dante saw,
Who yet obeyed some hidden law.
* * * * *
Is it not miraculous
That they should here be gathered thus,
All to be spread before your view,
Who are strange to them as they to you?
Soul, how can you sustain without a sob,
The lightest thought of this titanic throb
Of earthly life, that swells and breaks
Into leaping scattering waves of fire,
Into tameless tempests of effort and storms of desire
That eternally makes
The confused glittering armies of humankind,
To their own heroism blind,
Swarm over the earth to build, to dig, and to till,
To mould and compel land and sea to their will...
Whence we are here eating...
Standing here as on a high hill,
Strain, my imagination, strain forth to embrace
The energies that labour for this place,
This place, this instant. Beyond your island's verge,
Listen, and hear the roaring impulsive surge,
The clamour of voices, the blasting of powder, the clanging of steel,
The thunder of hammers, the rattle of oars...
For this one meal
Ten thousand Indian hamlets stored their yields,
Manchurian peasants sweltered in their fields,
And Greeks drove carts to Patras, and lone men
Saw burning summer come and go again
And huddled from the winds of winter on
The fertile deserts of Saskatchewan.
To fabricate these things have been marchings and slaughters,
The sun has toiled and the moon has moved the waters,
Cities have laboured, and crowded plains, and deep in the earth
Men have plunged unafraid with ardour to wrench the worth
Of sweating dim-lit caverns, and paths have been hewn
Through forests where for uncounted years nor sun nor moon
Have penetrated, men have driven straight shining rails
Through the dense bowels of mountains, and climbed their frozen tops, and wrinkled sailors have shouted at shouting gales
In the huge Pacific, and battled around the Horn
And gasping, coasted to Rio, and turning towards the morn,
Fought over the wastes to Spain, and battered and worn,
Sailed up the Channel, and on into the Nore
To the city of masts and the smoky familiar shore.
So, so of every substance you see around
Might a tale be unwound
Of perils passed, of adventurous journeys made
In man's undying and stupendous crusade.
This flower of man's energies Trade
Brought hither to hand and lip
By waggon, train or ship,
Each atom that we eat....
Stare at the wine, stare at the meat.
The mutton which these platters fills
Grazed upon a thousand hills;
This bread so square and white and dry
Once was corn that sang to the sky;
And all these spruce, obedient wines
Flowed from the vatted fruit of vines
That trailed, a bright maternal host,
The warm Mediterranean coast,
Or spread their Bacchic mantle on
That Iberian Helicon
Where the slopes of Portugal
Crown the Atlantic's eastern wall.
O mighty energy, never-failing flame!
O patient toils and journeys in the name
Of Trade! No journey ever was the same
As another, nor ever came again one task;
And each man's face is an ever-changing mask.
From the minutest cell to the lordliest star
All things are unique, though all of their kindred are.
And though all things exist for ever, all life is change,
And the oldest passions come to each heart in a garment strange.
Though life be as brief as a flower and the body but dust,
Man walks the earth holding both body and spirit in trust;
And the various glories of sense are spread for his delight,
New pageants glow in the sunset, new stars are born in the night,
And clouds come every day, and never a shape recurs,
And the grass grows every year, yet never the same blade stirs
Another spring, and no delving man breaks again the self-same clod
As he did last year though he stand once more where last year he trod.
O wonderful procession fore-ordained by God!
Wonderful in unity, wonderful in diversity.
Contemplate it, soul, and see
How the material universe moves and strives with anguish and glee!
* * * * *
I was born for that reason,
With muscles, heart and eyes,
To watch each following season,
To work and to be wise;
Not body and mind to tether
To unseen things alone,
But to traverse together
The known and the unknown.
My muscles were not welded
To waste away in sleep,
My bones were never builded
To throw upon a heap.
"Man worships God in action,"
Senses and reason call,
"And thought is putrefaction,
If thought is all in all!"
Most of the guests are gone; look over there,
Against a pillar leans with absent air
A tall, dark, pallid waiter. There he stands
Limply, with vacant eyes and listless hands.
He dreams of some small Tyrolean town,
A church, a bridge, a stream that rushes down.
A frustrate, hankering man, this one short time
Unconscious he into my gaze did climb;
He sinks again, again he is but one
Of many myriads underneath the sun,
Now faint, now vivid.... How puzzling is it all!
For now again, in spite of all,
The lights, the chairs, the diners, and the hall
Lose their opacity.
Fool! exert your will,
Finish your whisky up, and pay your bill.
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