ONCE among other tenants at will upon earth,
Dwelt a Mind of high rank, very proud of his birth,
With a Body, who, though a good Body enough,
When his feelings were hurt, was inclined to be rough;
Now that Mind and that Body, for many a day,
Lived as what we call friends in a cold sort of way;
For the very best friends, though the sons of one mother,
Cool in friendship by seeing too much of each other.
At length, just as time should have softened their tether,
And they had not much longer to rub on together,
Many trifles occurred that they differed about,
And engendered the rancour which thus they spoke out :-
Quoth the Mind to the Body, "Attend to me, sir r;
At whate'er I propose, must you always demur?
Rouse up, and look lively-we want something new-
Just the weather for travel, let's start for Peru.
Ha! there you sit, languidly, sipping your sago!"
I'm forced to remind you I've got the lumbago.
O ye gods, what a wrench! softly, softly! lie still-
I abandon Peru; take your anodyne pill.
Somewhat eased by the pill and a warm fomentation,
The Body vouchsafed to the Mind-meditation.
Now, the calmness with which sound philosophers scan ills,
Depends, at such times, very much on hot flannels.
Mused the Mind:-"How can Matter stretch Me on the rack?
Why should Mind feel lumbago has Mind got a back?
I could write something new on that subject, I think,—
Would it hurt you, my Body, to give me the ink?"
At your old tricks again! Let me rest in my bed.
Metaphysics indeed! pleasant nuts for my head..
Ah, beware of yourself! If its rage you provoke,
That head could demolish the Mind with a stroke.
Grim thought to have scared Mr Addison's Cato,
When he sat in his dressing-gown reading his Plato!
Does Man nurse in his head an electric torpedo,
Whose stroke could have hurled into rubbish the 'Phædo'? Vile Body! thou tyrant! thou worse than a Turk!
If I must be thy slave-then, at least, let me work,
For in labour we lose the dull sense of our chain;
But I cannot even think without leave of thy brain.
Well, well! since it must be, I tamely submit.
How Now do you feel? less inclined for a fit?
That is well! come, cheer up! though you are a vile Body,
Let me cherish and comfort you!-Ring for the toddy.
Then the Body, though not without aid of the Mind,
Raised himself on his elbow, and gravely rejoined :-
O my Mind! it is well said by Sappho—at least
So she says in Grillparzer *-that you are a beast,
And the worst of all beasts; other sins she compares
To hyenas and wolves, lions, tigers, and bears;
But the snake is Ingratitude!-you are ungrateful,
And are thus of all beasts of the field the most hateful.
Rememberest thou, wretch, with no pang of remorse,
How I served thy least whim in the days of my force?
When thy thoughts through my ear, touch and taste, scent and
sight,
Wandered forth for the food which they found in delight;
When my youth crowned thee king of Hope's boundless domains,
And thy love warmed to life from the glow of my veins.
And what my return? overtasked, overborne,
And alike by thy pains and thy pleasures outworn,
Thou hast made me one ache from the sole to the crown;
Thank thyself, cruel rider, thy steed founders down!
Now, ere the Mind's answer I duly report,
It becomes me to say that in camp and in court,
In senate and college, this Body and Mind,
Clubbed up in one whole, by one title defined,
Were called "A Great Man."
With excusable pride, The Mind, looking down on the Body, replied
View thy pains as the taxes exacted by glory,
What's this passage through life to a passage in story?
I have made thee one ache from the head to the crown,
Be it so!
And the recompense? Priceless; Renown.
Hang renown! Horrid thing more malign to a Body,
Than that other strong poison you offered me-toddy.
By renown in my teens I was snatched from my cricket,
To be sent to the wars, where I served as a wicket.
And there your first step in renown crippled me,
By the ball you invited to fracture my knee.
Well, I cannot expect you to sympathise much
With the Mind's noble longings--
But battles and bullets don't come every day-
You owe me some pleasant things more in your way;
For the joys of the sense are by culture refined,
And the Body's a guest in the feasts of the Mind.
Recall'st thou the banquets vouchsafed thee to share,
When the wine was indeed the Unbinder of Care;
In which Genius and Wisdom, invited by Mirth,
Laid aside their grand titles as rulers of earth;
And, contented awhile our familiars to sit,
Genius came but as Humour, and Wisdom as Wit?
Recall'st thou those nights?
Yes, the nights might be pleasant, but then-their Next Day;
And, as Humour and Wit should have long since found out,
The Unbinder of Care is the Giver of Gout.
Yet you've injured me less with good wine and good cooks,
Than with those horrid banquets you made upon books.
Every hint my poor nerves could convey to you scorning,
Interdicted from sleep till past three in the morning,
While you were devouring the trash of a college,
And my blood was made thin with crude apples of knowledge.
To dry morsels of Kant, undigested, I trace
Through the maze of my ganglions the tic in my face:
And however renowned your new theory on Light is,
Its effect upon me was my chronic gastritis.
Talk of Nature's wise laws, learn from nature's lawgiver,
That the first law to man is-"Take care of your liver!"
But I have not yet done with your boasted renown,
"Tis the nuisance all Bodies of sense should put down.
Where a Mind is renowned, there a Body's dyspeptic-
Even in youth Julius Cæsar made his epileptic.
The carbuncular red of renowned Cromwell's nose
Explains his bad nights: what a stomach it shows!
Who more famed than they two? Perhaps great Alexander:
But would I be his body? I'm not such a gander.
When I think on the numberless pains and distresses
His small body endured from his great mind's excesses,
All its short life exposed to heat, cold, wounds, and slaughter,
Its march into Ind-not a drop of good water;
Its enlargement of spleen-shown by rages at table,
Till it fell, easy prey, to malaria at Babel ;-
Could his mind come to earth, its old pranks to repeat
Once more, as that plague, Alexander the Great,
And in want of a body propose to take me,
My strength re-bestowed and my option left free,
I should say, as a body of blood, flesh, and bones,
Before I'd be his, I'd be that of John Jones.
Enough! to a mortal no curse like renown!
Here, shifting his flannels, he groaned and sank down.
Now, on hearing the Body complain in this fashion,
The Mind became seized with fraternal compassion;
And although at that moment he felt very keenly
The sting of his pride to be rated so meanly,
So much had been said which he felt to be true
In a common-sense, bodily, plain point of view,
That it seemed not beneath him to meet the complaint
By confessing his sins-in the tone of a saint.
Yes, I cannot deny that I merit your blame-
I have sinned against you in my ardour for fame;
Yet even such sins you would see, my poor Body,
In a much milder light had you taken that toddy.
But are all of my acts to be traced to one cause?
Have I strained your quick nerves for no end but applause?
Do not all sages say that the Mind cannot hurt you
If it follow the impulse unerring of virtue?
And how oft, when most lazy, I've urged you to step on,
And attain the pure air of the moral TO PREPON!
Let such thoughts send your blood with more warmth through its channels,
Wrap yourself in my virtues, and spurn those moist flannels!
Ho! your virtues! I thank you for nothing, my Mentor,
I'd as soon wrap my back in the shirt of the Centaur.
What the Mind calls a virtue too oft is a sin,
To be shunned by a Body that values his skin.
Pray, which of your virtues most tickles your vanity?
The parent and queen of all virtues-Humanity.
And of all human virtues I've proved it to be
The vice most inhumanly cruel to me.
Scarcely three weeks ago, when, seduced by fine talk
Of your care for my health, I indulged in a walk,
On a sudden you stop me-a house is in flames;
It was nothing to me had it burned up the Thames,
But you hear a shrill cry-" Save the child in the attic!
You forget, thanks to you, that I've long been rheumatic,
And to rescue that brat, who was no child of mine,
Up the Alp of a ladder you hurry my spine.
Thus, as Cassio was stabbed from behind by Iago,
Vile assassin, you plunged in my back-this lumbago.
That was, I believe, your last impulse of virtue!
In improving myself must I ever then hurt you?
Must your wheels for their clockwork be rendered unfit,
If made slower by wisdom or quicker by wit?
Is the test of all valour the risk of your bones,
And the height of philosophy scorn for your groans?
Must the Mind in its strife give the Body no quarter,
And where one would be saint must the other be martyr?
Alas, it is true! and that truth proves, O brother!
That we two were not meant to live long with each other.
But forgive me the past; what both now want is quiet :
Henceforth, I'll concentre my thoughts on your diet;
And, at least, till the term of companionship ends,
Let us patch up our quarrels and try to be friends.
Then the Body let fall the two words in men's fate
And men's language, the fullest of sorrow-" Too late!"
He paused and shed tears-then resumed: "I can see
Nothing left for myself but revenge upon thee."
He spake-gout, lumbago, and tic re-began,
Till both Body and Mind fell asleep-A Great Man!
Thus the feud once declared, was renewed unrelenting.
Still the Mind proudly braved the avenger's tormenting;
And whene'er he could coax from his jailer, the gout,
The loan of two feet to walk statelily out,
The crowd's reverent gaze on his limp and his crutch,
And the murmur, "There goes the Great Man," soothed him much. "Ache, O body!" he said, "from the head to the crown;
Ever young with the young blooms the life of renown."
How long this stern struggle continued, who knows?
"Tis the record of Mind that biography shows;
Even German professors still leave in dark question
The most critical dates in a Cæsar's digestion.
At length a door oped in the valves of the heart,
Through which the Mind looked and resolved to depart.
Bending over the Body, he whispered "Good-night!"
And then, kissing the lids, stole away with the light.
So at morning the Body lay cold in his bed,
And the news went through London, "The Great Man is dead!" Now the Mind-like a young bird, whose wings newly given, Though they lift it from earth, soar not yet into heaven
Still hovering around the old places he knew,
Kept this world, like the wrack of a dream, in his view.
But strange to relate that which most had consoled,
Or rejoiced him to think would remain in his hold
As a part of himself, the Immortal,- -renown-
Seemed extinct as the spark when a rocket drops down,
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