Duty (Clough)

Duty that’s to say, complying, With whate’er’s expected here; On your unknown cousin’s dying, Straight be ready with the tear; Upon etiquette relying, Unto usage nought denying, Lend your waist to be embraced, Blush not even, never fear; Claims of kith and kin connection, Claims of manners honour still, Ready money of affection Pay, whoever drew the bill. With the form conforming duly, Senseless what it meaneth truly, Go to church the world require you, To balls the world require you too, And marry papa and mamma desire you, And your sisters and schoolfellows do. Duty ’tis to take on trust What things are good, and right, and just; And whether indeed they be or be not, Try not, test not, feel not, see not: ’Tis walk and dance, sit down and rise By leading, opening ne’er your eyes; Stunt sturdy limbs that Nature gave, And be drawn in a Bath chair along to the grave. ’Tis the stern and prompt suppressing, As an obvious deadly sin, All the questing and the guessing Of the souls own soul within: ’Tis the coward acquiescence In a destiny’s behest, To a shade by terror made, Sacrificing, aye, the essence Of all that’s truest, noblest, best: ’Tis the blind non-recognition Or of goodness, truth, or beauty, Save by precept and submission; Moral blank, and moral void, Life at very birth destroyed. Atrophy, exinanition! Duty! Yea, by duty’s prime condition Pure nonentity of duty!