Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/415

 A MINOR PROPHET.

HAVE a friend, a vegetarian seer,

By name Elias Baptist Butterworth,

A harmless, bland, disinterested man,

Whose ancestors in Cromwell's day believed

The Second Advent certain in five years,

But when King Charles the Second came instead,

Revised their date and sought another world:

I mean—not heaven but—America.

A fervid stock, whose generous hope embraced

The fortunes of mankind, not stopping short

At rise of leather, or the fall of gold,

Nor listening to the voices of the time

As housewives listen to a cackling hen,

With wonder whether she has laid her egg

On their own nest-egg. Still they did insist

Somewhat too wearisomely on the joys

Of their Millennium, when coats and hats

Would all be of one pattern, books and songs

All fit for Sundays, and the casual talk

As good as sermons preached extempore.

And in Elias the ancestral zeal

Breathes strong as ever, only modified

By Transatlantic air and modern thought.

You could not pass him in the street and fail

To note his shoulders' long declivity.

Beard to the waist, swan-neck, and large pale eyes;

Or, when he lifts his hat, to mark his hair