Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/420

 With my coevals. So poor Colin Clout,

To whom raw onion gives prospective zest,

Consoling hours of dampest wintry work,

Could hardly fancy any regal joys

Quite unimpregnate with the onion's scent:

Perhaps his highest hopes are not all clear

Of waftings from that energetic bulb:

'T is well that onion is not heresy.

Speaking in parable, I am Colin Clout.

A clinging flavor penetrates my life —

My onion is imperfectness: I cleave

To nature's blunders, evanescent types

Which sages banish from Utopia.

"Not worship beauty?" say you. Patience, friend!

I worship in the temple with the rest;

But by my hearth I keep a sacred nook

For gnomes and dwarfs, duck-footed waddling elves

Who stitched and hammered for the weary man

In days of old. And in that piety

I clothe ungainly forms inherited

From toiling generations, daily bent

At desk, or plough, or loom, or in the mine,

In pioneering labors for the world.

Nay, I am apt when floundering confused

From too rash flight, to grasp at paradox,

And pity future men who will not know

A keen experience with pity blent,

The pathos exquisite of lovely minds

Hid in harsh forms—not penetrating them

Like fire divine within a common bush

Which glows transfigured by the heavenly guest,

So that men put their shoes off; but encaged

Like a sweet child within some thick-walled cell,

Who leaps and fails to hold the window-bars,

But having shown a little dimpled hand