Macaulay's New Zealander
It little profits that, an idle man,
On this worn arch, in sight of wasted halls,
I mope, a solitary pelican,
And glower and glower for ever on Saint Paul's:—
Will no soft-hearted mortal be so very
Obliging as to row me o'er the ferry?
Here three-and-thirty years* I've stood estranged,
A dream of ruin all around me stretching;
And centuries shall see me yet unchanged,
Ever in act to sketch, but nothing sketching;
Mutely immutable, constrain'dly still,
With nought to stand against, except my will.
A wondrous lot is mine; ye bide your doom
Till men say Vixit: mine begins ere birth;
A lonely ghost projected from the womb
Of Time-to-come, I linger now on earth.
Ye vertebrates date back, while I commence
My weary present in the future tense.
A weird eidolon; a born paradox;
A fixture framed of incorporeal particles;
Yet dropped in many an Editorial box,
Blown thence in squibs, or hurled in Leading Articles;
A Nomad, though my permanent address is
In Volume Second of Macaulay's Essays.
I was not born of woman (see Macduff—
Nor stare to hear my lore so far extends;
The sire who bore me trafficked in such stuff,
And had his Shakespeare at his finger-ends:
The quitch is in the blood—such blood as ghost has;
I know as much as he; at least, almost as).
I was not born of woman; gave no pain;
Through no preliminary stage did pass;
But sprang, a Pallas, from Macaulay's brain,
Though not like her, with spear and helm of brass;
My spear, a pencil of Queensland plumbago;
My casque, a felt one—latest from Otago.
And therein lies the sting of all I bear—
That after brooding ages on mine arch,
And treasuring what the centuries prepare,
And noting what ye proudly term the March
Of Progress, and assimilating all
“The long result of Time,” see “Locksley-hall;”—
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poem by James Brunton Stephens
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