1920] on Science and Poetry 217 



Science. 



I would rejoice in iron arms with those 

 Who, nobly in the scorn of recompense, 

 Have dared to follow Truth alone, and thence 

 To teach the truth — nor fear'd the rage that rose. 

 No high-piled monuments are theirs who chose 

 Her great inglorious toil — no flaming death ; 

 To them was sweet the poetry of prose, 

 But wisdom gave a fragrance to their breath. 

 Alas ! we sleep and snore beyond the night, 

 Tho' these great men the dreamless daylight show ; 

 But they endure — the Sons of simple Light — 

 And, with no lying lanthorne's antic glow, 

 Beveal the open way that we must go. 



But if it was Science which had carried European civilization so far 

 forward, there seemed to roe still to be something, not Science, but 

 rather the opposite of Science, which had retarded Indian civiliza- 

 tion for centuries — because otherwise India should at least have kept 

 abreast of Europe. This indeed is a very great problem, which our 

 own science has scarcely yet begun to consider. We have no right to 

 assume that civilization always advances ; often it stands still, and 

 even recedes, owing to some decadence ; and it may recede in the 

 Europe of to-morrow as it did in the India of yesterday. That is a 

 terrible thought, which I put into the following verses, also written 

 nearly forty years ago : — 



India. 



Here from my lonely watch-tower of the East 



An ancient race outworn I see — 

 With dread, my own dear distant Country, lest 



The same fate fall on thee. 



Lo, here the iron winter of curst caste 



Has made men into things that creep ; 

 The leprous beggars totter trembling past ; 



The baser sultans sleep. 



Xot for a thousand years has Freedom's cry 



The stillness of this horror cleaved, 

 But as of old the hopeless millions die, 



That yet have never lived. 



Man has no leisure but to snatch and eat, 

 Who should have been a god on earth ; 



The lean ones cry ; the fat ones curse and beat, 

 And wealth but weakens worth. 



Heaven, shall man rebelling never take 



From Fate what she denies, his bliss ? 

 Cannot the mind that made the engine make 



A nobler life than this ? 



