Ferishtah's Fancies/A Bean-Stripe: also Apple-Eating
12. A BEAN-STRIPE: ALSO APPLE-EATING.
"Look, I strew beans" . . .(Ferishtah, we premise,Strove this way with a scholar's cavilmentWho put the peevish question: "Sir, be frank!A good thing or a bad thing—Life is which?Shine and shade, happiness and miseryBattle it out there: which force beats, I ask?If I pick beans from out a bushelful—This one, this other,―then demand of theeWhat colour names each justly in the main,— 'Black' I expect, and 'White' ensues reply:No hesitation for what speck, spot, splashOf either colour's opposite, intrudesTo modify thy judgment. Well, for beans.Substitute days,—show, ranged in order, Life—Then, tell me its true colour! Time is short,Life's days compose a span,—as brief be speech!Black I pronounce for, like the Indian Sage,—Black—present, past and future, interspersedWith blanks, no doubt, which simple folk style GoodBecause not Evil: no, indeed? Forsooth,Black's shade on White is White too! What's the worstOf Evil but that, past, it overshadesThe else-exempted present?—memory, We call the plague! 'Nay, but our memory fadesAnd leaves the past unsullied!' Does it so?Why, straight the purpose of such breathing-space,Such respite from past ill, grows plain enough!What follows on remembrance of the past?Fear of the future! Life, from birth to death,Means—either looking back on harm escaped,Or looking forward to that harm's returnWith tenfold power of harming. Black, not White,Never the whole consummate quietudeLife should be, troubled by no fear!—nor hope—I'll say, since lamplight dies in noontide, hopeLoses itself in certainty. Such lotMan's might have been: I leave the consequenceTo bolder critics of the Primal Cause; Such am not I: but, man—as man I speak:Black is the bean-throw: evil is the Life!"
"Look, I strew beans"—resumed Ferishtah—"beansBlackish and whitish; what they figure forthShall be man's sum of moments, bad and good,That make up Life,—each moment when he feelsPleasure or pain, his poorest fact of sense,Consciousness anyhow: there's stand the first;Whence next advance shall be from points to line,Singulars to a series, parts to whole,And moments to the Life. How look they now,Viewed in the large, those little joys and griefsRanged duly all a-row at last, like beans —These which I strew? This bean was white, this—black,Set by itself,—but see if, good and badEach following either in companionship,Black have not grown less black and white less white,Till blackish seems but dun, and whitish—grey,And the whole line turns—well, or black to theeOr white belike to me—no matter which:The main result is—both are modifiedAccording to our eye's scope, power of rangeBefore and after. Black dost call this bean?What, with a whiteness in its wake, which—see—Suffuses half its neighbour?—and, in turn,Lowers its pearliness late absolute,Frowned upon by the jet which follows hard— Else wholly white my bean were. Choose a joy!Bettered it was by sorrow gone before,And sobered somewhat by the shadowy senseOf sorrow which came after or might come.Joy, sorrow,—by precedence, subsequence—Either on each, make fusion, mix in LifeThat's both and neither wholly: grey or dun?Dun thou decidest? grey prevails, say I:Wherefore? Because my view is wide enough,Reaches from first to last nor winks at all:Motion achieves it: stop short—fast we stick,—Probably at the bean that's blackest.Since—Son, trust me,—this I know and only this—I am in motion, and all things beside That circle round my passage through their midst,—Motionless, these are, as regarding me:—Which means, myself I solely recognize.They too may recognize themselves, not me,For aught I know or care: but plain they serveThis, if no other purpose—stuff to tryAnd test my power upon of raying lightAnd lending hue to all things as I goMoonlike through vapour. Mark the flying orb!Think'st thou the halo, painted still afreshAt each new cloud-fleece pierced and passaged through,This was and is and will be evermoreColoured in permanence? The glory swimsGirdling the glory-giver, swallowed straightBy night's abysmal gloom, unglorified Behind as erst before the advancer: gloom?Faced by the onward-faring, see, succeedsFrom the abandoned heaven a next surprise,And where's the gloom now?—silver-smitten straight,One glow and variegation! So with me,Who move and make,—myself,—the black, the white,The good, the bad, of life's environment.Stand still! black stays black: start again! there's whiteAsserts supremacy: the motion's allThat colours me my moment: seen as joy?—I have escaped from sorrow, or that wasOr might have been as sorrow?—thence shall beEscape as certain white preceded black,Black shall give way to white as duly,—so,Deepest in black means white most imminent. Stand still,—have no before, no after!—lifeProves death, existence grows impossibleTo man like me. 'What else is blessed sleepBut death, then?' Why, a rapture of releaseFrom toil,—that 's sleep's approach: as certainly,The end of sleep means, toil is triumphed o'er:These round the blank inconsciousness betweenBrightness and brightness, either pushed to blazeJust through that blank's interposition. HenceThe use of things external: man—that 's I—Practise there on my power of casting light,And calling substance,—when the light I castBreaks into colour,—by its proper name—A truth and yet a falsity: black, white,Names each bean taken from what lay so close And threw such tint pain might mean pain indeedSeen in the passage past it,—pleasure proveNo mere delusion while I paused to look,—Though what an idle fancy was that fearWhich overhung and hindered pleasure's hue!While how, again, pain's shade enhanced the shineOf pleasure, else no pleasure! Such effectsCame of such causes. Passage at an end,—Past, present, future pains and pleasures fusedSo that one glance may gather blacks and whitesInto a life-time,—like my bean-streak there,Why, white they whirl into, not black—for me!"
"Ay, but for me? The indubitable blacks,Immeasurable miseries, here, there And everywhere i' the world—world outside thinePaled off so opportunely,—body's plague,Torment of soul,-where 's found thy fellowshipWith wide humanity all round aboutReeling beneath its burden? What's despair?Behold that man, that woman, child—nay, brute!Will any speck of white unblacken lifeSplashed, splotched, dyed hell-deep now from end to endFor him or her or it—who knows? Not I!"
'Nor I, Son! 'It' shall stand for bird, beast, fish,Reptile, and insect even: take the last!There's the palm-aphis, minute miracleAs wondrous every whit as thou or I:Well, and his world's the palm-frond, there he's born, Lives, breeds and dies in that circumference,An inch of green for cradle, pasture-ground,Purlieu and grave: the palm's use, ask of him!'To furnish these,' replies his wit: ask thine—Who see the heaven above, the earth below,Creation everywhere,—these, each and allClaim certain recognition from the treeFor special service rendered branch and bole,Top-tuft and tap-root:—for thyself, thus seen,Palms furnish dates to eat, and leaves to shade,—Maybe, thatch huts with,—have another useThan strikes the aphis. So with me, my Son!know my own appointed patch i' the world,What pleasures me or pains there all outside—How he, she, it, and even thou, Son, live, (Are pleased or pained, is past conjecture, onceI pry beneath the semblance,—all that's fit,To practise with,-reach where the fact may lieFathom-deep lower. There's the first and lastOf my philosophy. Blacks blur thy white?Not mine! The aphis feeds, nor finds his leafUntenable, because a lance-thrust, nay,Lightning strikes sere a moss-patch close beside,Where certain other aphids live and love.Restriction to his single inch of white,That's law for him, the aphis: but for me,The man, the larger-souled, beside my stretchOf blacks and whites, I see a world of woeAll round about me: one such burst of blackIntolerable o'er the life I count White in the main, and, yea—white's faintest traceWere clean abolished once and evermore.Thus fare my fellows, swallowed up in gloomSo far as I discern: how far is that?God's care be God's! ’Tis mine—to boast no joyUnsobered by such sorrows of my kindAs sully with their shade my life that shines."
"Reflected possibilities of pain,Forsooth, just chasten pleasure! Pain itself,—Fact and not fancy, does not this affectThe general colour?"
"Here and there a touchTaught me, betimes, the artifice of things— That all about, external to myself,Was meant to be suspected,―not revealedDemonstrably a cheat,—but half seen throughLest white should rule unchecked along the line:Therefore white may not triumph. All the same,Of absolute and irretrievableAnd all-subduing black,—black's soul of blackBeyond white's power to disintensify,―Of that I saw no sample: such may wreckMy life and ruin my philosophyTo-morrow, doubtless: hence the constant shadeCast on life's shine,—the tremor that intrudesWhen firmest seems my faith in white. Dost ask'Who is Ferishtah, hitherto exemptFrom black experience? Why, if God be just, Were sundry fellow-mortals singled outTo undergo experience for his sake,Just that the gift of pain, bestowed on them,In him might temper to the due degreeJoy's else-excessive largess?' Why, indeed!Back are we brought thus to the starting-point—Man's impotency, God's omnipotence,These stop my answer. Aphis that I am,How leave my inch-allotment, pass at willInto my fellow's liberty of range,Enter into his sense of black and white,As either, seen by me from outside, seemsPredominatingly the colour? Life,Lived by my fellow, shall I pass intoAnd myself live there? No—no more than pass From Persia, where in sun since birth I baskDaily, to some ungracious land afar,Told of by travellers, where the might of snowSmothers up day, and fluids lose themselvesFrozen to marble. How I bear the sun,Beat though he may unduly, that I know:How blood once curdled ever creeps again,Baffles conjecture: yet since people liveSomehow, resist a clime would conquer me,Somehow provided for their sake must seemCompensative resource. 'No sun, no grapes,—Then, no subsistence!'—were it wisely said?Or this well-reasoned—'Do I dare feel warmthAnd please my palate here with Persia's vine,Though, over-mounts,—to trust the traveller,― Snow, feather-thick, is falling while I feast?What if the cruel winter force his wayHere also?' Son, the wise reply were this:When cold from over-mounts spikes through and throughBlood, bone and marrow of Ferishtah,―then,Time to look out for shelter—time, at least,To wring the hands and cry 'no shelter serves!'Shelter, of some sort, no experienced chillWarrants that I despair to find."
"No less,Doctors have differed here; thou say'st thy say;Another man's experience masters thine,Flat controverted by the sourly-Sage, The Indian witness who, with facultyFine as Ferishtah's, found no white at allChequer the world's predominating black,No good oust evil from supremacy,So that Life's best was that it led to death.How of his testimony?"
"Son, supposeMy camel told me: 'Threescore days and tenI traversed hill and dale yet never foundFood to stop hunger, drink to stay my drouth;Yet, here I stand alive, which take in proofThat to survive was found impossible!''Nay, rather take thou, non-surviving beast,'(Reply were prompt) 'on flank this thwack of staff Nowise affecting flesh that's dead and dry!Thou wincest? Take correction twice, amendNext time thy nomenclature! Call white—white!'The sourly-Sage for whom life's best was deathLived out his seventy years, looked hale, laughed loud,Liked—above all—his dinner,—lied, in short."
"Lied is a rough phrase: say he fell from truthIn climbing towards it!—sure less faulty soThan had he sat him down and stayed contentWith thy safe orthodoxy 'White, all white,White everywhere be certain I should seeDid I but understand how white is black,As clearer sense than mine would.' Clearer sense,—Whose may that be? Mere human eyes I boast, And such distinguish colours in the main,However any tongue, that 's human too,Please to report the matter. Dost thou blameA soul that strives but to see plain, speak true,Truth at all hazards? Oh, this false for real,This emptiness which feigns solidity,—Ever some grey that's white and dun that 's black,—When shall we rest upon the thing itselfNot on its semblance?—Soul—too weak, forsooth,To cope with fact—wants fiction everywhere!Mine tires of falsehood: truth at any cost!"
"Take one and try conclusions—this, suppose!God is all-good, all-wise, all-powerful: truth?Take it and rest there. What is man? Not God: None of these absolutes therefore,―yet himself,A creature with a creature's qualities.Make them agree, these two conceptions! EachAbolishes the other. Is man weak,Foolish and bad? He must be Ahriman,Co-equal with an Ormuzd, Bad with Good,Or else a thing made at the Prime Sole Will,Doing a maker's pleasure—with resultsWhich—call, the wide world over, 'what must be'—But, from man's point of view, and only pointPossible to his powers, call—evidenceOf goodness, wisdom, strength—we mock ourselvesIn all that 's best of us,—man's blind but sureCraving for these in very deed not word,Reality and not illusion. Well,― Since these nowhere exist—nor there where causeMust have effect, nor here where craving meansCraving unfollowed by fit consequenceAnd full supply, aye sought for, never found—These what are they but man's own rule of right?A scheme of goodness recognized by man,Although by man unrealizable,—Not God's with whom to will were to perform :Nowise performed here, therefore never willed.What follows but that God, who could the best,Has willed the worst,—while man, with power to matchWill with performance, were deservedlyHailed the supreme—provided . . . here's the touchThat breaks the bubble . . . this concept of man'sWere man's own work, his birth of heart and brain, His native grace, no alien gift at all.The bubble breaks here. Will of man create?No more than this my hand which strewed the beansProduced them also from its finger-tips.Back goes creation to its source, source primeAnd ultimate, the single and the sole.How reconcile discordancy,—uniteNotion and notion—God that only canYet does not,—man that would indeedBut just as surely cannot,—both in one?What help occurs to our intelligence?
Ah, the beans,—or,—example better yet,—A carpet-web I saw once leave the loomAnd lie at gorgeous length in Ispahan: The weaver plied his work with lengths of silkDyed each to match some jewel as it might,And wove them, this by that. 'How comes it, friend,'—(Quoth I)—'that while, apart, this fiery hue,That watery dimness, either shocks the eye,So blinding bright, or else offends again,By dulness,—yet the two, set each by each,Somehow produce a colour born of both,A medium profitable to the sight?''Such medium is the end whereat I aim,'—Answered my craftsman: 'there's no single tinctWould satisfy the eye's desire to tasteThe secret of the diamond join extremes,Results a serviceable medium-ghost,The diamond's simulation. Even so, I needs must blend the quality of manWith quality of God, and so assistMere human sight to understand my Life,What is, what should be,—understand therebyWherefore I hate the first and love the last,—Understand why things so present themselvesTo me, placed here to prove I understand.Thus, from beginning runs the chain to end,And binds me plain enough. By consequence,I bade thee tolerate,—not kick and cuffThe man who held that natures did in factBlend so, since so thyself must have them blendIn fancy, if it take a flight so far."
"A power, confessed past knowledge, nay, past thought,―Thus thought and known!"
"To know of, think about—Is all man's sum of faculty effectsWhen exercised on earth's least atom, Son!What was, what is, what may such atom be?No answer! Still, what seems it to man's sense?An atom with some certain propertiesKnown about, thought of as occasion needs,—Man's—but occasions of the universe?Unthinkable, unknowable to man.Yet, since to think and know fire through and throughExceeds man, is the warmth of fire unknown,Its uses—are they so unthinkable?Pass from such obvious power to powers unseen,Undreamed of save in their sure consequence: Take that, we spoke of late, which draws to groundThe staff my hand lets fall: it draws, at least―Thus much man thinks and knows, if nothing more."
"Ay, but man puts no mind into such power!He neither thanks it, when an apple drops,Nor prays it spare his pate while underneath.Does he thank Summer though it plumped the rind?Why thank the other force—whate'er its name—Which gave him teeth to bite and tongue to tasteAnd throat to let the pulp pass? Force and force,No end of forces! Have they mind like man?"
"Suppose thou visit our lord Shalim-Shah,Bringing thy tribute as appointed. 'Here Come I to pay my due!' Whereat one slaveObsequious spreads a carpet for thy foot,His fellow offers sweetmeats, while a thirdPrepares a pipe: what thanks or praise have they?Such as befit prompt service. GratitudeGoes past them to the Shah whose gracious nodSet all the sweet civility at work;But for his ordinance, I much suspect,My scholar had been left to cool his heelsUncarpeted, or warm them—likelier still—With bastinado for intrusion. SlavesNeeds must obey their master: 'force and force,No end of forces,' act as bids some forceSupreme o'er all and each: where find that one?How recognize him? Simply as thou didst The Shah—by reasoning 'Since I feel a debt,Behoves me pay the same to one awareI have my duty, he his privilege.'Didst thou expect the slave who charged thy pipeWould serve as well to take thy tribute-bagAnd save thee farther trouble?"
"Be it so!The sense within me that I owe a debtAssures me—somewhere must be somebodyReady to take his due. All comes to this—Where due is, there acceptance follows: findHim who accepts the due! and why look far?Behold thy kindred compass thee about!Ere thou wast born and after thou shalt die, Heroic man stands forth as Shalim-Shah.Rustem and Gew, Gudarz and all the rest,How come they short of lordship that's to seek?Dead worthies! but men live undoubtedlyGifted as Sindokht, sage Sulayman's match,Valiant like Kawah: ay, and while earth lastsSuch heroes shall abound there—all for theeWho profitest by all the present, past,And future operation of thy race.Why, then, o'erburdened with a debt of thanks,Look wistful for some hand from out the cloudsTo take it, when, all round, a multitudeWould ease thee in a trice?"
"Such tendered thanksWould tumble back to who craved riddance, Son! —Who but my sorry self? See! stars are out—Stars which, unconscious of thy gaze beneath,Go glorying, and glorify thee too—Those Seven Thrones, Zurah's beauty, weird Parwin!Whether shall love and praise to stars be paidOr—say—some Mubid who, for good to theeBlind at thy birth, by magic all his ownOpened thine eyes, and gave the sightless sight,Let the stars' glory enter? Say his charmWorked while thou layedst sleeping: as he wen:Thou wakedst: 'What a novel sense have I!Whom shall I love and praise?' 'The stars, each orbThou standest rapt beneath,' proposes one:'Do not they live their life, and please themselves,And so please thee? What more is requisite?' Make thou this answer: 'If indeed no mageOpened my eyes and worked a miracle,Then let the stars thank me who apprehendThat such an one is white, such other blue!But for my apprehension both were blank.Cannot I close my eyes and bid my brainMake whites and blues, conceive without stars' help,New qualities of colour? were my sightLost or misleading, would yon red—I judgeA ruby's benefaction—stand for aughtBut green from vulgar glass? Myself appraiseLustre and lustre; should I overlookFomalhaut and declare some fen-fire king,Who shall correct me, lend me eyes he trustsNo more than I trust mine? My mage for me! I never saw him: if he never was,I am the arbitrator!' No, my Son!Let us sink down to thy similitude:I eat my apple, relish what is ripe—The sunny side, admire its raritySince half the tribe is wrinkled, and the restHide commonly a maggot in the core,—And down Zerdusht goes with due smack of lips:But—thank an apple? He who made my mouthTo masticate, my palate to approve,My maw to further the concoction—Himthank,—but for whose work, the orchard's wealthMight prove so many gall-nuts—stocks or stonesFor aught that I should think, or know, or care."
"Why from the world" Ferishtah smiled "should thanksGo to this work of mine? If worthy praise,Praised let it be and welcome: as verse ranks,So rate my verse: if good therein outweighsAught faulty judged, judge justly! Justice says:Be just to fact, or blaming or approving:But—generous? No, nor loving!
"Loving! what claim to love has work of mine?Concede my life were emptied of its gainsTo furnish forth and fill work's strict confine,Who works so for the world's sake—he complainsWith cause when hate, not love, rewards his pains.I looked beyond the world for truth and beauty:Sought, found and did my duty."