PHILOSOPHIES

BY RONALD ROSS

K.C.B., F.R.C.S., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S., C.B.

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

1923

All Rights Reserved

Printed in Great Britain by

Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

PREFACE

These verses were written in India between the years 1881 and 1899, mostly during my researches on malaria. Friends who have read that part of them which is called In Exile complained that they could not easily follow the movement of it; and as I am now publishing the poems together with a text-book on malaria—and also because I desire very strongly to rid my mind of this subject which has occupied it for twenty years—I take the opportunity to give such explanation of the work as I can find expression for.

In 1881 I joined the military medical service of India, and was called upon to serve during the next seven years in Madras, Bangalore, Burma, and the Andaman Islands. Having abundant leisure, I occupied most of it in the study of various sciences and arts, in all of which I attempted some works to the best of my ability. For this I make no excuse to my conscience, since to my mind art and science are the same, and efforts in both, however poor the result may be, are to be commended more than idleness. Near the end of the seven years, however, I began to be drawn toward certain thoughts which from the first had occurred to me in my profession, especially as to the cause of the widespread sickness and of the great misery and decadence of the people of India. Racked by poverty, swept by epidemics, housed in hovels, ruled by superstitions, they presented the spectacle of an ancient civilisation fallen for centuries into decay. One saw there both physical and mental degeneration. Since the time of the early mathematicians science had died; and since that of the great temples art had become ornament, and religion dogma. Here was the living picture of the fate which destroyed Greece, Rome, and Spain; and I saw in it the work of nescience—the opposite of science. . . . Returning to Britain in 1888, I qualified myself for pathological researches, and about 1890 or 1891 entered upon a careful study of malarial fever, in the hope of finding out accurately how it is caused and may be prevented. On August 20, 1897, I was fortunate enough to find the clue to the problem—which, I believe, would not have been discovered but for such good fortune; and the next year I ascertained the principal facts which I had been in search of.

These poems are the notes of the wayside. As for In Exile, I do not remember the date—but it was early in the course of the labour—when my thoughts began to shape themselves into a kind of sonnet of three short stanzas. It was a pleasure and relief after the day’s work to mould them thus, for each set of stanzas required a different balance and structure within its narrow limits, and was, so to speak, inscribed on small squares of stone, to be put away and arranged thereafter. Later, when my researches had attained to success, a sudden disastrous interruption of them compelled me to set aside the verses also, and it was not until nine years afterwards that I found time to arrange them for rough printing. They were then put nearly in the order of writing, some fragments being finished but most omitted. I have blamed myself for this, because the omissions give to the whole a more sombre cast than is natural to me, or than I had intended; but now I judge I was right in it. The poem, such as it is, is not a diary in verse, but rather the figure of a work and of a philosophy. . . . I find I cannot rise with those who would soar above reason in the chase of something supernal. Infinities and absolutes are still beyond us; though we may hope to come nearer to them some day by the patient study of little things. Our first duty is the opposite of that which many prophets enjoin upon us—or so I think. We must not accept any speculations merely because they now appear pleasant, flattering, or ennobling to us. We must be content to creep upwards step by step; planting each foot on the firmest finding of the moment; using the compass and such other instruments as we have; observing without either despair or contempt the clouds and precipices above and beneath us. Especially our duty at present is to better our present foothold; to investigate; to comprehend the forces of nature; to set our state rationally in order; to stamp down disease in body, mind, and government; to lighten the monstrous misery of our fellows, not by windy dogmas, but by calm science. The sufferings of the world are due to this, that we despise those plain earthly teachers, reason, work, and discipline. Lost in many speculations, we leave our house disordered, unkept, and dirty. We indulge too much in dreams; in politics which organise not prosperity but contention; in philosophies which expressly teach irrationalism, fakirism, and nescience. The poor fakir seated begging by the roadside; with his visions—and his sores! Such is man. . . . An old philosophy this—like the opposite one. The poem gathers itself under it and attempts to use the great symbols of that wonderful Land, the drought, the doubt, the pains of self, the arid labour, the horrors of whole nations diseased, the crime of Nescience, parodying God’s words, and the victory of His thunder and rain.

The dated stanzas near the end, except the first two lines of the second quatrain, were written the day after the discovery of the parasites of malaria in mosquitos. There are some repetitions, and I fear worse faults; but it is too late to mend them. I am much indebted to Mr. John Masefield and Mrs. Masefield for assisting me in the correction of the proofs.

THE AUTHOR.

December 2, 1909.

CONTENTS

PRELUDES

APOLOGUES

LABOURS

IN EXILE

PÆANS

[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.

PRELUDES

India

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.

Not 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.

O 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?

Madras, 1881.

Thought

Thought

Spirit of Thought, not thine the songs that flow

To fill with love or lull Idalian hours.

Thou wert not nurtured ’mid the marish flowers,

Or where the nightshade blooms, or lilies blow:

But on the mountains. From those keeps of snow

Thou seëst the heavens, and earth, and marts and towers

Of teeming man; the battle smoke that lours

Above the nations where they strive below;⁠—

The gleam of golden cohorts and the cloud

Of shrieking peoples yielding to the brink⁠—

The gleam, the gold, the agony, the rage;

The civic virtue of a race unbow’d;

The reeling empire, lost in license, sink;

And chattering pigmies of a later age.

1881-2.

Science

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,

Reveal the open way that we must go.

1881-2.

Power

Power

Caligula, pacing thro’ his pillar’d hall,

Ere yet the last dull glimmer of his mind

Had faded in the banquet, where reclined

He spent all day in drunken festival,

Made impious pretence that Jove with him,

Unseen, walk’d, talk’d and jested; for he spoke

To nothing by his side; or frown’d; or broke

In answering smiles; or shook a playful rim

Of raiment coyly. ‘Earth,’ he said, ‘is mine⁠—

No vapour. Yet Caligula, brother Jove,

Will love thee if he find thee worthy love;

If not, his solid powers shall war with thine

And break them, God of Cloud.’ The courtiers round,

As in the presence of two deities, bent

In servile scorn: when, like a warning sent,

An utterance of earthquake shook the ground,

Awful, but which no human meaning bore.

With glaring eyeballs narrowing in dismay,

The huddled creature fallen foaming lay,

Glass’d in the liquid marbles of the floor.

1881-2.

Dogma

Dogma

To a poor martyr perisht in the flame

Lo suddenly the cool and calm of Heaven,

And One who gently touch’d and tended, came.

‘For thee, O Lord,’ he cried, ‘my life was given.’

When thus the Pitiful One: ‘O suffering man,

I taught thee not to die, but how to live;

But ye have wrongly read the simple plan,

And turn to strife the Heav’nly gift I give.

I taught the faith of works, the prayer of deeds,

The sacrament of love. I gave, not awe,

But praise; no church but God’s; no form, no creeds;

No priest but conscience and no lord but law.

Behold, my brother, by my side in Heaven

Judas abhor’d by men and Nero next.

How then, if such as these may be forgiven,

Shall one be damn’d who stumbles at a text?’

1881-2.

Froth

Froth

This bubbling gossip here of fops and fools,

Who have no care beyond the coming chance,

Rough-rubs the angry soul to arrogance

And puts puff’d wisdom out of her own rules.

True, knowledge comes on all winds, without schools,

And every folly has her saw: perchance

Some costly gem from silliest spodomance

May be unash’d; and mind has many tools.

But still, love here rains not her heav’nly dew,

Nor friendship soothes the folly-fretted sense;

But pride and ignorance, the empty two,

Strut arm-in-arm to air their consequence,

And toil bleeds tears of gold for idle opulence.

1881-2.

Liberty

Liberty

When Cassius fell and Brutus died,

Resentful Liberty arose,

Where from aloft the mountain snows

She watch’d the battle’s breaking tide;

And as she rent her azure robe

Darkness descended o’er the globe.

‘Break never, Night,’ she cried, ‘nor bring

Before I come again the morn

With all her heav’nly light, for scorn

Of this base world so slumbering;

Where men for thrice five hundred years

Their sin shall mourn, and me, in tears.’

1882.

The Three Angels

The Three Angels

Heav’n vex’d in heaven heard the World

And all the grief thereof, and sent

The angel Strength. Swift he unfurl’d

His wings and flasht his sword and went:

But still the cry of Earth rang to the firmament.

Then gentle Love, most loved in heaven,

Heav’n sent to Earth. His large eyes shone,

Upcast with glory from God given,

And darkening downward from the Throne

He fell: nor bated yet the far terrestrial moan.

Then all the host of heav’n, amazed,

Cried, ‘Next let Wisdom go and prove

Himself and conquer.’ But he raised

His face and answer’d, ‘Heav’n above,

Like them, alone I fail; send with me Strength and Love.’

1882.

APOLOGUES

Return

Return

Muse, in my boyhood’s careless days

My rev’rence for thee was not small,

Altho’ I roam’d by Star and Sea

And left thee, seeking other ways—

I left thee, for I knew that all

Return by Sea and Star to thee.

Not worthy he to hear thy song,

Him thou thyself despisest most,

Who dares not leave thee and arise

To face the World’s discordant throng;

Since thou’rt best gain’d by being lost,

And Earth is in thy Heav’nly eyes.

1886-7.

The Star and the Sun

The Star and the Sun

In Darkness, and pacing the Thunder-Beat Shore

By many Waves,

No sound being near to me there but the hoarse

Cicala’s cry,

While that unseen Sword, the Zodiacal Light,

Falchion of Dawn,

Made clear all the Orient, wanning the Silvery Stars,

I heard the fine flute of the Fast-Fading Fire,

The Morning Star,

Pipe thus to the Glimmering Glories of Night,

And sing, O World,

If I too must leave thee then who can remain?

But lo! from the Deep

The Thundering Sun upsprang and responded, I.

Andamans, 1886-7.

The World’s Inheritors

The World’s Inheritors

God gazing down from Heaven saw the World.

Mighty, himself a heav’n, he fill’d the heavens.

His beard fell like a wasted thunder at eve,

And all his robe was woven with white stars,

And on his breast a star.

The World was dark. Deep in a forest there,

Where not the rill that routed in the wood

Dared break the silence, nor one murmur of night

Wound to the stagnant, chill, and listening air,

Five children slumbering lay.

One ruddy as the red grapes of the south;

One duskier, breather of more burning air;

One blue-eyed, blond, and golden-crown’d with locks;

One finely fashion’d in an even mould;

And one hard wrought as steel.

Lord of the Woods their Sire; enormous, rough,

Hair-tangled like the north-bear: but his Mate

Queen of a myriad palaces that shone

With chalcedon and jasper, justly wrought,

And gems of jewel’d stone.

Who when he saw her won her; loved her well;

By her abhor’d: and so he slew her then,

And gazed upon her beauty dead, and died

Himself, lamenting his wild woods. And these

Their wondrous offspring were.

Europe, A.D. 500.

The World beheld them and adored—adored,

And fear’d, and sought to slay them; for

The battle-brood of gods is battle-born.

But they endured; nor in the thunder found

Harm, or the bolt of death.

And God look’d down and spake, and thro’ the Earth

The murmur ran, terranean like the shock

When central earthquakes jar, until the Deep

Foams tingling to the icèd poles; and said,

To these I give the World.

Andamans, 1886-7.

Death-Song of Savagery

Death-Song of Savagery

I have heard it—I have heard the Forest

Strive to bring me comfort, and the Ocean

Roll large-tongued consolation round me.

I have heard the weakling Wildbirds crying,

And the wailing Winds proclaim me brother.

I have heard these things and yet I perish.

From the Flowers, the myriad mouths of Forest,

Honey’d words have come, and from the Billows,

Bursting, issue of sweet cheering voices.

In this Midnight and moon-glamour’d Darkness,

Winds and Wildbirds crying give me pity;

But, altho’ I hear them, lo! I perish.

For a mighty Voice rolls thro’ my Spirit,

Crying, As thou wert, so art, and shalt be,

Ever and for ever and for ever,

Son of Midnight and moon-glamour’d Darkness,

Rayless, lightless, and thy One Star faded,

Child of Night and Ocean, till thou perish.

Andamans, 1886-7.

Epilogue to the author’s romance The Child of Ocean.

Ocean and the Dead

In 1740 the cemeteries of Dunwich were laid bare by the sea.

Ocean and the Rock

The Brothers

The islands about which this legend is told are known as Jezírat Darzé and Jezírat Samhé, east of Cape Gardafui—one high and the other low.