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Poetry by George Eliot.
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The Legend of Jubal, and Other Poems (1874)
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A Minor Prophet
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Where and how would George Eliot even hear of a vegetarian?
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One doesn't know if George Eliot is trying to be outlandish, satirical, or just trying to write humour, but it isn't funny in the opening line.
"I have a friend, a vegetarian seer,
"By name Elias Baptist Butterworth,
A harmless, bland, disinterested man,
"Whose ancestors in Cromwell’s day believed
"The Second Advent certain in five years,
"But when King Charles the Second came instead,
"Revised their date and sought another world:
"I mean—not heaven but—America.
"A fervid stock, whose generous hope embraced
"The fortunes of mankind, not stopping short
"At rise of leather, or the fall of gold,
"Nor listening to the voices of the time
"As housewives listen to a cackling hen,
"With wonder whether she has laid her egg
"On their own nest-egg. Still they did insist
"Somewhat too wearisomely on the joys
"Of their Millennium, when coats and hats
"Would all be of one pattern, books and songs
"All fit for Sundays, and the casual talk
"As good as sermons preached extempore."
Nowhere could a European have even heard of anyone vegetarian, except in India, during the lifetime of George Eliot or before - it's Beatles who made India and yoga fashionable, and until then attitude towards India varied from fraud a la Macaulay to contempt a la most racist colonial invaders to reverence a la some evolved souls including a few of the great German authors - so her opening line is nothing but contempt of an ignorant racist for an ancient culture far more evolved, and rich in treasure of knowledge, than she and her nation could have imagined. And until central heating, hot water and greater ease of shipping came in, which wasn't until middle of twentieth century, a vegetarian diet wasn't possible in Europe; it would have been very difficult in most parts of U.S., too.
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And she continues ridiculing things far beyond grasp of most of West-
"So the Thought-atmosphere is everywhere:
"High truths that glimmered under other names
"To ancient sages, whence good scholarship
"Applied to Eleusinian mysteries—
"The Vedas—Tripitaka—Vendidad—
"Might furnish weaker proof for weaker minds
"That Thought was rapping in the hoary past,
"And might have edified the Greeks by raps
"At the greater Dionysia, if their ears
"Had not been filled with Sophoclean verse.
"And when all Earth is vegetarian—
"When, lacking butchers, quadrupeds die out,
"And less Thought-atmosphere is reabsorbed
"By nerves of insects parasitical,
"Those higher truths, seized now by higher minds
"But not expressed (the insects hindering),
"Will either flash out into eloquence,
"Or better still, be comprehensible
"By rappings simply, without need of roots."
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Funny how things reverse, and what she thought once funny has now come to be dead serious, but in a very different way.
"’T is on this theme—the vegetarian world—
"That good Elias willingly expands:
"He loves to tell in mildly nasal tones
"And vowels stretched to suit the widest views,
"The future fortunes of our infant Earth—
"When it will be too full of human kind
"To have the room for wilder animals.
"Saith he, Sahara will be populous
"With families of gentlemen retired
"From commerce in more Central Africa,
"Who order coolness as we order coal,
"And have a lobe anterior strong enough
"To think away the sand-storms. Science thus
"Will leave no spot on this terraqueous globe
"Unfit to be inhabited by man,
"The chief of animals: all meaner brutes
"Will have been smoked or elbowed out of life."
Well, ordering cool in Sahara isn't that different from routinely air conditioned homes, offices and cars, across Southern U.S.- especially Texas. And feeding humans, environmental science tells us, will be better and cheaper with a more vegetarian diet, if not completely vegetarian one. Meat industry is laying oceans waste, apart from other concerns.
"No lions then shall lap Caffrarian pools,
"Or shake the Atlas with their midnight roar:
"Even the slow, slime-loving crocodile,
"The last of animals to take a hint,
"Will then retire forever from a scene
"Where public feeling strongly sets against him.
"Fishes may lead carnivorous lives obscure,"
Well, several species have gone extinct, beginning during era of colonial expansion, from Dodo onwards; concern about this turned matters around for whales, but thanks to British, lions of India are in fact on verge of extinction.
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"Imagination in that distant age,
"Aiming at fiction called historical,
"Will vainly try to reconstruct the times
"When it was man’s preposterous delight
"To sit astride live horses, which consumed
"Materials for incalculable cakes;
"When there were milkmaids who drew milk from cows
"With udders kept abnormal for that end
"Since the rude mythopoeic period
"Of Aryan dairymen who did not blush
"To call their milkmaid and their daughter one—
"Helplessly gazing at the Milky Way,
"Nor dreaming of the astral cocoa-nuts
"Quite at the service of posterity."
Well, it isn't quite fable yet, but it's almost there. Riding horses is far more expensive than driving, especially in U.S.; dairies In most of industrial world use machines for milking. And what she meant by astral cocoa-nuts, who knows!
"By dint of diet vegetarian
"All will be harmony of hue and line,
"Bodies and minds all perfect, limbs well-turned,
"And talk quite free from aught erroneous.
"Thus far Elias in his seer’s mantle:
"But at this climax in his prophecy
"My sinking spirits, fearing to be swamped,
"Urge me to speak.
“High prospects, these, my friend,
"Setting the weak carnivorous brain astretch;
"We will resume the thread another day.”
"“To-morrow,” cries Ellas, “at this hour?”
"“No, not to-morrow—I shall have a cold—
"At least I feel some soreness—this endemic—
"Good-by.”"
After this, George Eliot's verses flow.
"For purest pity is the eye of love
"Melting at sight of sorrow; and to grieve
"Because it sees no sorrow, shows a love
"Warped from its truer nature, turned to love
"Of merest habit, like the miser’s greed.
"But I am Colin still: my prejudice
"Is for the flavour of my daily food.
"Not that I doubt the world is growing still
"As once it grew from Chaos and from Night;
"Or have a soul too shrunken for the hope
"Which dawned in human breasts, a double morn,
"With earliest watchings of the rising light
"Chasing the darkness; and through many an age
"Has raised the vision of a future time
"That stands an Angel with a face all mild
"Spearing the demon. I too rest in faith
"That man’s perfection is the crowning flower,
"Toward which the urgent sap in life’s great tree
"Is pressing—seen in puny blossoms now,
"But in the world’s great morrows to expand
"With broadest petal and with deepest glow."
"Yet, see the patched and plodding citizen
"Waiting upon the pavement with the throng
"While some victorious world-hero makes
"Triumphal entry, and the peal of shouts
"And flush of faces ‘neath uplifted hats
"Run like a storm of joy along the streets!
"He says, “God bless him!” almost with a sob,
"As the great hero passes; he is glad
"The world holds mighty men and mighty deeds;
"The music stirs his pulses like strong wine,
"The moving splendour touches him with awe—
"’T is glory shed around the common weal,
"And he will pay his tribute willingly,
"Though with the pennies earned by sordid toil.
"Perhaps the hero’s deeds have helped to bring
"A time when every honest citizen
"Shall wear a coat unpatched. And yet he feels
"More easy fellowship with neighbours there
"Who look on too; and he will soon relapse
"From noticing the banners and the steeds
"To think with pleasure there is just one bun
"Left in his pocket, that may serve to tempt
"The wide-eyed lad, whose weight is all too much
"For that young mother’s arms: and then he falls
"To dreamy picturing of sunny days
"When he himself was a small big-cheeked lad
"In some far village where no heroes came,
"And stood a listener ’twixt his father’s legs
"In the warm fire-light while the old folk talked
"And shook their heads and looked upon the floor;
"And he was puzzled, thinking life was fine—
"The bread and cheese so nice all through the year
"And Christmas sure to come! Oh that good time!
"He, could he choose, would have those days again
"And see the dear old-fashioned things once more.
"But soon the wheels and drums have all passed by
"And tramping feet are heard like sudden rain:
"The quiet startles our good citizen;
"He feels the child upon his arms, and knows
"He is with the people making holiday
"Because of hopes for better days to come.
"But Hope to him was like the brilliant west
"Telling of sunrise in a world unknown.
"And from that dazzling curtain of bright hues
"He turned to the familiar face of fields
"Lying all clear in the calm morning land.
"Maybe ’t is wiser not to fix a lens
"Too scrutinizing on the glorious times
"When Barbarossa shall arise and shake
"His mountain, good King Arthur come again.
"And all the heroes of such giant soul
"That, living once to cheer mankind with hope,
"They had to sleep until the time was ripe
"For greater deeds to match their greater thought.
"Yet no! the earth yields nothing more Divine
"Than high prophetic vision—than the Seer
"Who fasting from man’s meaner joy beholds
"The paths of beauteous order, and constructs
"A fairer type to shame our low content.
"But prophecy is like potential sound
"Which turned to music seems a voice sublime
"From out the soul of light; but turns to noise
"In scrannel pipes, and makes all ears averse."
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"Presentiment of better things on earth
"Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls
"To admiration, self-renouncing love,
"Or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one,—
"Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night
"We hear the roll and dash of waves that break
"Nearer and nearer with the rushing tide,
"Which rises to the level of the cliff
"Because the wide Atlantic rolls behind,
"Throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs."
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