Poems Author:George Eliot Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A MINOE PEOPHET. I Have a friend, a vegetarian seer, By uame Elias Baptist Bntterworth, A harmless bland, disinterested man, Whose ancestors in Cromw... more »ell's day believed The Second Advent certain in five years, Bnt when King Charles the Second came instead. Revised their date and sought another world: I mean—not heaven bnt—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 Milleuninm, 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. And in Elias the ancestral zeal Breathes strong as ever, ouly modified By Transatlantic air and modern thought. Yon could not pass him in the street and fail To note his shoulders' long declivity, Beard to the waist, swan-neck, and large pale eyes; Or, when he lifts his hat, to mark his hair Brushed back to show his great capacity— A full grain's length at the angle of the brow Proving him witty, while the shallower men Ouly seem witty in their repartees. Not that he's vain, bufe that his doctrine needs The testimony of his frontal lobe. On all points he adopts the latest views; Takes for the key of universal Mind The "levitation" of stont gentlemen; Believes the Rappings are not spirits' work, Bat the Thought-atmosphere's, a steam of brains In correlated force of raps, as proved By motion, heat, and scicnce generally; The spectrum, for example,...« less