An Instance of Dyspepsia

I

There is a man of fifty-four years;

He has dyspepsia, it appears;

He chooses his food carefully,

He pays his doctors liberally,

He goes through life mournfully.

II

He looks on his meals, misgiving much

If the result of his eating them won’t be such,

It will not make him feel even worse than is usual with him.

After each meal, he’s torpid; things are dim

In his mind; and he lies on his couch for an hour or so,

Hoping the food of his living won’t give him too much woe.

He is ugly and he is rich,

He has tried everything, everything which

His doctors could in their knowledge offer,

Making him so he would not suffer

From his stomach’s acting ill.

But he suffers, suffers still.

III

He has his servants whom he pays

Good wages, and so each one willingly stays.

Though the temper of his mind is an ugly thing;

Suddenly, reasonlessly, it will spring

On the person near him – his servant, the chances are-

And will utter words, far

From truthful; and they are insulting, too.

But his servants, obedient, silently will do

All that he says; for he is sick, and then

These servants of his are men

Whose present means of life on this sick man depend.

IV

And so he lives and eats and bears

His ills as well as he may.

The doctors ask him ever how he fares,

And still tell him in an assuring way,

That he will be feeling well some day;

Be able to eat almost anything –

And they try in other ways to be comforting.

V

He is rich and powerful, but is ready to die.

Yet there is no good reason why,

Considering the largeness of the means that are his

(He can easily pay

For the best care and knowledge there is

In the world), that death can’t be kept away

For a good number of years.

But ah, the pains, and ah, the fears

That his crazy body gives this rich sick man;

Still trying, trying as best he can

To get all the pleasure that life has to give.

Though, yet, he too in his way can see,

How little happiness in his life can be.

VI

His body, although sick, is yet

As any human body, intricate.

Here are all the things that in

Reality go to make up man;

The matter of the completely thinking man

Working on all reality’s forms;

The matter of a woman’s face that can

Cause in one who sees it storms

Taking in them a whole self;

Here, in foundation, is all the wealth

That is in nature when she makes

That which through her the form of human takes.

– And, oh, the things that are man’s own,

Once himself to him were known!

VII

This dyspeptic man with stomach in such a state,

It would not work well on the food which perforce he ate,

Without giving him continuously present pain

Which would make him cry out again and again;

Make him worry his servants; and gave his face a muddy look;

And made his mind weaker than it might have been –

This man had lived yet at a time when his stomach was in

A condition it worked silently and well on the food he took.

And this was a time when he was a child,

A slender boy, and his bearing was mild

And soft. And he was taught

All the things that his teachers thought,

And the world could show him, in keeping with

Conditions as he found them, and if

He went aside from these, it was not that he knew,

But his body was new and he was young,

And whatever he as a boy might do,

Use and gracefulness went along

With his life; he was still being formed,

And in the roots of his being was unharmed.

But the world as it was gave the lad,

When he was grown, a form of life it had;

It was a life narrow and mean,

Lived as in the age that now is seen.

The world put him in a place in which,

Through one aim’s following, he soon got rich.

And richer he grew as his years went on,

And more and more his mind was drawn

Within the bounds of this enriching aim

Which bigger and bigger to his mind became.

VIII

This man, with his body ugly and diseased,

Lived once through a time when his mind seized

On the beauty that in the body of woman is.

And desires for its possession then were his.

And he loved, and his mind had in it those things

That love of another’s self to one’s self brings.

His mind with love’s wishes and imaginings moved,

And through possession at times were his

love-longings soothed.

Yet his self burned, though variously strong,

And this man then was fully among

Those other beings that with him living were,

For he felt the stir

That two selves make in each

When their longings one to the other reach.

IX

He had been a slender boy and he had desired

Beauty as he saw it, and he was now

One who only (as far as his thoughts went) required

For his happiness that life allow

Him the means unsuffering to get

The foundations of man’s having it.

But of his stomach was his protest –

Why must he eat if he could not digest?

And man’s body, gracefully complex,

Made so fittingly for sex and sex,

Made for mind’s working, in his body’s form he saw

But as something that did him almost to madness vex.

X

He lived on, suffering, complaining all his days,

Troubling others with his ways –

His married daughter, his servants and his friends;

All the persons near him who the sick man attend.

He might have lived for a long time yet,

But that his cook once, in a fret

(She was by an insult of his into it set)

Forgot to do precisely as the doctor said.

Something else was running through her head.

On something harmful this sick man was fed.

He was then in an angry mood,

And one that made him careless, and his food

Gulpingly he ate; and as suffering came

Keener than before, he moaned and cried,

Afterwards grew quiet and in a stupor died.

The next day and all those near him were around his bed,

Before the actions of his body left him finally dead.

And they could not in their hearts sorrowful be,

The end of this dyspeptic old man to see.

XI

When the end of his life came, the city’s papers said:

“One of the city’s most eminent men was dead.”

“One of our foremost insurance men has gone;

His career is worth meditating on.

He was born in our city of poor parents and never it left

Until from us God him in His Omnipotence reft.”

“Here again is shown how a young man with perseverance

From rising high no circumstance prevents.”

“Young men will be helped on their way

To success by the inspiring life of Harold F. Gray.”

XII

Harold F. Gray now is dead;

Because of the world’s condition, his manner of life he led.

That this world’s condition needs wholly to be changed by us

And can be, should be as anything obvious.