James Vila Blake, Sonnets from Marcus Aurelius 27

27. 

Κλάδος τοῦ προσεχοῦς κλάδου ἀποκοπεὶς οὐ δύναται μὴ καὶ τοῦ ὅλου φυτοῦ ἀποκεκόφθαι. οὕτω δὴ καὶ ἄνθρωπος ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου ἀποσχισθεὶς ὅλης τῆς κοινωνίας ἀποπέπτωκε. κλάδον μὲν οὖν ἄλλος ἀποκόπτει: ἄνθρωπος δὲ αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν τοῦ πλησίον χωρίζει μισήσας καὶ ἀποστραφείς, ἀγνοεῖ δὲ ὅτι καὶ τοῦ ὅλου πολιτεύματος ἅμα ἀποτέτμηκεν ἑαυτόν. 

A branch cut off from the adjoining branch can not but be lopped from the entire plant. In like manner also a man severed from any one man has fallen off from the whole commonalty of men. Now a branch suffers the ill without doing it, because an alien hand severs it, while it is a man’s own doing if he parts himself from his neighbor by hating him and turning away from him; but he little understands that at the same time he has sundered himself from the whole body and citizenship of mankind.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.8 

27. 

“What a thought of God when he conceived a tree!” 

The trunk, behold, twice spreads, that one end grips 

The earth, the other playeth wild and free 

On lyric winds with countless finger-tips. 

Rend bough from bough, you part the rended end 

From the tree’s self, and leave it disbodied, void; 

So is a man, if he one man unfriend, 

Cut from mankind, unlodged, unkinned, destroyed. 

O if, I say, one breaks the natural band 

Of all to all, and doth his fellow hate, 

He little dreams nor can not understand 

How he from life is disincorporate. 

All ’s One, One ’s all—this is “the strength of laws” 

From which a tree or man his welfare draws. 

IMAGE by Peggy Marco