EARLIER POEMS.
THE SOULS OF BOOKS.
I.
Sit here and muse!—it is an antique room—
High-roof'd with casements, through whose purple pane
Unwilling Daylight steals amidst the gloom,
Shy as a fearful stranger.
There THEY reign
(In loftier pomp than waking life had known),
The Kings of Thought!—not crown'd until the grave.
When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb,
The beggar Homer mounts the Monarch's throne!
Ye ever-living and imperial Souls,
Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe,
All that divide us from the clod ye gave!
Law—Order—Love—Intelligence—the Sense
Of Beauty—Music and the Minstrel's wreath!—
What were our wanderings if without your goals?
As air and light, the glory ye dispense,
Becomes our being—who of us can tell
What he had been, had Cadmus never taught
The art that fixes into form the thought—
Had Plato never spoken from his cell,
Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?—
Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakspeare sung!
II.
Hark! while we muse, without the walls is heard
The various murmur of the labouring crowd,
How still, within those archive-cells interr'd,
The Calm Ones reign!—and yet they rouse the loud
Passions and tumults of the circling world!
From them, how many a youthful Tully caught
The zest and ardour of the eager Bar;
From them, how many a young Ambition sought
Gay meteors glancing o'er the sands afar—
By them each restless wing has been unfurl'd,
And their ghosts urge each rival's rushing car!
They made yon Preacher zealous for the truth;
They made yon Poet wistful for the star;
Gave Age its pastime—fired the cheek of Youth—
The unseen sires of all our beings are,—
III.
And now so still! This, Cicero, is thy heart;
I hear it beating through each purple line.
This is thyself, Anacreon—yet thou art
Wreath'd, as in Athens, with the Cnidian vine.
I ope thy pages, Milton, and, behold
Thy spirit meets me in the haunted ground!
Sublime and eloquent, as while, of old,
"It flamed and sparkled in its crystal bound;"[B]
These are yourselves—your life of life! The Wise
(Minstrel or Sage) out of their books are clay;
But in their books, as from their graves, they rise,
Angels—that, side by side, upon our way,
Walk with and warn us!
Hark! the world so loud
And they, the movers of the world, so still!
What gives this beauty to the grave? the shroud
Scarce wraps the Poet, than at once there cease
Envy and Hate! "Nine cities claim him dead,
Through which the living Homer begg'd his bread!"
And what the charm that can such health distil
From wither'd leaves—oft poisons in their bloom?
We call some books immoral! Do they live?
If so, believe me, TIME hath made them pure.
In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace—
God wills that nothing evil should endure;
The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole,
As the dust leaves the disembodied soul!
Come from thy niche, Lucretius! Thou didst give
Man the black creed of Nothing in the tomb!
Well, when we read thee, does the dogma taint?
No; with a listless eye we pass it o'er,
And linger only on the hues that paint
The Poet's spirit lovelier than his lore.
None learn from thee to cavil with their God;
None commune with thy genius to depart
Without a loftier instinct of the heart.
Thou mak'st no Atheist—thou but mak'st the mind
Richer in gifts which Atheists best confute—
Fancy and Thought! 'Tis these that from the sod
Lift us! The life which soars above the brute
Ever and mightiest, breathes from a great Poet's lute!
Lo! that grim Merriment of Hatred;[C]—born
Of him—the Master-Mocker of Mankind,
Beside the grin of whose malignant spleen,
Voltaire's gay sarcasm seems a smile serene,—
Do we not place it in our children's hands,
Leading young Hope through Lemuel's fabled lands?—
God's and man's libel in that foul yahoo!—
Well, and what mischief can the libel do?
O impotence of Genius to belie
Its glorious task—its mission from the sky!
Swift wrote this book to wreak a ribald scorn
On aught the man should love or Priest should mourn—
And lo! the book, from all its ends beguiled,
A harmless wonder to some happy child!
IV.
All books grow homilies by time; they are
Temples, at once, and Landmarks. In them, we
Who but for them, upon that inch of ground
We call "The Present," from the cell could see
No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar;
Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round,
Traverse all space, and number every star,
And feel the Near less household than the Far!
There is no Past, so long as Books shall live!
A disinterr'd Pompeii wakes again
For him who seeks yon well; lost cities give
Up their untarnish'd wonders, and the reign
Of Jove revives and Saturn:—At our will
Rise dome and tower on Delphi's sacred hill;
Bloom Cimon's trees in Academe;[D]—along
Leucadia's headland sighs the Lesbian's song;
With Egypt's Queen once more we sail the Nile,
And learn how worlds are barter'd for a smile:—
Rise up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er,
Ope but that page—lo, Babylon once more!
V.
Ye make the Past our heritage and home:
And is this all? No: by each prophet-sage—
No; by the herald souls that Greece and Rome
Sent forth, like hymns, to greet the Morning Star
That rose on Bethlehem—by thy golden page,
Melodious Plato—by thy solemn dreams,
World-wearied Tully!—and above ye all,
By THIS, the Everlasting Monument
Of God to mortals, on whose front the beams
Flash glory-breathing day—our lights ye are
To the dark Bourne beyond; in you are sent
The types of Truths whose life is The To-come;
In you soars up the Adam from the fall;
In you the Future as the Past is given—
Ev'n in our death ye bid us hail our birth;—
Unfold these pages, and behold the Heaven,
Without one grave-stone left upon the Earth!
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD AND CONDORCET.
Led by the Graces, through a court he moved,
"All men revered him, and all women loved;"[E]—
Happier than Paris, when to him there came
The three Celestials—Learning, Love, and Fame,
He found the art to soothe them all, and see
The Golden Apple shared amidst the Three.
Yet he, this man, for whom the world assumed
Each rose that in Gargettian[F] gardens bloom'd,
Left to mankind a legacy of all
That from earth's sweetness can extract a gall.
With him, indeed, poor Love is but a name—
Virtue a mask—Beneficence a game.
The Eternal Egotist, the Human Soul,
Sees but in Self the starting-post and goal.
Nipp'd in the frost of that cold, glittering air,
High thoughts are dwarf'd, and youth's warm dreams despair!
He lived in luxury, and he died in peace,
And saints in powder wept at his decease!
Man loves this sparkling satire on himself;—
Gaze round—see Rochefoucauld on every shelf!
Look on the other;—Penury made him sour,
His learnèd youth the hireling slave of power;
His Manhood cast amidst the stormiest time,
A hideous stage, half frenzy and all crime:—
Upon the Dungeon's floor of stone he died,
With Life's last Friend, his Horace, by his side!
Yet he—this Sage—who found the world so base,
Left what?—His "Progress of the Human Race."
A golden dream of man without a sin;
All virtue round him and all peace within!
Man does not love such portraits of himself,
And thrusts the unwelcome Flatterer from the shelf.
JEALOUSY AND ART.
If bright Apollo be the type of Art,
So is flay'd Marsyas that of Jealousy:
With the bare fibres which for ever smart
Under the sunbeams that rejoice the sky.
Had Marsyas ask'd not with the god to vie,
The god had praised the cunning of his flute.
Thou stealest half Apollo's melody,
Tune but thy reed in concert with his lute.
Each should enrich the other—each enhance
By his own gift the common Beautiful:
That every colour more may charm the glance,
All varying flowers the garland-weavers cull;
Adorn'd by Contrast, Art no rival knows,—
The violet steals not perfume from the rose.
THE MASTER TO THE SCHOLAR.
Write for the pedant Few, the vein shall grow
Cold at its source and meagre in its flow;
But for the vulgar Many wouldst thou write,
How coarse the passion, and the thought how trite!
"Nor Few, nor Many—riddles from thee fall?"
Author, as Nature smiles—so write;—for All!
THE TRUE CRITIC.
Taste is to sense, as Charity to soul,
A bias less to censure than to praise;
A quick perception of the arduous whole,
Where the dull eye some careless flaw surveys.
Every true critic—from the Stagirite
To Schlegel and to Addison—hath won
His fame by serving a reflected light,
And clearing vapour from a clouded sun.
Who envies him whose microscopic eyes
See but the canker in the glorious rose?
Not much I ween the Zoïlus we prize,
Though even Homer may at moments doze.
Praise not to me the sharp sarcastic sneer,
Mocking the Fane which Genius builds to Time.
High works are Sabbaths to the Soul! Revere
Even some rare discord in the solemn chime.
When on the gaze the Venus dawns divine,
The Cobbler comes the slipper to condemn;
The Slave alone descends into the mine
To work the dross—the Monarch wears the gem.
TALENT AND GENIUS.
Talent convinces—Genius but excites;
This tasks the reason, that the soul delights.
Talent from sober judgment takes its birth,
And reconciles the pinion to the earth;
Genius unsettles with desires the mind,
Contented not till earth be left behind;
Talent, the sunshine on a cultured soil;
Ripens the fruit, by slow degrees, for toil;
Genius, the sudden Iris of the skies,
On cloud itself reflects its wondrous dyes:
And to the earth, in tears and glory, given,
Clasps in its airy arch the pomp of Heaven!
Talent gives all that vulgar critics need—
And frames a horn-book for the Dull to read;
Genius, the Pythian of the Beautiful,
Leaves its large truths a riddle to the Dull—
From eyes profane a veil the Isis screens,
And fools on fools still ask—"What Hamlet means?"
EURIPIDES.
If in less stately mould thy thoughts were cast
Than thy twin Masters of the Grecian stage,
Lone, 'mid the loftier wonders of the Past,
Thou stand'st—more household to the Modern Age;—
Thou mark'st that change in Manners when the frown
Of the vast Titans vanish'd from the earth,
When a more soft Philosophy stole down
From the dark heavens to man's familiar hearth.
With thee came Love and Woman's influence o'er
Her sterner Lord; and Poesy, till then
A Sculpture, warm'd to Painting;[G] what before
Glass'd but the dim-seen Gods, grew now to men
Clear mirrors, and the Passions took their place,
Where a serene if solemn Awe had made
The scene a temple to the elder race:
The struggles of Humanity became
Not those of Titan with a God, nor those
Of the great Heart with that unbodied Name
By which our ignorance would explain our woes
And justify the Heavens,—relentless Fate;—
But, truer to the human life, thine art
Made thought with thought, and will with will debate,
And placed the God and Titan in the Heart;
Thy Phædra and thy pale Medea were
The birth of that most subtle wisdom, which
Dawn'd in the world with Socrates, to bear
Its last most precious offspring in the rich
And genial soul of Shakspeare. And for this
Wit blamed thee living, Dulness taunts thee dead.[H]
And yet the Pythian did not speak amiss
When in thy verse the latent truths she read,
And hail'd thee wiser than thy tribe.[I] Of thee
All genius in our softer times hath been
The grateful echo; and thy soul we see
Still through our tears—upon the later Scene.
Doth the Italian for his frigid thought
Steal but a natural pathos,—hath the Gaul
To mimes that ape the form of heroes taught
One step that reels not underneath the pall
Of the dark Muse—this praise we give, nor more
They just remind us—thou hast lived before!
But that which made thee wiser than the Schools
Was the long sadness of a much-wrong'd life;
The sneer of satire, and the gibe of fools,
The broken hearth-gods and the perjured wife.
For Sorrow is the messenger between
The Poet and Men's bosoms:—Genius can
Fill with unsympathizing Gods the Scene,
But Grief alone can teach us what is Man!
THE BONES OF RAPHAEL.
When the author was in Rome, in the year 1833, the bones of Raphael were discovered, and laid for several days in state in one of the churches.
Wave upon wave, the human ocean stream'd
Along the chancel of the solemn pile;
And, with a softer day, the tapers beam'd
Upon the Bier within the vaulted aisle:—
And, mingled with the crowd, I halted there
And ask'd a Roman scholar by my side,
What sainted dust invoked the common prayer?
"Stranger!" the man, as in disdain, replied,
"Nine days already hath the Disinterr'd
Been given again to mortal eye, and all
The great of Rome, the Conclave and the Pope,
Have flock'd to grace the second funeral
Of him whose soul, until it fled, like Hope,
Gave Beauty to the World:—But haply thou,
A dweller of the North, hast never heard
Of one who, if no saint in waking life,
Communed in dreams with angels, and transferr'd
The heaven in which we trust his soul is now
To the mute canvas.—Underneath that pall
Repose the bones of Raphael!"
Not a word
I answer'd, but in awe I drew more near,
And saw the crowd toil on in busy strife,
Eager which first should touch the holy bier,
I ask'd a boor, more earnest than the rest,
"Whose bones are these?"
"I know not what his name;
But, since the Pope and Conclave have been here,
Doubtless a famous Saint!"
The Boor express'd
The very thought the wandering stranger guess'd.
Which wiser, he, the Scholar, who had sneer'd
To hear the Stranger canonize the Dead;
Or they, the Boor, the Stranger, who revered
The Saint, where he the Artist?—Answer, Fame,
Whose Saints are not the Calendar's! Perchance
Tasso and Raphael, age to age, have given
The earth a lustre more direct from Heaven
Than San Gennaro, or thy Dennis, France;
Or English George!—Read History.[J]—
When the crowd
Were gone, I slipp'd some coins into the hand
Of a grave-visaged Priest, who took his stand
Beside the Bier, and bade him lift the shroud;
And there I paused, and gazed upon the all
The Worm had spared to Raphael.—He had died,
As sang the Alfieri of our land,
In the embrace of Beauty[K]—beautiful
Himself as Cynthia's lover!—That, the skull
Once pillow'd on soft bosoms, which still rise
With passionate life, in canvas;—in the void
Of those blank sockets shone the starry eyes,
That, like the stars, found home in heaven! The pall
With its dark hues, gave forth, in gleaming white,
The delicate bones; for still an undestroy'd
Beauty, amidst decay, appear'd to dwell
About the mournful relics; and the light,
In crownlike halo, lovingly did fall
On the broad brow,—the hush'd and ruin'd cell
Of the old Art—Nature's sweet Oracle!
Believe or not, no horror seem'd to wrap
What has most horror for our life—the Dead:
The sleep slept soft, as in a mother's lap,
As if the Genius of the Grecian Death,
That with a kiss inhaled the parting breath,
That, wing'd for Heaven, stood by the charnel porch,
Lowering, with looks of love, th' extinguish'd torch,
Had taken watch beside the narrow bed;
And from the wrecks of the beloved clay
Had scared, with guardian eyes, each ghastlier shape away!
Come, Moralist, with truths of tritest worth,
And tell us how "to this complexion" all
That beautify the melancholy earth
"Must come at last!" The little and the low,
The mob of common men, rejoice to know
How the grave levels with themselves the great:
For something in the envy of the small
Still loves the vast Democracy of Death!
But flatter not yourselves—in death the fate
Of Genius still divides itself from yours:
Yea, ev'n upon the earth! For Genius lives
Not in your life—it does not breathe your breath,
It does not share your charnels;—but insures
In death itself the life that life survives!
Genius to you what most you value gave,
The noisy forum and the glittering mart,
The solid goods and mammon of the world,
In these your life—and these with life depart!
Grudge not what Genius to itself shall claim—
A life that lived but in the dreams of Art,
A world whose sunshine was the smile from Fame.
These die not, Moralist, when all are hurl'd,
Fasces and sceptre, in the common grave:—
Genius, in life or death, is still the same—
Death but makes deathless what Life ask'd—the Name.
THE ATHENIAN AND THE SPARTAN.
A DIALOGUE.
THE ATHENIAN.
Stern Prisoner in thy rites of old,
To Learning blind, to Beauty cold,—
Never for thee, with garlands crown'd,
The lyre and myrtle circle round;
Dull to the Lesbian ruby's froth,
Thou revellest in thy verjuice broth.
With Phidian art our temples shine,
Like mansions meet for gods divine;
Thou think'st thy gods despise such toys,
And shrines are made—for scourging boys,
As triflers, thou canst only see
The Drama's Kings—our glorious Three.
No Plato fires your youth to thinking,
Your nobler school,—in Helots drinking!
Contented as your sires before—
The Little makes ye loathe The More.
We, ever pushing forward, still
Take power, where powerless, from the will;
We, ever straining at the All,
With hands that grasp when feet may fall,[L]—
Earth, ocean,—near and far,—we roam,
Where Fame, where Fortune,—there a home!
You hold all progress degradation,
Improvement but degeneration,
And only wear your scarlet coat
When self-defence must cut a throat.
Yet ev'n in war, your only calling,
A snail would beat your best at crawling;
We slew the Mede at Marathon,
While you were gazing at the moon![M]
Pshaw, man, lay by these antique graces,
True wisdom hates such solemn faces!
Spartans, if only livelier fellows,
Would make ev'n us a little jealous!
THE SPARTAN (calmly).
Friend, Spartans when they need improvement
Take models not from endless movement.
We found our sires the lords of Greece;—
Ask'd why? this answer—"Laws and Peace."
Enough for us to hold our own;
Who grasps at shadows risks the bone.
You're ever up, and ever down,—
There's something fix'd in True Renown.
The New has charms for men, I'm told;
Granted,—but all our gods are old.
Better to imitate a god
Than shift like men.
THE ATHENIAN (impatiently).
You are so odd!
There is no sense in these laconics.
Ho, Dromio! bring my last Platonics.
This mode of arguing, though emphatic,
Is quite eclipsed by the Socratic.
SPARTAN.
Friend—
ATHENIAN.
You have said. Now listen! Peace!
SPARTAN.
Friend—
ATHENIAN.
Gods! his tongue will never cease!
I tell you, man is made for walking,
Not standing still.
SPARTAN.
My friend—
ATHENIAN.
And talking!
Forward's my motto—life and motion!
SPARTAN.
Mine be the Rock, as thine the Ocean.
TIME.
Discuss, ye symbols of the twain
Great Creeds—the Steadfast and Improving;
The one shall rot that would remain,
The one wear out in moving!
THE
PHILANTHROPIST AND THE MISANTHROPE.
A DIALOGUE.
THE PHILANTHROPIST.
Yes, thou mayst sneer, but still I own
A love that spreads from zone to zone:
No time the sacred fire can smother!
Where breathes the man, I hail the brother.
Man! how sublime,—from Heaven his birth—
The God's bright Image walks the earth!
And if, at times, his footstep strays,
I pity where I may not praise.
THE MISANTHROPE.
Thou lov'st mankind. Pray tell me, then,
What history best excuses men?
Long wars for slight pretences made,
See murder but a glorious trade;
Each landmark from the savage state,
Doth virtue or a vice create?
Do ships speed plenty o'er the main?—
What swells the sail? The lust of gain!
What makes a law where laws were not?
Strength's wish to keep what Strength has got!
If rise a Few—the true Sublime,
Who lend the light of Heaven to Time,
What the return the Many make?
The poison'd bowl! the fiery stake!
Thou lov'st mankind,—come tell me, then,
Lov'st thou the past career of men?
THE PHILANTHROPIST.
Nay, little should I love mankind,
If their dark Past my praise could find,
It is because—
THE MISANTHROPE.
A moment hold!
Enough gone times: our own behold!
What lessons doth a past of woe
And crime upon our age bestow?
How few amongst the tribes of earth
Are rescued from the primal wild;
What countless lands the ocean's girth,
By savage rites and gore defil'd!
Afric—a mart of human flesh;
Asia—a satrapy of slaves!
And yonder tracts from Nature fresh,
Worn empires fill with knaves?
Are men at home more good and wise?
My friend, thou read'st the daily papers;
Perchance, thou seest but laughing skies,
Where I but mists and vapours.
But much the same seems each disease.
What most improved? The doctor's fees!
The Law can still oppress the Weak,
The Proud still march before the Meek.
Still crabbed Age and heedless Youth;
Still Power perplex'd, asks "What is Truth?"
To no result our squabbles come:
To some what's best is worst to some.
The few the cake amongst them carve,
And labourers sweat and poets starve;
And Envy still on Genius feeds,
And not one modest man succeeds.
All much the same for prince and peasant—
I've done.—How dost thou love the Present?
THE PHILANTHROPIST.
'Tis not man's Present or man's Past;
Beyond, man's friend his eye must cast.
Must see him break each galling fetter;
To gain the best, desire the better—
From Discontent itself we borrow
The glorious yearnings for the morrow;
Science and Truth like waves advance
Upon the antique Ignorance.
THE MISANTHROPE.
Like waves—the image not amiss!
They gain on that side—lose on this;
Pleased, after fifty ages, if
They gulp at last an inch of cliff.
THE PHILANTHROPIST.
You really cannot think by satire,
To mine the truths you cannot batter;
Man's destinies are brightening slowly,
With them entwined each thought most holy.
What though the Past my horror moves,
No Eden though the Present seems,
Who loves Mankind, their Future loves,
And trusts, and lives—
THE MISANTHROPE.
In dreams!
WISDOM.
In both extremes there seems convey'd,
A truth to own, and yet deny;
But what between the extremes has made
The master-difference?
HOPE.
I!—
What wert thou, Wisdom, but for me?
Though thou the Past, the Present see,
Through ME alone, the eye can mark
The Future dawning on the dark.
I plant the tree, and till the soil;
I show the fruit,—where thou the toil;
Where thou despondest, I aspire—
Thine sad Content, mine bright Desire.
Under my earthlier name of Hope,
The love to things unborn is given,
But call me Faith—behold I ope
The flaming gates of Heaven!
Take ME from Man, and Man is both
The Dastard and the Slave;
And Love is lust, and Peace a sloth,
And all the Earth a Grave!
THE IDEAL WORLD.
ARGUMENT.
Section I.
The Ideal World—Its realm is everywhere around us—Its inhabitants are the immortal personifications of all beautiful thoughts—To that World we attain by the repose of the senses.
Section II.
Our dreams belong to the Ideal—The diviner love for which youth sighs, not attainable in life—But the pursuit of that love, beyond the world of the senses, purifies the soul, and awakes the Genius—Instances in Petrarch—Dante.
Section III.
Genius, lifting its life to the Ideal becomes itself a pure idea—It must comprehend all existence: all human sins and sufferings—But, in comprehending, it transmutes them—The Poet in his twofold being—The actual and the ideal—The influence of Genius over the sternest realities of earth—Over our passions—wars and superstitions—Its identity is with human progress—Its agency, even where unacknowledged, is universal.
Section IV.
Forgiveness to the errors of our benefactors.
Section V.
The Ideal is not confined to Poets—Algernon Sydney recognizes his Ideal in liberty, and believes in its triumph where the mere practical man could behold but its ruins—Yet liberty in this world must ever be an Ideal, and the land that it promises can be found but in death.
Section VI.
Yet all have two escapes into the Ideal World; viz. Memory and Hope—Example of Hope in youth, however excluded from action and desire—Napoleon's son.
Section VII.
Example of Memory as leading to the Ideal—Amidst life, however humble, and in a mind however ignorant—the village widow.
Section VIII.
Hence in Hope, Memory, and Prayer, all of us are Poets.