WITH CHRISTOPHER SMART

It seems as if ... or did the actual chance

Startle me and perplex? Let truth be said!

How might this happen? Dreaming, blindfold led

By visionary hand, did soul's advance

Precede my body's, gain inheritance

Of fact by fancy—so that when I read

At length with waking eyes your Song, instead

Of mere bewilderment, with me first glance

Was but full recognition that in trance

Or merely thought's adventure some old day

Of dim and done-with boyishness, or—well,

Why might it not have been, the miracle

Broke on me as I took my sober way

Through veritable regions of our earth

And made discovery, many a wondrous one?

Anyhow, fact or fancy, such its birth:

I was exploring some huge house, had gone

Through room and room complacently, no dearth

Anywhere of the signs of decent taste,

Adequate culture: wealth had run to waste

Nowise, nor penury was proved by stint:

All showed the Golden Mean without a hint

Of brave extravagance that breaks the rule.

The master of the mansion was no fool

Assuredly, no genius just as sure!

Safe mediocrity had scorned the lure

Of now too much and now too little cost,

And satisfied me sight was never lost

Of moderate design's accomplishment

In calm completeness. On and on I went

With no more hope than fear of what came next,

Till lo, I push a door, sudden uplift

A hanging, enter, chance upon a shift

Indeed of scene! So—thus it is thou deck'st

High heaven, our low earth's brick-and-mortar work?

III

It was the Chapel. That a star, from murk

Which hid, should flashingly emerge at last,

Were small surprise: but from broad day I passed

Into a presence that turned shine to shade.

There fronted me the Rafael Mother-Maid,

Never to whom knelt votarist in shrine

By Nature's bounty helped, by Art's divine

More varied—beauty with magnificence—

Than this: from floor to roof one evidence

Of how far earth may rival heaven. No niche

Where glory was not prisoned to enrich

Man's gaze with gold and gems, no space but glowed

With color, gleamed with carving—hues which owed

Their outburst to a brush the painter fed

With rainbow-substance—rare shapes never wed

To actual flesh and blood, which, brain-born once,

Became the sculptor's dowry, Art's response

To earth's despair. And all seemed old yet new:

Youth,—in the marble's curve, the canvas' hue,

Apparent,—wanted not the crowning thrill

Of age the consecrator. Hands long still

Had worked here—could it be, what lent them skill

Retained a power to supervise, protect,

Enforce new lessons with the old, connect

Our life with theirs? No merely modern touch

Told me that here the artist, doing much,

Elsewhere did more, perchance does better, lives—

So needs must learn.

Well, these provocatives

Having fulfilled their office, forth I went

Big with anticipation—well-nigh fear—

Of what next room and next for startled eyes

Might have in store, surprise beyond surprise.

Next room and next and next—what followed here?

Why, nothing! not one object to arrest

My passage—everywhere too manifest

The previous decent null and void of best

And worst, mere ordinary right and fit,

Calm commonplace which neither missed, nor hit

Inch-high, inch-low, the placid mark proposed.

Armed with this instance, have I diagnosed

Your case, my Christopher? The man was sound

And sane at starting: all at once the ground

Gave way beneath his step, a certain smoke

Curled up and caught him, or perhaps down broke

A fireball wrapping flesh and spirit both

In conflagration. Then—as heaven were loth

To linger—let earth understand too well

How heaven at need can operate—off fell

The flame-robe, and the untransfigured man

Resumed sobriety,—as he began,

So did he end nor alter pace, not he!

Now, what I fain would know is—could it be

That he—whoe'er he was that furnished forth

The Chapel, making thus, from South to North,

Rafael touch Leighton, Michelagnolo

Join Watts, was found but once combining so

The elder and the younger, taking stand

On Art's supreme,—or that yourself who sang

A Song where flute-breath silvers trumpet-clang,

And stations you for once on either hand

With Milton and with Keats, empowered to claim

Affinity on just one point—(or blame

Or praise my judgment, thus it fronts you full)—

How came it you resume the void and null,

Subside to insignificance,—live, die

—Proved plainly two mere mortals who drew nigh

One moment—that, to Art's best hierarchy,

This, to the superhuman poet-pair?

What if, in one point only, then and there

The otherwise all-unapproachable

Allowed impingement? Does the sphere pretend

To span the cube's breadth, cover end to end

The plane with its embrace? No, surely! Still,

Contact is contact, sphere's touch no whit less

Than cube's superimposure. Such success

Befell Smart only out of throngs between

Milton and Keats that donned the singing-dress—

Smart, solely of such songmen, pierced the screen

'Twixt thing and word, lit language straight from soul,—

Left no fine film-flake on the naked coal

Live from the censer—shapely or uncouth,

Fire-suffused through and through, one blaze of truth

Undeadened by a lie,—(you have my mind)—

For, think! this blaze outleapt with black behind

And blank before, when Hayley and the rest ...

But let the dead successors worst and best

Bury their dead: with life be my concern—

Yours with the fire-flame: what I fain would learn

Is just—(suppose me haply ignorant

Down to the common knowledge, doctors vaunt)

Just this—why only once the fire-flame was:

No matter if the marvel came to pass

The way folk judged—if power too long suppressed

Broke loose and maddened, as the vulgar guessed

Or simply brain-disorder (doctors said),

A turmoil of the particles disturbed,

Brain's workaday performance in your head,

Spurred spirit to wild action health had curbed,

And so verse issued in a cataract

Whence prose, before and after, unperturbed

Was wont to wend its way. Concede the fact

That here a poet was who always could—

Never before did—never after would—

Achieve the feat: how were such fact explained?

VII

Was it that when, by rarest chance, there fell

Disguise from Nature, so that Truth remained

Naked, and whoso saw for once could tell

Us others of her majesty and might

In large, her lovelinesses infinite

In little,—straight you used the power wherewith

Sense, penetrating as through rind to pith

Each object, thoroughly revealed might view

And comprehend the old things thus made new,

So that while eye saw, soul to tongue could trust

Thing which struck word out, and once more adjust

Real vision to right language, till heaven's vault

Pompous with sunset, storm-stirred sea's assault

On the swilled rock-ridge, earth's embosomed brood

Of tree and flower and weed, with all the life

That flies or swims or crawls, in peace or strife,

Above, below,—each had its note and name

For Man to know by,—Man who, now—the same

As erst in Eden, needs that all he sees

Be named him ere he note by what degrees

Of strength and beauty to its end Design

Ever thus operates—(your thought and mine,

No matter for the many dissident)—

So did you sing your Song, so truth found vent

In words for once with you?

VIII

Then—back was furled

The robe thus thrown aside, and straight the world

Darkened into the old oft-catalogued

Repository of things that sky, wave, land,

Or show or hide, clear late, accretion-clogged

Now, just as long ago, by tellings and

Re-tellings to satiety, which strike

Muffled upon the ear's drum. Very like

None was so startled as yourself when friends

Came, hailed your fast-returning wits: "Health mends

Importantly, for—to be plain with you—

This scribble on the wall was done—in lieu

Of pen and paper—with—ha, ha!—your key

Denting it on the wainscot! Do you see

How wise our caution was? Thus much we stopped

Of babble that had else grown print: and lopped

From your trim bay-tree this unsightly bough—

Smart's who translated Horace! Write us now" ...

Why, what Smart did write—never afterward

One line to show that he, who paced the sward,

Had reached the zenith from his madhouse cell.

Was it because you judged (I know full well

You never had the fancy)—judged—as some—

That who makes poetry must reproduce

Thus ever and thus only, as they come,

Each strength, each beauty, everywhere diffuse

Throughout creation, so that eye and ear,

Seeing and hearing, straight shall recognize,

At touch of just a trait, the strength appear,—

Suggested by a line's lapse see arise

All evident the beauty,—fresh surprise

Startling at fresh achievement? "So, indeed,

Wallows the whale's bulk in the waste of brine,

Nor otherwise its feather-tufts make fine

Wild Virgin's Bower when stars faint off to seed!"

(My prose—your poetry I dare not give,

Purpling too much my mere gray argument.)

—Was it because you judged—when fugitive

Was glory found, and wholly gone and spent

Such power of startling up deaf ear, blind eye,

At truth's appearance,—that you humbly bent

The head and, bidding vivid work good-by,

Doffed lyric dress and trod the world once more

A drab-clothed decent proseman as before?

Strengths, beauties, by one word's flash thus laid bare

—That was effectual service: made aware

Of strengths and beauties, Man but hears the text,

Awaits your teaching. Nature? What comes next?

Why all the strength and beauty?—to be shown

Thus in one word's flash, thenceforth let alone

By Man who needs must deal with aught that 's known

Never so lately and so little? Friend,

First give us knowledge, then appoint its use!

Strength, beauty are the means: ignore their end?

As well you stopped at proving how profuse

Stones, sticks, nay stubble lie to left and right

Ready to help the builder,—careless quite

If he should take, or leave the same to strew

Earth idly,—as by word's flash bring in view

Strength, beauty, then bid who beholds the same

Go on beholding. Why gains unemployed?

Nature was made to be by Man enjoyed

First; followed duly by enjoyment's fruit,

Instruction—haply leaving joy behind:

And you, the instructor, would you slack pursuit

Of the main prize, as poet help mankind

Just to enjoy, there leave them? Play the fool,

Abjuring a superior privilege?

Please simply when your function is to rule—

By thought incite to deed? From edge to edge

Of earth's round, strength and beauty everywhere

Pullulate—and must you particularize

All, each and every apparition? Spare

Yourself and us the trouble! Ears and eyes

Want so much strength and beauty, and no less

Nor more, to learn life's lesson by. Oh, yes—

The other method 's favored in our day!

The end ere the beginning: as you may

Master the heavens before you study earth,

Make you familiar with the meteor's birth

Ere you descend to scrutinize the rose!

I say, o'erstep no least one of the rows

That lead man from the bottom where he plants

Foot first of all, to life's last ladder-top:

Arrived there, vain enough will seem the vaunts

Of those who say—"We scale the skies, then drop

To earth—to find, how all things there are loth

To answer heavenly law: we understand

The meteor's course, and lo, the rose's growth—

How other than should be by law's command!"

Would not you tell such—"Friends, beware lest fume

Offuscate sense: learn earth first ere presume

To teach heaven legislation. Law must be

Active in earth or nowhere: earth you see,—

Or there or not at all, Will, Power and Love

Admit discovery,—as below, above

Seek next law's confirmation! But reverse

The order, where 's the wonder things grow worse

Than, by the law your fancy formulates,

They should be? Cease from anger at the fates

Which thwart themselves so madly. Live and learn,

Not first learn and then live, is our concern.