And who can bind in formal duty
The Protean shapes of airy Beauty?
Who tune the Teian's lyre of gold
To priestly hymns in temples cold?
Accept the playmate by thy side,
Ordain'd to charm thee, not to guide.
The stream reflects each curve on shore,
And Song alike thy good and error;
Let Wisdom be the monitor,
But Song should be the mirror.
To truth direct while Science goes
With measured pace and sober eye;
The simplest wild-flower more bestows
Than Egypt's lore, on Poesy.
The Magian seer who counts the stars,
Regrets the cloud that veils his skies;
To me, the Greek, the clouds are cars
From which bend down divinities!
Like cloud itself this common day
Let Fancy make awhile the duller,
Its iris in the cloud shall play,
And weave thy world the pomp of colour.
He paused; as if in concord with the Song
Seem'd to flash forth the universe of hues
In the Sicilian summer: on the banks
Crocus, and hyacinth, and anemoné,
Superb narcissus, Cytherea's rose,
And woodbine lush, and lilies silver-starr'd;
And delicate cloudlets blush'd in lucent skies;
And yellowing sunbeams shot through purple waves;
And still from bough to bough the wings of birds,
And still from flower to flower the gorgeous dyes
Of the gay insect-revellers wandering went—
And as I look'd I murmur'd, "Singer, yes,
As colour to the world, so song to life!"
LYKEGENES.
Conceal'd from Saturn's deathful frown
The wild Curetes strove,
By chant and cymbal clash, to drown
The infant cries of Jove.
But when, full-grown, the Thunder-king,
Triumphant o'er the Titan's fall,
And throned in Ida, look'd on all,
And all subjected saw;
Saw the sublime Uranian Ring,
And every joyous living thing,
Calm'd into love beneath his tranquil law;—
Then straight above, below, around,
His voice was heard in every sound;
The mountain peal'd it through the cave;
The whirlwind to the answering wave;
By loneliest stream, by deepest dell,
It murmur'd in mysterious Pan;
No less than in the golden shell
From which the falls of music well
O'er floors Olympian!
For Jove in all that breathes must dwell,
And speak through all to Man.
Singer, who asketh Hermes for his rod,
To lead men's souls into Elysian bowers,
To whose belief the alter'd earth is trod
Still by Kronidian Powers,
If through thy veins the purer tide hath been
Pour'd from the nectar-streams in Hebé's urn,
That thou mightst both without thee and within
Feel the pervading Jove—wouldst thou return
To the dark time of old,
When Earth-born Force the Heir of Heaven controll'd,
And with thy tinkling brass aspire
To stifle Nature's music-choir,
And drown the voice of God?
O Light, thou poetry of Heaven,
That glid'st through hollow air thy way,
That fill'st the starry founts of Even,
And all the azure seas of Day;
Give to my song thy glorious flow,
That while it glads it may illume,
Whether it gild the iris' bow,
And part its rays amid the gloom;
Or whether, one broad tranquil stream,
It break in no fantastic dyes,
But calmly weaving beam on beam,
Make Heaven distinct to human eyes;
A truth that floats serene and clear,
'Twixt Gods and men an atmosphere;
Less seen itself than bringing all to sight,
And to man's soul what to man's world is Light.
Then, as the Singer ceased, the western sun
Halted a moment o'er the roseate hill
Hush'd in pellucent air; and all the crests
Of the still groves, and all the undulous curves
Of far-off headlands stood distinctly soft
Against the unfathomable purple skies,
And linking in my thought the outward shows
Of Beauty with the inward types sublime,
By which through Beauty poets lead to Knowledge,
And are the lamps of Nature,
"Yes," I murmur'd,
"Song is to soul what unto life is Light!"
But gliding now behind the steeps it flush'd,
The disk of day sunk gradual, gradual down,
And in the homage of the old Religion
To the departing Sun,—the rival two
Ceased their dispute, and bent sweet serious brows
In chorus with the cusps of bended flowers,
Sighing their joint "Farewell, O golden Sun!"
Now Hesper came, the gentle shepherd-star,
Bright as when Moschus sung to it;—along
The sacred grove, and through the Parian shafts
Of the pale temple, shot the glistening rays,
And trembled in the tremor of the wave:—
Then the fair rivals, as they silent rose,
Turn'd each to each in brotherlike embrace;
Lone amid starry solitude they stood,
In equal beauty clasp'd,—and both divine.[D]