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.