The first of the new, in our race’s story,
Beats the last of the old.[36]
As with the artist, so with the spectator, growth had only begun when
Looking [his] last on them all,
[He] turned [his] eyes inwardly one fine day
And cried with a start—What if we so small
Be greater and grander the while than they?
Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
In both, of such lower types are we
Precisely because of our wider nature;
For time, theirs—ours, for eternity.[37]
········
They are perfect—how else? they shall never change:
We are faulty—why not? we have time in store.
The Artificer’s hand is not arrested
With us; we are rough-hewn, nowise polished.[38]
Bitter as is to Cleon the realization that “What’s come to perfection perishes,” to the Christian artist the same axiom serves but as incentive to more strenuous effort. In imperfection he recognizes the germ of future progress.
The help whereby he mounts,
The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall,
Since all things suffer change save God the Truth.[39]
As imperfection suggests progress, so to “the heir of immortality” is failure but a step towards ultimate attainment. With confidence he may inquire
What is our failure here but a triumph’s evidence[40]
For the fulness of the days?
The Greek, with his bounded horizon, realizes but the first aspect of the truth: that
In man there’s failure, only since he left
The lower and inconscious forms of life.
That