Warnings fray no one; (ll. 360-361.)
as they will convert no one. With him, the speaker, alone rests the knowledge of the nature of his surroundings, and at times he, too, experiences the old uncertainty as to their true character.
And what the results following the Judgment? (a) At first, joy that all is now free of access where heretofore part only was attainable. Nature lies open not merely for the gratification of the senses, but to be studied by aid of science—
I stooped and picked a leaf of fern,
And recollected I might learn
From books, how many myriad sorts
Of ferns exist (etc.). (ll. 738-741.)
Will not the vistas of “earth’s resources,” thus opening out before the lover of nature, prove composed of “vast exhaustless beauty, endless change of wonder?” Yes: but the Judgment has taught that which the term of probation failed to teach—that a genuine appreciation of these beauties was even then a possibility. Absolute renunciation was not essential to spiritual development: for that alone was needed the insight capable of looking beyond “the gift to the giver,” beyond “the finite to infinity.” Which could recognize in
All partial beauty—a pledge
Of beauty in its plenitude. (ll. 769-770.)
The cause of life’s failure, justifying condemnation, lay in an acceptance of the means as the end, of the pledge in place of the ultimate fulfilment. Now, absolute satiety being attained, the soul’s ambition being bounded by the limits of earth, the plenitude of “those who looked above” is not for it.
(b) But if Nature refuses to yield the satisfaction demanded, the seeker for consolation would turn thence to a contemplation of Art, the works of which he holds as “supplanting,” mainly giving worth to Nature: Art which bears upon it the impress of human labour. And here again recurs the teaching of Andrea del Sarto, of A Toccata of Galuppi’s, of Old Pictures in Florence, of Rabbi Ben Ezra, of Cleon: in short, of almost any of the more characteristic poems. In so far as these artists, to whom the lover of earth looks for satisfaction in his search for the beautiful, refused to recognize as binding the limitations imposed upon their work by temporary conditions: in so far was a sphere of higher development prepared for and awaiting them elsewhere. Undesirous of contemporary appreciation, the true artist is represented as fearing lest judgment should be passed upon that which he realizes to be but the imperfection denoting “perfection hid, reserved in part to grace” that after-time of labour, the existence of which the world ignores. He was
Afraid
His fellow men should give him rank
By mere tentatives which he shrank
Smitten at heart from, all the more,
That gazers pressed in to adore. (ll. 791-795.)
And the speaker has been amongst the throng of spectators who accepted these “mere tentatives” as the consummation of the artist’s powers. Thus with Art as with Nature, “the pledge sufficed his mood.” Hence, in both relations—failure. Enjoyment, enjoyment to the full, of Art as of Nature was no impossibility, only, here too, with the sensuous gratification should have subsisted also the “spirit’s hunger,”