Unsated—not unsatable. (ll. 860-861.)
Unsated, until the soul’s true sphere shall have been attained. Now is that judgment pronounced which we find Andrea del Sarto passing upon himself whilst life and its opportunities yet remained his.
Deride
Their choice now, thou who sit’st outside. (ll. 862-863.)
Their choice, whose guide has been “the spirit’s fugitive brief gleams.” So says Andrea of his fellow artists in Florence—
Themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that’s shut to me,
········
My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.[67]
(c) Nature and Art have then alike failed. Wherein may the yearnings of the soul discover the satisfaction hitherto denied them? Perchance, through a more complete intellectual development.
Mind is best—I will seize mind. (l. 874.)
······
Oh, let me strive to make the most
Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped
Of budding wings, else now equipped
For voyage from summer isle to isle! (ll. 867-870.)
Here a direct reversal of the theory of Bishop Blougram, implied by his censure of the traveller whose equipment was ever adapted to the needs of the future to the neglect of existing requirements. This man, the soliloquist of Easter Day, whose lot is now irrevocably confined to earth, recognizes too late the fatal character of the mistake perpetrated in “nipping the budding wings”: realizes that, as an inevitable result, the course of the race and the goal of the ambition are alike limited, henceforth, by an earthly environment. That “the earth’s best is but the earth’s best.” The failure to look above is, in fact, here more disastrous in its results than in either of the earlier instances: since here the possibilities are also greater. Through the mind alone may come
Those intuitions, grasps of guess,
Which pull the more into the less,
Making the finite comprehend
Infinity. (ll. 905-908.)
To genius have been granted from time to time glimpses of the spiritual world, made plain in moments of insight, yet not too plain. A world which, during his sojourn on earth, is intended not for man’s permanent habitation. A world he must “traverse, not remain a guest in.” Once capable of continuing a denizen of the spiritual world, the uses of earth as a training-ground would be for that man at an end. He who should so live would become a Lazarus, as the Arabian physician presents him to us; in Dr. Westcott’s phrase, “not a man, but a sign.” Brief visions of heaven are vouchsafed, that he who has once seen may “come back and tell the world,” himself “stung with hunger” for the fuller light. As in Nature, as in Art, so, too, here in a more purely intellectual sphere, the pledge is not the plenitude, the symbol not the reality.