Stars, clash your shining shields—a soul is free!
iii
Of George Santayana as a poet I have incidentally spoken in Chapter 9, quoting one of his superb sonnets, but I think I neglected to call attention to the preface he has recently provided for his Poems. It is an omission that must be repaired. I can scarcely give an idea of the preface’s excellence as vigorous and beautiful prose, but aside from Santayana’s explanation that the subject of these poems is “simply my philosophy in the making,” it is just to quote this passage: “A Muse—not exactly an English Muse—actually visited me in my isolation; the same, or a ghost of the same, that visited Boethius or Alfred de Musset or Leopardi. It was literally impossible for me then not to re-echo her eloquence. When that compulsion ceased, I ceased to write verses. My emotion—for there was genuine emotion—faded into a sense that my lesson was learned and my troth plighted....” I cannot resist quoting from the closing poem, the lines on Art that count as a translation from Theophile Gautier but are actually so much more than that:
All things are doubly fair
If patience fashion them
And care—
Verse, enamel, marble, gem....
—All things return to dust
Save beauties fashioned well.
The bust