Or clearly sung his true, true thought,
Or utterly bodied forth his life,
Or out of life and song has wrought [11]
The perfect one of man and wife;
Or lived and sung, that Life and Song
Might each express the other's all,
Careless if life or art were long
Since both were one, to stand or fall:
So that the wonder struck the crowd,
Who shouted it about the land:
`His song was only living aloud,
His work, a singing with his hand!'
____ 1868.
Notes: Life and Song
`Life and Song' is the fifth of a series of seven poems published under the general heading of `Street-cries', with the two stanzas following as an introduction:
"Oft seems the Time a market-town
Where many merchant-spirits meet
Who up and down and up and down
Cry out along the street
"Their needs, as wares; one THUS, one SO:
Till all the ways are full of sound:
— But still come rain, and sun, and snow,
And still the world goes round."
The remaining numbers of the series are: 1. `Remonstrance', given in this volume; 2. `The Ship of Earth'; 3. `How Love Looked for Hell'; 4. `Tyranny'; 6. `To Richard Wagner'; 7. `A Song of Love'.
I can think of no more helpful comment on the subject of our poem than this sentence from Milton's `Apology for Smectymnuus', already alluded to in the `Introduction' (p. liv [Part VI]): "And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy."