Ah, but the apparition—the dumb sign—
The beckoning finger bidding me forego
The fellowship, the converse, and the wine,
The songs, the festal glow!
And, ah, to know not, while with friends I sit,
And while the purple joy is passed about,
Whether 'tis ampler day divinelier lit
Or homeless night without.
Nor the graceful fancy in these, from Beauty's Metempsychosis:—
From wave and star and flower,
Some effluence rare
Was lent thee; a divine but transient dower;
Thou yield'st it back from eyes and lips and hair
To wave and star and flower.
Should'st thou to-morrow die,
Thou still shalt be
Found in the rose, and met in all the sky;
And from the ocean's heart shalt sing to me,
Should'st thou to-morrow die.
I have also said that Mr. Watson knows his own strength and his limitations. Let me conclude by quoting a passage from his Apologia, the very style of which will be in itself the justification of the man whom it argues to justify:—
... Because I have full oft
In singers' selves found me a theme of song,
Holding these also to be very part
Of Nature's greatness....
And though I be to these but as a knoll
About the feet of the high mountains, scarce
Remarked at all, save when a valley cloud
Holds the high mountains hidden, and the knoll
Against the clouds shows briefly eminent;
Yet, ev'n as they, I, too, with constant heart,
And with no light or careless ministry,
Have served what seemed the voice; and unprofane
Have dedicated to melodious ends
All of myself that least ignoble was.
For though of faulty and of erring walk,
I have not suffered aught in me of frail
To blur my song; I have not paid the world
The evil and the insolent courtesy
Of offering it my baseness for a gift.
And unto such as think all Art is cold,
All music unimpassioned, if it breathe
An ardour not of Eros' lips, and glow
With fire not caught from Aphrodite's breast,
Be it enough to say, that in Man's life
Is room for great emotions unbegot
Of dalliance and embracement, unbegot
Even of the purer nuptials of the soul;
And one not pale of blood, to human touch
Not tardily responsive, yet may know
A deeper transport and a mightier thrill
Than comes of commerce with mortality,
When, rapt from all relation with his kind,
All temporal and immediate circumstance,
In silence, in the visionary mood
That, flashing light on the dark deep, perceives
Order beyond this coil and errancy;
Isled from the fretful hour he stands alone,
And hears the eternal movement, and beholds
Above him and around and at his feet,
In million-billowed consentaneousness,
The flowing, flowing, flowing of the world.
The Making of a Shakespeare
There is nothing both wholly new and wholly true to be said concerning Shakespeare. Eckermann, who played Boswell to Goethe's Johnson, was once disposed to discuss Shakespeare with that great master. Alone of modern poets Goethe has revealed a capacity in some degree comparable with that of the myriad-minded Englishman. Yet Goethe replied to Eckermann, "We cannot talk about Shakespeare; everything is inadequate." If the German intellectual colossus, whose conversation bestrode the narrow world from comparative anatomy and scientific optics to the principles of art, could not talk of Shakespeare; if a poet whose writings, next to those of our own unrivalled bard, are most thickly studded with great stars of thought, could not talk of Shakespeare, what is to be said by us punier men who are compelled to peep about for matter of discourse? "Everything is inadequate." That perhaps is the reason why talk about Shakespeare, even from the sanest of men, is apt to convert itself into perfervid rhapsody. Meanwhile, from those whose sanity is less assured, it runs to the delirium of some harebrained cipher of Shakespeare-Geheimnis, and an amused world is asked to listen while some female Dogberry asserts that the truth, too long concealed, has been proved, and it will soon go near to be thought, that Romeo and Juliet was written by none other than Anne Hathaway.