One I have known, and haply yet I know, A youth by baser pa.s.sions undefiled, Lit by the light of genius and the glow Which real feeling leaves where once it smiled; Firm as a man, yet tender as a child; Armed at all points by fantasy and thought, To face the true or soar amid the wild; By love and labour, as a good man ought, Ready to pay the price by which dear truth is bought!
"Tis not with cold advice or stern rebuke, With formal precept, or wit face demure, But with the unconscious eloquence of look, Where shines the heart so loving and so pure: "Tis these, with constant goodness, that allure All hearts to love and imitate his worth.
Beside him weaker natures feel secure, Even as the flower beside the oak peeps forth, Safe, though the rain descends, and blows the biting North!
Such is my friend, and such I fain would be, Mild, thoughtful, modest, faithful, loving, gay, Correct, not cold, nor uncontroll"d though free, But proof to all the lures that round us play, Even as the sun, that on his azure way Moveth with steady pace and lofty mien, Though blushing clouds, like syrens, woo his stay, Higher and higher through the pure serene, Till comes the calm of eve and wraps him from the scene.
THE SPIRIT OF THE IDEAL.
Sweet sister spirits, ye whose starlight tresses Stream on the night-winds as ye float along, Missioned with hope to man--and with caresses
To slumbering babes--refreshment to the strong-- And grace the sensuous soul that it"s arrayed in: As the light burden of melodious song
Weighs down a poet"s words;--as an o"erladen Lily doth bend beneath its own pure snow; Or with its joy, the free heart of a maiden:--
Thus, I behold your outstretched pinions grow Heavy with all the priceless gifts and graces G.o.d through thy ministration doth bestow.
Do ye not plant the rose on youthful faces?
And rob the heavens of stars for Beauty"s eyes?
Do ye not fold within love"s pure embraces
All that Omnipotence doth yet devise For human bliss, or rapture superhuman-- Heaven upon earth, and earth still in the skies?
Do ye not sow the fruitful heart of woman With tenderest charities and faith sincere, To feed man"s sterile soul and to illumine
His duller eyes, that else might settle here, With the bright promise of a purer region-- A starlight beacon to a starry sphere?
Are they not all thy children, that bright legion-- Of aspirations, and all hopeful sighs That in the solemn train of grave Religion
Strew heavenly flowers before man"s longing eyes, And make him feel, as o"er life"s sea he wendeth, The far-off odorous airs of Paradise?--
Like to the breeze some flowery island sendeth Unto the seaman, ere its bowers are seen, Which tells him soon his weary wandering endeth--
Soon shall he rest, in bosky shades of green, By daisied meadows prankt with dewy flowers, With ever-running rivulets between.
These are thy tasks, my sisters--these the powers G.o.d in his goodness gives into thy hands:-- "Tis from thy fingers fall the diamond showers
Of budding Spring, and o"er the expectant lands June"s odorous purple and rich Autumn"s gold: And even when needful Winter wide expands
His fallow wings, and winds blow sharp and cold From the harsh east, "tis thine, o"er all the plain, The leafless woodlands and the unsheltered wold,
Gently to drop the flakes of feathery rain-- Heaven"s warmest down--around the slumbering seeds, And o"er the roots the frost-blanched counterpane.
What though man"s careless eye but little heeds Even the effects, much less the remoter cause, Still, in the doing of beneficent deeds--
By G.o.d and his Vicegerent Nature"s laws-- Ever a compensating joy is found.
Think ye the rain-drop heedeth if it draws
Rankness as well as Beauty from the ground?
Or that the sullen wind will deign to wake Only Aeolian melodies of sound--
And not the stormy screams that make men quake Thus do ye act, my sisters; thus ye do Your cheerful duty for the doing"s sake--
Not unrewarded surely--not when you See the successful issue of your charms, Bringing the absent back again to view--
Giving the loved one to the lover"s arms-- Smoothing the gra.s.sy couch in weary age-- Hushing in death"s great calm a world"s alarms.
I, I alone upon the earth"s vast stage Am doomed to act an unrequited part-- I, the unseen preceptress of the sage--
I, whose ideal form doth win the heart Of all whom G.o.d"s vocation hath a.s.signed To wear the sacred vesture of high Art--
To pa.s.s along the electric sparks of mind From age to age, from race to race, until The expanding truth encircles all mankind.
What without me were all the poet"s skill?-- Dead, sensuous form without the quickening soul.
What without me the instinctive aim of will?--
A useless magnet pointing to no pole.
What the fine ear and the creative hand?
Most potent spirits free from man"s control.
I, THE IDEAL, by the poet stand When all his soul o"erflows with holy fire, When currents of the beautiful and grand
Run glittering down along each burning wire Until the heart of the great world doth feel The electric shock of his G.o.d-kindled lyre:--
Then rolls the thunderous music peal on peal, Or in the breathless after-pause, a strain Simpler and sweeter through the hush doth steal--
Like to the pattering drops of summer rain Or rustling gra.s.s, when fragrance fills the air And all the groves are vocal once again:
Whatever form, whatever shape I bear, The Spirit of high Impulse, and the Soul Of all conceptions beautiful and rare,
Am I; who now swift spurning all control, On rapid wings--the Ariel of the Muse-- Dart from the dazzling centre to the pole;
Now in the magic mimicry of hues Such as surround G.o.d"s golden throne, descend In t.i.tian"s skies the boundaries to confuse
Betwixt earth"s heaven and heaven"s own heaven to blend In Raphael"s forms the human and divine, Where spirit dawns, and matter seems to end.
Again on wings of melody, so fine They mock the sight, but fall upon the ear Like tuneful rose-leaves at the day"s decline--
And with the music of a happier sphere Entrance some master of melodious sound, Till startled men the hymns of angels hear.
Happy for me when, in the vacant round Of barren ages, one great steadfast soul Faithful to me and to his art is found.
But, ah! my sisters, with my grief condole; Join in my sorrows and respond my sighs; And let your sobs the funeral dirges toll;
Weep those who falter in the great emprise-- Who, turning off upon some poor pretence, Some worthless guerdon or some paltry prize,
Down from the airy zenith through the immense Sink to the low expedients of an hour, And barter soul for all the slough of sense,--