Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

Meant to save his own life in the desert;
Ready in the desert to deliver
(Kneeling down to let his breast be opened)
Hoard and life together for his mistress.

XII

I shall never, in the years remaining, Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,

Make you music that should all-express

me;

So it seems: I stand on my attainment. This of verse alone, one life allows me; Verse and nothing else have I to give you. Other heights in other lives, God willingAll the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!

XIII

[ocr errors]

Yet a semblance of resource avails us Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it.

Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly, Lines I write the first time and the last time.

He who works in fresco, steals a hairbrush,

Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly, Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little, Makes a strange art of an art familiar, Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets. He who blows thro' bronze, may breathe thro' silver,

Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.

He who writes, may write for once as I do.

XIV

Love, you saw me gather men and women, Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, Enter each and all, and use their service, Speak from every mouth, the speech, a

poem.

Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:
I am mine and yours-the rest be all
men's,

Karshook, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty.
Let me speak this once in my true person,
Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea,
Though the fruit of speech be just this
sentence-

Pray you, look on these my men and women,

Take and keep my fifty poems finished; Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also! Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.

Only this is sure- the sight were other, Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence,

Dying now impoverished here in London. God be thanked, the meanest of His creatures

Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,

One to show a woman when he loves her.

XVIII

This I say of me, but think of you, Love! This to you-yourself my moon of poets!

Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder,

Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you.

There, in turn I stand with them and praise you,

Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.
But the best is when I glide from out them,
Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
Come out on the other side, the novel
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
Where I hush and bless myself with silence.

XIX

Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno, Wrote one song — and in my brain I sing it, Drew one angel - borne, see, on my bosom! R. B.

ABT VOGLER

(AFTER HE HAS BEEN EXTEMPORIZING UPON

THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT OF HIS

INVENTION) [1864.]

WOULD that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,

Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,

Man, brute, reptile, fly, - alien of end and of aim,

Adverse, each from the other heavenhigh, hell-deep removed,

Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,

And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,

This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!

Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,

Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!

And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,

Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,

Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,

Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was, Aye, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,

Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,

Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:

For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,

When a great illumination surprises a festal night

Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)

Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,

Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;

And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,

As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:

Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,

Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;

Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,

For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.

Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,

Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,

Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,

Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;

Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone, But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new: What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;

And what is, shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,

All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,

All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,

Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the

process so wonder-worth:

Had I written the same, made verse- still, effect proceeds from cause,

Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;

It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,

Painter and poet are proud in the artistlist enrolled:

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,

Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!

And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,

That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought;

It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, and all is said:

Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought;

And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;

Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;

For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,

That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.

Never to be again! But many more of the kind

As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?

To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind

To the same, same self, same love, same
God: aye, what was shall be.

Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name?

Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands!

What, have fear of change from Thee who art ever the same?

Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands?

There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;

The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;

What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist;

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power

Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives. for the melodist

When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,

The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

го

reflection ono

XVII

I still within this life,

Though lifted o'er its strife,

Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, "This rage was right i' the main, That acquiescence vain:

The Future I may face now I have proved

the Past.'

XVIII

For more is not reserved

To man, with soul just nerved

To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: Here, work enough to watch

The Master work, and catch Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tools' true play.

XIX

As it was better, youth

Should strive, through acts uncouth, Toward making, than repose on aught found made;

So, better, age, exempt

From strife, should know, than tempt Further. Thou waitedest age; wait death nor be afraid!

XX

Enough now, if the Right

And Good and Infinite

[blocks in formation]

Be named here, as thou callest thy hand Lasts ever, past recall;

[blocks in formation]

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand

[blocks in formation]
« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »