Curved in the wave, and drank unloth
As if from rivers of the south;
His lips sobbed through the water rank,
His heart paused in him while he drank,
His brain beat heart-like, rose and sank,
And he swooned backward to a dream
Wherein he lay 'twixt gloom and gleam,
With Death and Life at each extreme:
And spiritual thunders, born of soul
Not cloud, did leap from mystic pole
And o'er him roll and counter-roll,
Crushing their echoes reboant
With their own wheels. Did Heaven so grant
His spirit a sign of covenant?
At last came silence. A slow kiss
Did crown his forehead after this;
His eyelids flew back for the bliss--
The lady stood beside his head,
Smiling a thought, with hair dispread;
The moonshine seemed dishevelled
In her sleek tresses manifold
Like Danae's in the rain of old
That dripped with melancholy gold:
But SHE was holy, pale and high
As one who saw an ecstasy
Beyond a foretold agony.
"Rise up!" said she with voice where song
Eddied through speech, "rise up; be strong:
And learn how right avenges wrong."
The poet rose up on his feet:
He stood before an altar set
For sacrament with vessels meet
And mystic altar-lights which shine
As if their flames were crystalline
Carved flames that would not shrink or pine.
The altar filled the central place
Of a great church, and toward its face
Long aisles did shoot and interlace,
And from it a continuous mist
Of incense (round the edges kissed
By a yellow light of amethyst)
Wound upward slowly and throbbingly,
Cloud within cloud, right silverly,
Cloud above cloud, victoriously,--
Broke full against the arched roof
And thence refracting eddied off
And floated through the marble woof
Of many a fine-wrought architrave,
Then, poising its white masses brave,
Swept solemnly down aisle and nave
Where, now in dark and now in light,
The countless columns, glimmering white,
Seemed leading out to the Infinite:
Plunged halfway up the shaft, they showed
In that pale shifting incense-cloud
Which flowed them by and overflowed
Till mist and marble seemed to blend
And the whole temple, at the end,
With its own incense to distend,--
The arches like a giant's bow
To bend and slacken,--and below,
The niched saints to come and go:
Alone amid the shifting scene
That central altar stood serene
In its clear steadfast taper-sheen.
Then first, the poet was aware
Of a chief angel standing there
Before that altar, in the glare.
His eyes were dreadful, for you saw
That _they_ saw God; his lips and jaw
Grand-made and strong, as Sinai's law
They could enunciate and refrain
From vibratory after-pain,
And his brow's height was sovereign:
On the vast background of his wings
Rises his image, and he flings
From each plumed arc pale glitterings
And fiery flakes (as beateth, more
Or less, the angel-heart) before
And round him upon roof and floor,
Edging with fire the shifting fumes,
While at his side 'twixt lights and glooms
The phantasm of an organ booms.
Extending from which instrument
And angel, right and left-way bent,
The poet's sight grew sentient
Of a strange company around
And toward the altar, pale and bound
With bay above the eyes profound.
Deathful their faces were, and yet
The power of life was in them set--
Never forgot nor to forget:
Sublime significance of mouth,
Dilated nostril full of youth,
And forehead royal with the truth.
These faces were not multiplied
Beyond your count, but side by side
Did front the altar, glorified,
Still as a vision, yet exprest
Full as an action--look and geste
Of buried saint in risen rest.
The poet knew them. Faint and dim
His spirits seemed to sink in him--
Then, like a dolphin, change and swim
The current: these were poets true,
Who died for Beauty as martyrs do
For Truth--the ends being scarcely two.
God's prophets of the Beautiful
These poets were; of iron rule,
The rugged cilix, serge of wool.
Here Homer, with the broad suspense
Of thunderous brows, and lips intense
Of garrulous god-innocence.
There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o' the world: O eyes sublime
With tears and laughters for all time!
Here AEschylus, the women swooned
To see so awful when he frowned
As the gods did: he standeth crowned.
Euripides, with close and mild
Scholastic lips, that could be wild
And laugh or sob out like a child
Even in the classes. Sophocles,
With that king's-look which down the trees
Followed the dark effigies
Of the lost Theban. Hesiod old,
Who, somewhat blind and deaf and cold,
Cared most for gods and bulls. And bold
Electric Pindar, quick as fear,
With race-dust on his cheeks, and clear
Slant startled eyes that seem to hear
The chariot rounding the last goal,
To hurtle past it in his soul.
And Sappho, with that gloriole
Of ebon hair on calmed brows--
O poet-woman! none forgoes
The leap, attaining the repose.
Theocritus, with glittering locks
Dropt sideway, as betwixt the rocks
He watched the visionary flocks.
And Aristophanes, who took
The world with mirth, and laughter-struck
The hollow caves of Thought and woke
The infinite echoes hid in each.
And Virgil: shade of Mantuan beech
Did help the shade of bay to reach
And knit around his forehead high:
For his gods wore less majesty
Than his brown bees hummed deathlessly.
Lucretius, nobler than his mood,
Who dropped his plummet down the broad
Deep universe and said "No God--"
Finding no bottom: he denied
Divinely the divine, and died
Chief poet on the Tiber-side
By grace of God: his face is stern
As one compelled, in spite of scorn,
To teach a truth he would not learn.
And Ossian, dimly seen or guessed;
Once counted greater than the rest,
When mountain-winds blew out his vest.
And Spenser drooped his dreaming head
(With languid sleep-smile you had said
From his own verse engendered)
On Ariosto's, till they ran
Their curls in one: the Italian
Shot nimbler heat of bolder man
From his fine lids. And Dante stern
And sweet, whose spirit was an urn
For wine and milk poured out in turn.
Hard-souled Alfieri; and fancy-willed
Boiardo, who with laughter filled
The pauses of the jostled shield.
And Berni, with a hand stretched out
To sleek that storm. And, not without
The wreath he died in and the doubt
He died by, Tasso, bard and lover,
Whose visions were too thin to cover
The face of a false woman over.
And soft Racine; and grave Corneille,
The orator of rhymes, whose wail
Scarce shook his purple. And Petrarch pale,
From whose brain-lighted heart were thrown
A thousand thoughts beneath the sun,
Each lucid with the name of One.
And Camoens, with that look he had,
Compelling India's Genius sad
From the wave through the Lusiad,--
The murmurs of the storm-cape ocean
Indrawn in vibrative emotion
Along the verse. And, while devotion
In his wild eyes fantastic shone
Under the tonsure blown upon
By airs celestial, Calderon.
And bold De Vega, who breathed quick
Verse after verse, till death's old trick
Put pause to life and rhetoric.
And Goethe, with that reaching eye
His soul reached out from, far and high,
And fell from inner entity.
And Schiller, with heroic front
Worthy of Plutarch's kiss upon 't,
Too large for wreath of modern wont.
And Chaucer, with his infantine
Familiar clasp of things divine;
That mark upon his lip is wine.
Here, Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim:
The shapes of suns and stars did swim
Like clouds from them, and granted him
God for sole vision. Cowley, there,
Whose active fancy debonair
Drew straws like amber--foul to fair.
Drayton and Browne, with smiles they drew
From outward nature, still kept new
From their own inward nature true.
And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben,
Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when
The world was worthy of such men.
And Burns, with pungent passionings
Set in his eyes: deep lyric springs
Are of the fire-mount's issuings.
And Shelley, in his white ideal,
All statue-blind. And Keats the real
Adonis with the hymeneal
Fresh vernal buds half sunk between
His youthful curls, kissed straight and sheen
In his Rome-grave, by Venus queen.
And poor, proud Byron, sad as grave
And salt as life; forlornly brave,
And quivering with the dart he drave.
And visionary Coleridge, who
Did sweep his thoughts as angels do
Their wings with cadence up the Blue.
These poets faced (and many more)
The lighted altar looming o'er
The clouds of incense dim and hoar:
And all their faces, in the lull
Of natural things, looked wonderful
With life and death and deathless rule.
All, still as stone and yet intense;
As if by spirit's vehemence
That stone were carved and not by sense.
But where the heart of each should beat,
There seemed a wound instead of it,
From whence the blood dropped to their feet
Drop after drop--dropped heavily
As century follows century
Into the deep eternity.
Then said the lady--and her word
Came distant, as wide waves were stirred
Between her and the ear that heard,--
"_World's use_ is cold, _world's love_ is vain,
_World's cruelty_ is bitter bane,
But pain is not the fruit of pain.
"Hearken, O poet, whom I led
From the dark wood: dismissing dread,
Now hear this angel in my stead.
"His organ's clavier strikes along
These poets' hearts, sonorous, strong,
They gave him without count of wrong,--
"A diapason whence to guide
Up to God's feet, from these who died,
An anthem fully glorified--
"Whereat God's blessing, IBARAK (=yivarech=)
Breathes back this music, folds it back
About the earth in vapoury rack,
"And men walk in it, crying 'Lo
The world is wider, and we know
The very heavens look brighter so:
"'The stars move statelier round the edge
Of the silver spheres, and give in pledge
Their light for nobler privilege:
"'No little flower but joys or grieves,
Full life is rustling in the sheaves,
Full spirit sweeps the forest-leaves.'
"So works this music on the earth,
God so admits it, sends it forth
To add another worth to worth--
"A new creation-bloom that rounds
The old creation and expounds
His Beautiful in tuneful sounds.
"Now hearken!" Then the poet gazed
Upon the angel glorious-faced
Whose hand, majestically raised,
Floated across the organ-keys,
Like a pale moon o'er murmuring seas,
With no touch but with influences:
Then rose and fell (with swell and swound
Of shapeless noises wandering round
A concord which at last they found)
Those mystic keys: the tones were mixed,
Dim, faint, and thrilled and throbbed betwixt
The incomplete and the unfixed:
And therein mighty minds were heard
In mighty musings, inly stirred,
And struggling outward for a word:
Until these surges, having run
This way and that, gave out as one
An Aphrodite of sweet tune,
A Harmony that, finding vent,
Upward in grand ascension went,
Winged to a heavenly argument,
Up, upward like a saint who strips
The shroud back from his eyes and lips,
And rises in apocalypse:
A harmony sublime and plain,
Which cleft (as flying swan, the rain,--
Throwing the drops off with a strain
Of her white wing) those undertones
Of perplext chords, and soared at once
And struck out from the starry thrones
Their several silver octaves as
It passed to God. The music was
Of divine stature; strong to pass:
And those who heard it, understood
Something of life in spirit and blood,
Something of nature's fair and good:
And while it sounded, those great souls
Did thrill as racers at the goals
And burn in all their aureoles;
But she the lady, as vapour-bound,
Stood calmly in the joy of sound,
Like Nature with the showers around:
And when it ceased, the blood which fell
Again, alone grew audible,
Tolling the silence as a bell.
The sovran angel lifted high
His hand, and spake out sovranly:
"Tried poets, hearken and reply!
"Give me true answers. If we grant
That not to suffer, is to want
The conscience of the jubilant,--
"If ignorance of anguish is
_But_ ignorance, and mortals miss
Far prospects, by a level bliss,--
"If, as two colours must be viewed
In a visible image, mortals should
Need good and evil, to see good,--
"If to speak nobly, comprehends
To feel profoundly,--if the ends
Of power and suffering, Nature blends,--
"If poets on the tripod must
Writhe like the Pythian to make just
Their oracles and merit trust,--
"If every vatic word that sweeps
To change the world must pale their lips
And leave their own souls in eclipse,--
"If to search deep the universe
Must pierce the searcher with the curse,
Because that bolt (in man's reverse)
"Was shot to the heart o' the wood and lies
Wedged deepest in the best,--if eyes
That look for visions and surprise
"From influent angels, must shut down
Their eyelids first to sun and moon,
The head asleep upon a stone,--
"If ONE who did redeem you back,
By His own loss, from final wrack,
Did consecrate by touch and track
"Those temporal sorrows till the taste
Of brackish waters of the waste
Is salt with tears He dropt too fast,--
"If all the crowns of earth must wound
With prickings of the thorns He found,--
If saddest sighs swell sweetest sound,--
"What say ye unto this?--refuse
This baptism in salt water?--choose
Calm breasts, mute lips, and labour loose?
"Or, O ye gifted givers! ye
Who give your liberal hearts to me
To make the world this harmony,
"Are ye resigned that they be spent
To such world's help?"
The Spirits bent
Their awful brows and said "Content."
Content! it sounded like _Amen_
Said by a choir of mourning men;
An affirmation full of pain
And patience,--ay, of glorying
And adoration, as a king
Might seal an oath for governing.
Then said the angel--and his face
Lightened abroad until the place
Grew larger for a moment's space,--
The long aisles flashing out in light,
And nave and transept, columns white
And arches crossed, being clear to sight
As if the roof were off and all
Stood in the noon-sun,--"Lo, I call
To other hearts as liberal.
"This pedal strikes out in the air:
My instrument has room to bear
Still fuller strains and perfecter.
"Herein is room, and shall be room
While Time lasts, for new hearts to come
Consummating while they consume.
"What living man will bring a gift
Of his own heart and help to lift
The tune?--The race is to the swift."
So asked the angel. Straight the while,
A company came up the aisle
With measured step and sorted smile;
Cleaving the incense-clouds that rise,
With winking unaccustomed eyes
And love-locks smelling sweet of spice.
One bore his head above the rest
As if the world were dispossessed,
And one did pillow chin on breast,
Right languid, an as he should faint;
One shook his curls across his paint
And moralized on worldly taint;
One, slanting up his face, did wink
The salt rheum to the eyelid's brink,
To think--O gods! or--not to think.
Some trod out stealthily and slow,
As if the sun would fall in snow
If they walked to instead of fro;
And some, with conscious ambling free,
Did shake their bells right daintily
On hand and foot, for harmony;
And some, composing sudden sighs
In attitudes of point-device,
Rehearsed impromptu agonies.
And when this company drew near
The spirits crowned, it might appear
Submitted to a ghastly fear;
As a sane eye in master-passion
Constrains a maniac to the fashion
Of hideous maniac imitation
In the least geste--the dropping low
O' the lid, the wrinkling of the brow,
Exaggerate with mock and mow,--
So mastered was that company
By the crowned vision utterly,
Swayed to a maniac mockery.
One dulled his eyeballs, as they ached
With Homer's forehead, though he lacked
An inch of any; and one racked
His lower lip with restless tooth,
As Pindar's rushing words forsooth
Were pent behind it; one his smooth
Pink cheeks did rumple passionate
Like AEschylus, and tried to prate
On trolling tongue of fate and fate;
One set her eyes like Sappho's--or
Any light woman's; one forbore
Like Dante, or any man as poor
In mirth, to let a smile undo
His hard-shut lips; and one that drew
Sour humours from his mother, blew
His sunken cheeks out to the size
Of most unnatural jollities,
Because Anacreon looked jest-wise;
So with the rest: it was a sight
A great world-laughter would requite,
Or great world-wrath, with equal right
Out came a speaker from that crowd
To speak for all, in sleek and proud
Exordial periods, while he bowed
His knee before the angel--"Thus,
O angel who hast called for us,
We bring thee service emulous,
"Fit service from sufficient soul,
Hand-service to receive world's dole,
Lip-service in world's ear to roll
"Adjusted concords soft enow
To hear the wine-cups passing, through,
And not too grave to spoil the show:
"Thou, certes, when thou askest more,
O sapient angel, leanest o'er
The window-sill of metaphor.
"To give our hearts up? fie! that rage
Barbaric antedates the age;
It is not done on any stage.
"Because your scald or gleeman went
With seven or nine-stringed instrument
Upon his back,--must ours be bent?
"We are not pilgrims, by your leave;
No, nor yet martyrs; if we grieve,
It is to rhyme to--summer eve:
"And if we labour, it shall be
As suiteth best with our degree,
In after-dinner reverie."
More yet that speaker would have said,
Poising between his smiles fair-fed
Each separate phrase till finished;
But all the foreheads of those born
And dead true poets flashed with scorn
Betwixt the bay leaves round them worn,
Ay, jetted such brave fire that they,
The new-come, shrank and paled away
Like leaden ashes when the day
Strikes on the hearth. A spirit-blast,
A presence known by power, at last
Took them up mutely: they had passed.
And he our pilgrim-poet saw
Only their places, in deep awe,
What time the angel's smile did draw
His gazing upward. Smiling on,
The angel in the angel shone,
Revealing glory in benison;
Till, ripened in the light which shut
The poet in, his spirit mute
Dropped sudden as a perfect fruit;
He fell before the angel's feet,
Saying, "If what is true is sweet,
In something I may compass it:
"For, where my worthiness is poor,
My will stands richly at the door
To pay shortcomings evermore.
"Accept me therefore: not for price
And not for pride my sacrifice
Is tendered, for my soul is nice
"And will beat down those dusty seeds
Of bearded corn if she succeeds
In soaring while the covey feeds.
"I soar, I am drawn up like the lark
To its white cloud--so high my mark,
Albeit my wing is small and dark.
"I ask no wages, seek no fame:
Sew me, for shroud round face and name,
God's banner of the oriflamme.
"I only would have leave to loose
(In tears and blood if so He choose)
Mine inward music out to use:
"I only would be spent--in pain
And loss, perchance, but not in vain--
Upon the sweetness of that strain;
"Only project beyond the bound
Of mine own life, so lost and found,
My voice, and live on in its sound;
"Only embrace and be embraced
By fiery ends, whereby to waste,
And light God's future with my past."
The angel's smile grew more divine,
The mortal speaking; ay, its shine
Swelled fuller, like a choir-note fine,
Till the broad glory round his brow
Did vibrate with the light below;
But what he said I do not know.
Nor know I if the man who prayed,
Rose up accepted, unforbade,
From the church-floor where he was laid,--
Nor if a listening life did run
Through the king-poets, one by one
Rejoicing in a worthy son:
My soul, which might have seen, grew blind
By what it looked on: I can find
No certain count of things behind.
I saw alone, dim, white and grand
As in a dream, the angel's hand
Stretched forth in gesture of command
Straight through the haze. And so, as erst,
A strain more noble than the first
Mused in the organ, and outburst:
With giant march from floor to roof
Rose the full notes, now parted off
In pauses massively aloof
Like measured thunders, now rejoined
In concords of mysterious kind
Which fused together sense and mind,
Now flashing sharp on sharp along
Exultant in a mounting throng,
Now dying off to a low song
Fed upon minors, wavelike sounds
Re-eddying into silver rounds,
Enlarging liberty with bounds:
And every rhythm that seemed to close
Survived in confluent underflows
Symphonious with the next that rose.
Thus the whole strain being multiplied
And greatened, with its glorified
Wings shot abroad from side to side,
Waved backward (as a wind might wave
A Brocken mist and with as brave
Wild roaring) arch and architrave,
Aisle, transept, column, marble wall,--
Then swelling outward, prodigal
Of aspiration beyond thrall,
Soared, and drew up with it the whole
Of this said vision, as a soul
Is raised by a thought. And as a scroll
Of bright devices is unrolled
Still upward with a gradual gold,
So rose the vision manifold,
Angel and organ, and the round
Of spirits, solemnized and crowned;
While the freed clouds of incense wound
Ascending, following in their track,
And glimmering faintly like the rack
O' the moon in her own light cast back.
And as that solemn dream withdrew,
The lady's kiss did fall anew
Cold on the poet's brow as dew.
And that same kiss which bound him first
Beyond the senses, now reversed
Its own law and most subtly pierced
His spirit with the sense of things
Sensual and present. Vanishings
Of glory with AEolian wings
Struck him and passed: the lady's face
Did melt back in the chrysopras
Of the orient morning sky that was
Yet clear of lark and there and so
She melted as a star might do,
Still smiling as she melted slow:
Smiling so slow, he seemed to see
Her smile the last thing, gloriously
Beyond her, far as memory.
Then he looked round: he was alone.
He lay before the breaking sun,
As Jacob at the Bethel stone.
And thought's entangled skein being wound,
He knew the moorland of his swound,
And the pale pools that smeared the ground;
The far wood-pines like offing ships;
The fourth pool's yew anear him drips,
_World's cruelty_ attaints his lips,
And still he tastes it, bitter still;
Through all that glorious possible
He had the sight of present ill.
Yet rising calmly up and slowly
With such a cheer as scorneth folly,
A mild delightsome melancholy,
He journeyed homeward through the wood
And prayed along the solitude
Betwixt the pines, "O God, my God!"
The golden morning's open flowings
Did sway the trees to murmurous bowings,
In metric chant of blessed poems.
And passing homeward through the wood,
He prayed along the solitude,
"THOU, Poet-God, art great and good!
"And though we must have, and have had
Right reason to be earthly sad,
THOU, Poet-God, art great and glad!"
CONCLUSION.
Life treads on life, and heart on heart;
We press too close in church and mart
To keep a dream or grave apart:
And I was 'ware of walking down
That same green forest where had gone
The poet-pilgrim. One by one
I traced his footsteps. From the east
A red and tender radiance pressed
Through the near trees, until I guessed
The sun behind shone full and round;
While up the leafiness profound
A wind scarce old enough for sound
Stood ready to blow on me when
I turned that way, and now and then
The birds sang and brake off again
To shake their pretty feathers dry
Of the dew sliding droppingly
From the leaf-edges and apply
Back to their song: 'twixt dew and bird
So sweet a silence ministered,
God seemed to use it for a word,
Yet morning souls did leap and run
In all things, as the least had won
A joyous insight of the sun,
And no one looking round the wood
Could help confessing as he stood,
_This Poet-God is glad and good._
But hark! a distant sound that grows,
A heaving, sinking of the boughs,
A rustling murmur, not of those,
A breezy noise which is not breeze!
And white-clad children by degrees
Steal out in troops among the trees,
Fair little children morning-bright,
With faces grave yet soft to sight,
Expressive of restrained delight.
Some plucked the palm-boughs within reach,
And others leapt up high to catch
The upper boughs and shake from each
A rain of dew till, wetted so,
The child who held the branch let go
And it swang backward with a flow
Of faster drippings. Then I knew
The children laughed; but the laugh flew
From its own chirrup as might do
A frightened song-bird; and a child
Who seemed the chief said very mild,
"Hush! keep this morning undefiled."
His eyes rebuked them from calm spheres,
His soul upon his brow appears
In waiting for more holy years.
I called the child to me, and said,
"What are your palms for?" "To be spread,"
He answered, "on a poet dead.
"The poet died last month, and now
The world which had been somewhat slow
In honouring his living brow,
"Commands the palms; they must be strown
On his new marble very soon,
In a procession of the town."
I sighed and said, "Did he foresee
Any such honour?" "Verily
I cannot tell you," answered he.