So, soon, to draw her thoughts out, baiting mine,
Some slur I dropt, suggested by a church:
It touch’d a theatre. “Extremes,” I said,
“Have met.”
“Extremes have met,” she said, “before!
I take your meaning. Elbert has disclosed—
Not what I am, but what I seem to be
To those who will not view me as I am.
You join their lists?—I hoped for better things.”
“But was it right to keep me ignorant?”
“I hoped it right,” she said, “to keep you wise.
What Elbert thought, I knew. With you, had hopes,
That she who might not seem so wholly wrong
Might better represent a class unknown,—”
“Without design, might represent amiss,”
I answer’d. “As for you, however class’d,
I fear no class could claim you, all in all.
For all rules have exceptions.”
“Take but rules
For this time,” said she. “Did you ever find
That ever, when the seers look forth through heaven,
They view there pews and pulpits?—Nay, not so:
Yet oft they note a stage and galleries,
All throng’d with white-robed hosts attendant there.
So these, you see, at times may hint of good.”
“They may,” I said, “but do they, as a rule?”
“Ah, as a rule,” she said, “they hint of life—”
“But mainly life to laugh at or to fear,”
I answer’d.
“When emotion swells and shrinks,
The spirit’s wings are moving,” she replied.
“And that art moves them most, which mirrors most
The life that is, and therefore is the truth.
So often have I heard my father say:
‘We read of truth who spell from nature’s page;
And art can best make out the meanings there;
For ’tis the artist’s thought that finds each form
A form of thought,—imagination’s glass
That views the infinite in the finite fact.
Here moves a man, you say. What see you?—man?—
Nay, nay; that guise material fashions there
The image only of his manliness.
And you can only know his life within,
As from the image you imagine it.
Yon little girl that skips beside the porch,—
I know her, love her, not, save as I pass
Behind that face to reach a region rare
Where dolls are sentient babes, and brothers kings.
And yonder maidens, musing in delight,
I know not, love not, till, in sacrifice,
My spirit seems to yield to their desires,
To wait a watchful servant unto them,
To move with motives that inspire their deeds,
To look through their own eyes and see their views,
And thrill with rhythm when their ear-drums throb;
Then, joining all with all, imagine thus
The movements of their hidden inner moods.
Thus too, through all of life, how know we more?
All things are fitful images alone,
Reflecting glory from the Absolute;
And he who can imagine from the part
What marks the whole, walks in the light of heaven.
Find then a life where every child becomes
Earth’s animated toy of manliness,
Each man the mass from which to mould a god,
And earth the pit whence all heaven’s wealth is mined,
You find for thought a life worth living for,
A life the artist gives us: it is he
Discerns a spirit always veil’d in shape,
A soul in man, and reason everywhere.’”