By virtue of his lady-love’s strange ring,
So that none knew him save his private page
And she who cried, God save him, every time
He brake spears with the brave till he quelled all—
So he applied him to all themes that came;
Loving the most to breast the rapid deeps
Where others had been drowned, and heeding nought
Where danger might not fill the place of fame.
And ’mid the magic circle of those sounds,
His lyre rayed out, spell-bound himself he stood,
Like a stilled storm. It is no task for suns
To shine. He knew himself a bard ordained,
More than inspired, of God, inspirited:—
Making himself like an electric rod
A lure for lightning feelings; and his words
Felt like the things that fall in thunder, which
The mind, when in a dark, hot, cloudful state,
Doth make metallic, meteoric, ball like.
He spake to spirits with a spirit tongue,
Who came compelled by wizard word of truth,
And rayed them round him from the ends of Heaven.
For as be all bards he was born of beauty,
And with a natural fitness to draw down
All tones and shades of beauty to his soul,
Even as the rainbow-tinted shell, which lies
Miles deep at bottom of the sea, hath all
Colours of skies and flowers, and gems, and plumes,
And all by Nature which doth reproduce
Like loveliness in seeming opposites.
Our life is like the wizard’s charmed ring:
Death’s heads, and loathsome things fill up the ground;
But spirits wing about, and wait on us,
While yet the hour of enchantment is.
And while we keep in, we are safe, and can
Force them to do our bidding. And he raised
The rebel in himself, and in his mind
Walked with him through the world.
He wrote of this?
He wrote a poem.
What was said of it?
Oh, much was said—much more than understood;
One said that he was mad; another, wise;
Another, wisely mad. The book is there.
Judge thou among them.
Well, but, who said what?
Some said that he blasphemed; and these men lied
To all eternity, unless such men
Be saved, when God shall rase that lie from life,
And from His own eternal memory:
But still the word is lied; though it were writ
In honeydew upon a lily leaf,
With quill of nightingale, like love letters
From Oberon sent to the bright Titania,
Fairest of all the fays—for that he used
The name of God as spirits use it, barely,
Yet surely more sublime in nakedness,
Statuelike, than in a whole tongue of dress.
Thou knowest, God! that to the full of worship
All things are worship-full; and Thy great name,
In all its awful brevity, hath nought
Unholy breeding in it, but doth bless
Rather the tongue that utters it; for me,
I ask no higher office than to fling
My spirit at Thy feet, and cry Thy name
God! through eternity. The man who sees
Irreverence in that name, must have been used
To take that name in vain, and the same man
Would see obscenity in pure white statues.
Call all things by their names. Hell, call thou hell;
Archangel, call archangel; and God, God.
And what said he of such?
He held his peace
A season, as a tree its sap till spring,
Preparing to unfold itself, and let
All rigor do its worst, which only served
To harden him, though nothing nesh at first.
And then he said at last, what, at the first,
He deemed would have been seen by other men,
By men, at least, above low-water mark,
Who take it, they lead others; that it is they
Who set their shoulders to the stalled world’s wheel,
And give it a hitch forwards.
There were some
Encouraged him with goodwill, surely?
Many.
The kind, the noble, and the able cheered him;
The lovely, likewise: others knew he nought of.
And yet he loved not praise, nor sighed for fame.
Men’s praise begets an awe of one’s own self
Within us, till we fear our heart, lest it,
Magician-like, show more than we can bear.
Nor was he fameless; but obscurity
Hath many a sacred use. The clouds which hide
The mental mountains rising nighest Heaven,
Are full of finest lightning, and a breath
Can give those gathered shadows fearful life,
And launch their light in thunder o’er the world.
And thought he well of that he wrote?
Perchance.
Perchance we suffer, and perchance succeed.
Perchance he would his tongue had perished ere
It uttered half he said, from childhood up
To manhood, and so on; for much I heard
From him required expiation, much
Soul sacrifice and penance for heart-deeds
Which passion had accomplished; yea, perchance,
He wished, how vain! that fruitful heart and breast
Had withered like a witch’s ere he had trained
The parasites of feeling that he did
About it; and perchance, for all I know,
He would his brain had died ere it conceived
One half the thought-seeds that took life in it,
And in his soul’s dark sanctuary dwelt.
Yet his blue eye’s dark ball grew greater with
Delight, and darker, as he viewed the things
He made; not monsters outside of the fane,
Grinning and howling, but seraphic forms—
Embodied thoughts of worship, wisdom, love,
Joining their fire-tipped wings across the shrine
Where his heart’s relics lay, and where were wrought
Immortal miracles upon men’s minds.
Take up the book, and, if thou understandest,
Unfold it to me.
What I can, I will.
Well I remember me of thee, poor book!
But there is consolation e’en for thee.
Fair hand have turned thee over, and bright eyes
Sprinkled their sparkles o’er thee with their prayers.
The poet’s pen is the true divining rod
Which trembles upwards the inner founts of feeling;
Bringing to light and use, else hid from all,
The many sweet clear sources which we have
Of good and beauty in our own deep bosoms;
And marks the variations of all mind
As does the needle an air-investing storm’s.
How does the book begin, go on and end?
It has a plan, but no plot. Life hath none.
Tell us, love; we will listen and not speak.
I wish I understood it, for I know
You would rather hear me than yourselves talk.
Surely.
I’d give up half the organs in my head,
Besides all undiscovered faculties,
To list to such a lecturer; and then
Have quite enough, perhaps, to comprehend.
’Twere needless that, to one half-witted now.
There is
