Epilogue to Lessing’s Laocoön
One morn as through Hyde Park we walk’d.
My friend and I, by chance we talk’d
Of Lessing’s famed Laocoön;
And after we awhile had gone
In Lessing’s track, and tried to see
What painting is, what poetry—
Diverging to another thought,
“Ah,” cries my friend, “but who hath taught
Why music and the other arts
Oftener perform aright their parts
Than poetry? why she, than they,
Fewer fine successes can display?
“For ’tis so, surely! Even in Greece,
Where best the poet framed his piece,
Even in that Phoebus-guarded ground
Pausanias on his travels found
Good poems, if he look’d, more rare
(Though many) than good statues were—
For these, in truth, were everywhere!
Of bards full many a stroke divine
In Dante’s, Petrarch’s, Tasso’s line,
The land of Ariosto show’d;
And yet, e’en there, the canvas glow’d
With triumphs, a yet ampler brood,
Of Raphael and his brotherhood.
And nobly perfect, in our day
Of haste, half-work, and disarray,
Profound yet touching, sweet yet strong,
Hath risen Goethe’s, Wordsworth’s song;
Yet even I (and none will bow
Deeper to these!) must needs allow,
They yield us not, to soothe our pains,
Such multitude of heavenly strains
As from the kings of sound are blown,
Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn.”
While thus my friend discoursed, we pass
Out of the path, and take the grass.
The grass had still the green of May,
And still the unblacken’d elms were gay;
The kine were resting in the shade,
The flies a summer murmur made;
Bright was the morn and south the air;
The soft-couch’d cattle were as fair
As those that pastured by the sea,
That old-world morn, in Sicily,
When on the beach the Cyclops lay,
And Galatea from the bay
Mock’d her poor lovelorn giant’s lay.
“Behold,” I said, “the painter’s sphere!
The limits of his art appear!
The passing group, the summer morn,
The grass, the elms, that blossom’d thorn;
Those cattle couch’d, or, as they rise,
Their shining flanks, their liquid eyes;
These, or much greater things, but caught
Like these, and in one aspect brought.
In outward semblance he must give
A moment’s life of things that live;
Then let him choose his moment well,
With power divine its story tell!”
Still we walk’d on, in thoughtful mood,
And now upon the Bridge we stood.
Full of sweet breathings was the air,
Of sudden stirs and pauses fair;
Down o’er the stately Bridge the breeze
Came rustling from the garden trees
And on the sparkling waters play’d.
Light-plashing waves an answer made,
And mimic boats their haven near’d.
Beyond, the Abbey towers appear’d,
By mist and chimneys unconfined,
Free to the sweep of light and wind;
While through their earth-moor’d nave below,
Another breath of wind doth blow,
Sound as of wandering breeze—but sound
In laws by human artists bound.
“The world of music!” I exclaim’d,
“This breeze that rustles by, that famed
Abbey recall it! what a sphere,
Large and profound, hath genius here!
The inspired musician what a range,
What power of passion, wealth of change!
Some source of feeling he must choose
And its lock’d fount of beauty use,
And through the stream of music tell
Its else unutterable spell;
To choose it rightly is his part,
And press into its inmost heart.
“Miserere, Domine!
The words are utter’d, and they flee.
Deep is their penitential moan,
Mighty their pathos, but ’tis gone!
They have declared the spirit’s sore
Sore load, and words can do no more.
Beethoven takes them then—those two
Poor, bounded words—and makes them new;
Infinite makes them, makes them young;
Transplants them to another tongue
Where they can now, without constraint,
Pour all the soul of their complaint,
And roll adown a channel large
The wealth divine they have in charge.
Page after page of music turn,
And still they live and still they burn,
Eternal, passion-fraught, and free—
Miserere, Domine!”
Onward we moved, and reach’d the Ride
Where gaily flows the human tide.
Afar, in rest the cattle lay,
We heard, afar, faint music play;
But agitated, brisk, and near,
Men, with their stream of life, were here.
Some hang upon the rails, and some
On foot, behind them, go and come.
This through the Ride upon his steed
Goes slowly by, and this at speed;
The young, the happy, and the fair,
The old, the sad, the worn were there;
Some vacant, and some musing went,
And some in talk and merriment.
Nods, smiles, and greetings, and farewells!
And now and then, perhaps, there swells
A sigh, a tear—but in the throng
All changes fast, and hies along;
Hies, ah, from whence, what native ground?
And to what goal, what ending, bound?
“Behold, at last the poet’s sphere!
But who,” I said, “suffices here?
“For, ah! so much he has to do!
Be painter and musician too!
The aspect of the moment show,
The feeling of the moment know!
The aspect not, I grant, express
Clear as the painter’s art can dress,
The feeling not, I grant, explore
So deep as the musician’s lore—
But clear as words can make revealing,
And deep as words can follow feeling.
But, ah, then comes his sorest spell
Of toil! he must life’s movement tell!
The thread which binds it all in one,
And not its
