Classic Poem

PART X.

Sublimest heroism emanates
From virtue only, all else fitful is;
Passion or impulse triumphing in things
Forgotten or outlived. The brightest gem
Is perseverance in her dazzling crown
To suffer and be silent still is great;
But to contend with wordless agony,
To feel the drops of disappointment fall
Chilling the heart; to mark the whitening hair,
The throbbings of faint hope beneath the dust
Cast over it of cold forgetfulness,
Which is oblivion; still to persevere
Is the sublimity of virtue reached,
The crown of life attained.
Years lapsed; the few
Yet many; there are hours of suffering
Embracing years, they pass and we live on,
Their impresses stamped less upon the brow
Than in the spirit.
Astrophel stood there
As one forgot, or met with the cold smile
Conventional, that freezes while we gaze;
The measured tones of an imposed restraint;
Glances averted of distrust or pride;
And that faint laugh of insincerity,
Light, dry, and curt, that palls the feeling ear.
He moved among them with a look sedate,
As one who swerved not from his self-respect;
Thoughtful as he who marks the insect-tribe
Disporting in the evening's sunny light,
Waved to and fro on motions of the air.
He in such human changes traced the law
Of solemn harmonies; they were to him,
In their infinity of nothingness,
The food of thought, the leading strings that drew
The soul to weigh the value of their breath
Against immortal yearnings.
Years rolled by,
And in that oratory still he sate,
Alone, but life and time had entered there
With change and shadow following. The lines
On his high brow had deepened, thought whose name
Is pain had left its traces, but the calm
Thereon was his who from an eminence
Beholds the end of his far pilgrimage.

The curtained door of the recess was closed:
Gathered within its central folds was seen
The portrait of his mother; she had passed
To God, and was at rest. Beneath it hung
What seemed the remnant of a laurel-wreath:
Leaves spare and shrivelled clung to its bared stem;
Like a remembered relic there it faded,
Withering by a neglected monument.
The dim and narrow casement shed its light
Upon his face abstracted, on the scrolls
Unrolled before him. On each side arose
Busts of the demigods we reverence, till
Memory becomes a power profound as life,
Imparted from the stone; those sentinels
We gather round, instinct with our own thought,
Their voices heard and answered by the soul.

The work was done, the canvas folded, all
That he had meditated from the hour
He bound himself before the altar, drawn
From palaces of nature, or of art,
Or scenes of homelier life, or that great age
When gods or angels trod the paths of men.

His musing eyes reposed on the high brow
Art gives the blind Maeonides: he weighed
The fates of that divine man and his song;
The wanderer, perchance the mendicant,
With the tongue given of eternity;
The Seer who spake of miserable men,
The jest and pity of the immortal gods,
As one who suffered with them. Then he turned
To him, the bard of the Lost Paradise;
Upon his face the veneration stamped
That saw the life created. Then he watched
The demigod of Avon's stream; the man
Of open brow and eyes benign, and smile,
Or rather luminous ray, his countenance
Sunlighting, as a mountain eminence;
The Spirit that dwelt among mankind, and passed,
And like great Nature's self his records left
Untended, to be gathered by the priests
Of thought, who in each silent vestige found
The signet-stamp of his divinity.

And then he mused upon our homage paid;
The dignified repose we give to them
Upon their columns; rest found not on earth,
Each slave to circumstance and irritants
That reach the loftiest in their solitudes.
He felt the light strings of the poet's lyre
No vision was, but the material harp
Whose chords are human memories; each note
Sounded of joy or grief, each discord proved
By him who would inspire in fellow-men
Sublimest teaching of humanity;
All that the aspiration can ascend;
All the misprised, mistrusted, can endure;
The stings of jealousy or scorn malign,
The perseverance that must baffle hate,
Ere the song, shadow of his thought, become
Embodied power, ere reached the height supreme.

He was awaked from fancies to the real.
Upon the latch a hand appealed with touch
Scarce audible, as of intrusion made,
Yet toned and weighed as for one ear designed.
Then the door slowly opened as a thief
Approaching tiptoe and unseen, till ceased
The motion, narrowed to the breadth exact
For apparition of the human form
That broke upon the poet's solitude.
Gesture of courtesy and welcome given,
The one unknown paced slowly to the chair,
His footstep's sound unheard.

He was a man
Wrapped up and folded in austerities:
Whate'er of fruit lay in him was concealed
By the encrusting countenance that gave
Faintest impressions. The automaton
Within the arm-chair sate immoveable;
One idea entering absorbed his brain,
The Poet visibly embodied there.

All human things succumb to circumstance,
Mightiest of levellers, whose rule controls
Monarchs as slaves. The eagle from its height
To carrion stoops, and, by the common law,
The poet's vision of abstraction melts
Before the wand of the conventional,
Until he treads the dust of earthly roads
Distrusting and distrusted.
Astrophel
Surveyed him with a staid and calm regard,
While in the purpose of that austere man,
He read the arbiter of all to him
That was vitality.
There sate the judge,
Minos, or Rhadamanthus of spirits saved
Or lost. His hand could gather up those leaves
Ere scattered to the winds; even he could give
Imperishable wings, and spread them forth,
In the broad sunlight of opinion. There
The maker and creator sat, nor less
Was he in power, contemplating those scrolls.
He read that visionary bard, and saw
His life's reality came but from him.
He felt that he could stand forth like the seer,
And say to those dry bones, those arid leaves,
The shadowy anatomies of thought,
" Arise and be impersonate!"
Each met
The other's eye with staid regard; the one
From earth abstracted eagle-like alone,
Enthroned amid its sightless solitudes,
The other of the earth that lives upon
The palpable things of life within his grasp.
The Poet felt the seated man should stand
Subject-like by the chair of regal state;
The opposite, and watchful, saw in him
The unreality of daily life;
The suitor of the impossible.
Astrophel
Spake with complacent pride subdued, and joy
Known only to the Poet, dwelling on
The ideal of his love; the hope and faith
Of triumph throbbing in his conscious heart:

" Before you are the records of a life,
The cherished labours of uncounted years.
Open them to the world, sole claim I make,
That you deal with them as your own."
Upon his seat
The Minos of the hour moved restlessly,
And rolled his eyes as one who would evade
The things he understood not. He felt like
The innocent bird that would escape the snare,
Or rather one recoiling from a snake.
Phrase curt or grandiose he understood not, less
The poet's love for children of his brain;
Or vainer yearnings for an earthly fame.
These were as tongues unknown, the light that shone
On darkness comprehended not; and less
The impotence of that vain claim upon
Posterity, sage matron yet unborn,
To her own cares and household gods entailed.

Then slowly the Austerity began:
The utterance of his staid voice expressed
Distrust and caution; the twin deities,
Ministrant elements of life and light,
Whereby he walked. Within his accent's dwelt
The doubt akin to apprehensiveness,
That chose each word, its value weighing:

" Sir,
I feel most honoured by your offering;
Could I be less in such high preference shown,
Conscious of your accorded meed, though late
Awarded by the few? Voices once raised
For poets herald them no more; the chiefs
Have fought and passed, the barriers are raised,
And crowds rush in arrayed with leaden arms.
Light novels are the mode that float upon
Their buoyant lightness. In a railway age
Men hate to think, and authors write for them.
If poetry sells, it is not such as yours;
Slight thought have men for records of fine art,
Or scenes of demigods of olden time,
Or revelations of a passionate life
Struggling for truth, confessions of the soul.
Ours is the age that feeds on palpable things:
In vain are lyres attuned to fancies shaped
From metaphysical webs of tortuous thought.
" Sir, in a word, for truth at last is told,
The curse on poetry is, " Thou shalt not sell! "
All authors write for money, call it " trash, "
Even with Iago; worship of mankind,
Without a hypocrite.
" You write for fame,
But Fame stooped never yet to boil the pot.
You will excuse the homeliness of phrase
When garbed in truth."
While speaking, with a glance
He scanned the room, but in that glance resolved
Its market worth. " You do not money win
Howe'er despised the bait seducing all
Your song bends not to fashions of the hour;
But to that Truth with face unchangeable,
Throughout all time. The women love the verse,
Pictures ornate elaborately wrought,
Reflecting types or memories of themselves.
" If I might venture to suggest advice,
Forgetting my own interest in yours,
I would entreat you, be a novelist.
Aspire to something that shall live; infuse
The formative elements of life and thought
In the creation. Meanwhile I await
The triple-volumed manuscript, and crave
Forgiveness, if I turn from poetry
With horror and dismay.
" If I might still
Suggestion make, howe'er incapable,
I would say, venturing upon the words
Of divine Shakespeare, poetry has fall'n
" Like Lucifer, never to hope again. "
And, having thus delivered my full mind,
And parting, as I trust, to meet once more,
I have the honour to bid you — good night!