LXXIV.
FROM TORQUATO TASSO.
CHORUS IN AMINTA.
STROPHE.
Love, in what school, of whom should Man most learn thee?
How read thy lesson right
When on Love's angel-wings, with dizzied sight
To the ninth heaven borne
For thine own brightness we can scarce discern thee?
—Not Athens in her pride of eloquence,
Not the bright God of Morn,
Burns in his speech, as he whom Love inspires;—
Who in thine inmost shrine has touch'd thy fires,
And goes initiate thence,
Beyond the wisest wise,
And holy in thy mysteries.
ANTISTROPHE.
O For thou art self-taught,
And self-reveal'd alone!
All thine to lend the language of the eye,
And give the thoughtless thought,
And thine to teach the golden oratory
The pedant schools disown.
—And often in that better eloquence,
Those sigh-entangled words, and glance betwixt
Past all rejoindure fixt
The soul finds truer utterance,
And dares a something more than words could dare:—
Then Silence pleads in her own voiceful prayer.
EPODE.
O then let others haunt Cephísus stream,
And con Love's lore in Academe—
In loving eyes the love of love I learn:—
He holds that erudite strain
In just disdain
Before th' unprompted eloquence of the heart,
The lightning words that burn
Dipt in the passionate fire of artless art.
